Has TIGHAR gone dark?

Jeeeeeez … talk about a Freudian slip! Kool-Aid or Kook-Aid, I guess either one fits.

“Kook-aid” in MFowler’s post above seems a terribly apt typo to describe TIGHAR.

Is there any proof they were ever on the island?

Without proof a theory is just a theory, the same way I have a theory on the legitimacy of the group’s claim.

They can’t call it “case closed”,They have tried mightily to make their case, going to absurd lengths to tie whatever their current obsession is: they have…bones, glass, metal, dried feces (DNA contaminated by improper handling), shoe heel…to AE and have failed time and time again to prove their claim.

Combined with the fact it is in their financial and organizational best interest to drag out the search and conveniently find new “evidence” to tout to the media and supporters.

Anyone who thinks they’re infallible or geniuses really has been drinking their “Kool -Aid”..

Vahe.D – are you familiar with the phrase, “he drank the Kook-Aid”? The Wikipedia entry is quite instructive, in light of what you just typed.

From its founding in 1985 until 1988, TIGHAR supported the “crash-and-sink” hypothesis advanced by Elgen Long. However, Ric Gillespie in 1988 saw an opportunity for TIGHAR to begin investigating the hypothesis that Earhart and Noonan landed in Nikumaroro to become real-life Robinson Crusoes because he noted that Nikumaroro and Howland Island were situated on the 157-337 navigational search line and that none of Earhart’s final radio transmissions were distress calls.

I’m not going to disagree with anyone on your side of the pond about the pathetic state of non-profit regulations in the USA, it’s been a source of dismay to me for decades.

In fact, TIGHAR was “visited” by the IRS in 2018 or so, after being sued by millionaire Tim Mellon in a dispute over what some underwater video at Nikumaroro did or did not show. TIGHAR’s IRS tax forms suddenly got much more descriptive and verbose about its “educational” mission and “young people” and things like that. But nothing fundamentally changed.

And as for pivoting to be all-in on the Earhart mystery … in 1988 when Gillespie launched his self-styled Earhart Project, you have to remember where TIGHAR was at as far as viability. It has been incorporated and given non-profit status three years earlier. It’s only noteworthy  “project” at the time was the search for Nungesser and Coli in the Maine woods – and that was going nowhere fast. Gillespie recognized that if he was going to make a living at “investigating” something to do with historic aircraft, he’d better find a subject that was a lot more recognizable to the general public.

Enter Amelia Earhart. Despite flatly stating that he had no interest in getting involved in the racier guesses about Earhart’s fate, Gillespie went all on on his Nikumaroro Hypothesis. And the money and media fame have been rolling in ever since – Gillespie is everywhere on the internet, and if you look at total revenues compared to total expenses for 2000-2021, there’s more than $300,000 that’s not accounted for when reviewing the tax forms (which may mean nothing because of the loosey-goosey way things can be reported on said forms).

As a fan of the good guys winning….

I would like to see an outcome where the group is discredited and held to censure and ridicule… not that the group seems to have any shame.

The problem internet’s long memory will keep them around firever. 

Just the other day I was looking up some AE detail and there was a 2017 article (posted by a reliable source) saying the long lost bones were likely AE’s.

(How could they tell if the bones were lost? I believed they just compared their size to photos of AE, hardly the most accurate measure. At any rate, seems pretty flimsy for the “likely” determination).

Since then, the bones have been found AND tested, or course, they are NOT AE’s.

Still, newcomers (and the gullible) or casual readers will come across those old stories and come away with very incorrect impressions.

Have we all got our popcorn ordered ready for when the sonar anomaly is further investigated next year? 

If it does turn out to be the Electra, it’s going to need to be a biiiiig bucket! I’m not  sure whether solving the mystery or watching TIGHAR is going to be the best bit yet (obviously an important assumption is being made here). 

Just because you don’t like the current regulations, or lack of them, is of no interest whatsoever to the US authorities.

As for not reading posts about TIGHAR, you won’t miss anything as they’ve never found anything yet and it’s a fair bet they’re not going to start now.

Gillespie’s income stream appears to be shrinking. Whether it will ever cease completely remains to be seen.

I wanted to find out, having read some of the many posts, on this forum how TIGHAR is allowed to exist. 

I have found out and, as I said earlier, I’m shocked and stunned. The largest economy on the planet, runs its taxation regulation in such a slap dash manner. Lack of regulation allows the law of the jungle to exist!!

It is his business model that is driving all this hot air. Change the rules (one of my earlier proposals) the other was stop donations (a lot more difficult to do) was the other. Either way TIGHAR would be forced to close down and the excessive hot air would disappear. As you said earlier it is up to his supporters to decide how and where they spend their money. If TIGHAR didn’t exist the supporters could invest their money in a genuine air museum, for example.     

The current lack of regulation(s) allow and almost encourage TIGHAR’s behaviour. 

I have decided that further reading of TIGHAR posts on this forum, by me, will not occur. 

H

Hypersonic…

Never assume the rest if the world is like the UK. 🙂  Don’t be fooled by the “Common language” nonsense…after all, even the various regions of the island differ from each other!

As someone who has lived and worked in both the US and UK…they are very different. No doubt each one will say “thankfully!”.

Instead of venting your  indignation at U.S. tax authorities, might I suggest aiming your ire at a certain organization? 

While charity rules may have worked in the group’s favour, in today’s internet world, all manner of groups can exist and make their ideals known regardless of national charity or tax rules.

I’m sure conspiracy theories and fake news…and the organizations that sponsor them…thrive  in the U.K.

