Hello, everyone. I have been lurking on and reading through the TIGHAR Amelia Earhart Project and Forum for a long time and finally felt compelled to register today after following the events in Casper this morning. Since I am brand new, please bear with any inadvertent mistakes I make in posting (there's an awful lot to learn in the "How to post" section of the Forum introduction!).
First, as I have wanted to do any number of times over my months of reading the research, articles, and forum discussion, I just want to thank all here for the incredible knowledge, education, insight, educated theorizing, and attention to detail (that means you, Richie) that everyone contributes -- that is, donates -- to this Research Project and Forum. I can't tell you how many times I have marveled over the six (and often more) new things I have learned before breakfast in a wide range of topics of which I know nothing, from celestial navigation to radio communications to South Pacific history to sonar radar to the depth and dynamics of bereavement...and more. (Oops, sorry for that run-run-run-on sentence.) I'm beginning to think that a year of daily study here at TIGHAR and the Amelia Earhart Project could beat any four-year college education, hands down.
Second, speaking of hands, after reading the news today, I'm keeping my fingers crossed re: a speedy end to the lawsuit.
And third... beyond the plaintiff's mutually exclusive accusations, which have already been well elucidated here, it suddenly occurred to me: if Ric and the TIGHAR team allegedly knew in 2010 that they had found the plane, why, after 25 years and millions of dollars of research would they spend a donor's $1M on yet more laborious, tedious, easily thwarted underwater searching and filming and side-scan sonar in 2012? After all the time, effort, and funds invested in trying to investigate and prove the Nikumaroro landing theory, wouldn't TIGHAR have spent the donor's 2012 donation on technology that could bring the plane, or at least some "smoking gun" evidence of the plane, up from its location as quickly as possible?... to show the world that TIGHAR's hypothesis had been right all along? Hasn't that been the whole point of searching the waters off the reef for the plane... to prove that it's there, and that the TIGHAR theory that Amelia and Fred landed on the reef was in fact the true answer to the mystery? If the Electra had truly been found, what's the point of using any donations for anything other than recovering it, or at least for protecting it and publicizing the discovery?
Common sense and our delightfully mercenary, fame-seeking, celebrity-fawning culture suggests that if the alleged TIGHAR "dark side" the plaintiff is complaining about knew that they'd found the famous Earhart plane in 2010, they would have "taken" the alleged plaintiff’s money, rented underwater recovery equipment with it, zipped right back to Amelia and Fred's alleged "grave" ASAP (which was 2012), and brought that Electra up lickety-split, claiming all the victory, glory, instant world fame, and gazillions of dollars in book, TV, and movie rights, as well as the title of Principal Investigator Of All Time in the relevant professional journals— with or without including the surprised donor in the glory. Instead, TIGHAR went back and quietly, patiently, painstakingly mowed the reef water again, graciously, repeatedly thanking the donor for the opportunity to do so.
It’s not clear yet if TIGHAR got too much more out of Niku VII than a whole lot more very expensive work to do, so how did they “benefit” from an alleged 2010 discovery that they allegedly “withheld” from the allegedly aggrieved Mr. M?
Respectfully wondering, with apologies for making up for all my long-unsaid comments....