Finally, you might think of casting some blame towards the well meaning but gullible people who donated money for so many years. 

After a few years of no returns, (and stubborn intransigence on the theory),  it becomes a case of “Fool me once…”.

Eventually, the light should have gone on…

MFowler,

Thankyou I couldn’t work out where J Boyle is based. I can see your based in the USA.

When I first found out how “slack” the process is I thought that can’t be right. I must have received a bang on the head or something. However, a brief re-check confirmed that my findings were indeed correct. Which you have now “independently” confirmed.

As I have said before financial regulation and policy, in the UK, is very very tight. His business model would not be allowed no if’s or but’s. Originally, I thought the rest of the democratic World followed in the same way. But clearly not.

H

hypersonic, I could go into great detail and go on at great length about the shortcomings of our Internal Revenue Service when it comes to granting non-profit status to groups and then … not regulating them. J Boyle has done a very good job of covering all of the salient points.

Bottom line – in the United States, getting your non-profit designation from the Internal Revenue Service is a government-sanctioned license to steal. It’s buyer beware. It took awhile before I saw Gillespie for what he was – an extraordinarily good showman.

The American policy is to avoid over regulation.

So, this group did things by their standards which is not how a professional group led by experts and meeting rigorous academic standards would have done things. I may not like their methodology, but if someone wants to give away their money, well…it’s their money.

I’m not sure it is the government’s role to tell prohibit people from giving money to an “amateur” group.

To stretch the point (quite) a bit, it would be like the government blocking a village choir because they are not as professional as the New College Oxford group. And don’t get me started about amateur dramatic societies, having witness a WI reenactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbour. 🙂

I’m hardly a fan of the group, but I’m realistic enough to know that people are going to support whoever they like, regardless of my opinion of their merit.

You might not care about the funding. I would suggest it is key. The point I have uncovered, in my own mind, is how poor regulation appears to be in the US I’m quite shocked.

Better regulation would have closed the organisation down many, many years ago. That’s if it had every been allowed, to be created, in the first place.

Resulting in the traffic on this forum being a whole lot less, I think.

It is the lack of regulation that has allowed the theories and fake news to gain momentum. Stoked by what would be unacceptable funding lines. If operating in the UK.

I don’t like their business model either. However, it isn’t illegal. There are two ways to close the organisation down:

1. Members, and the public, stop funding it.
2. Better official scrutiny and regulation.

Neither of which is going to happen in the short to medium term, I fear.

H

I don’t care about the money.

If people want to give money to them that is their business. U.S. laws are written to give churches the benefit of the doubt, you can’t have freedom of worship if the state can say who is or isn’t a church.

So, those laws are exploited by other not for profit groups.

What I care about is the group’s methodology and using the flight and people involved for its own ends.

Rather cynically (in my opinion) distorting history, making claims of solving the mystery when it really hasn’t done so, and not playing nice with those who disagree with its “findings”. 

That’s not how historic or scientific methodology is supposed to work.

Public comments, peer review, the kind of stuff I learned on graduate school, not conjecture and guess with nothing tangible to support it. 

To the best of my knowledge, they have not found anything on the island that is indisputably proof of AE being on the island. A lot of ” maybe” stuff that might have come from later inhabitants, (which isn’t usually acknowledged), but no real proof.

You only need to observe how many churches function in the USA to realize how TIGHAR has gotten away with so much and for so long. 

Being relatively new to the world of TIGHAR I wanted to understand how they are allowed to exist…..

It might come as a surprise to the readership. But Mr Gillespie and TIGHAR are not doing anything wrong. He / they are simply exploiting a massive hole in US financial and / or organisational law – it would seem. TIGHAR is registered with the Internal Revenue Service (tax authority) as a charity. Business No 51-0282621 filed a F501 (C) (3) application sometime ago, possibly in 1985, it was accepted. As such they are exempt paying tax and relatively free to do as they wish – it would also seem. Every year they submit a F990 Declaration. It indicates the financial turn over for the year, just past, the number of staff employed, and their salaries if appropriate. It also indicates the hrs per / week senior staff work. In the case of Mr Gillespie that is 60 hrs / week. So obviously he’s a very busy man. On the Declaration they also claim to have 200 supporters. Reading between the lines these would seem to be their main source of income. However, the public can donate via the TIGHAR website.

I have not seen any control measures in place, in the US, to control senior staff salaries. Having a senior member of a UK charity on a salary is very strictly controlled by HMRC (tax authority).

If TIGHAR was registered in Oxford, UK instead of Oxford, Pennsylvania they would be subject to scrutiny by the Charities Commission. They, the commission, have the power to decide whether the organisation should be accepted as a charity. From that follows the tax status. Part of the demonstration of suitability, in the UK, is an indication of what the organisation does for the community. The Charity Commission have the legal powers to investigate suspected breaches of the very tight rules and regulations imposed on UK charities. Which could result in prosecution, closure, or both. I can’t find any evidence of a separate regulatory authority in the US – it is quite possible there are many thousands of organisations over there exploiting the holes in the system.

In the UK the Charity Commission is empowered to ask difficult questions like: How many historic aircraft have you recovered in the last 40 years? Where are they? How many do you expect to recover in the next year? Etc.

What appears to be a lack of oversight, in the US system, means there isn’t anybody, in authority, to ask those difficult questions. On the other hand, the UK system is designed to guard against fraud, money laundering, misrepresentation and theft. As well as ensuring tax is paid where it is warranted.

My little bit of research here has taught me much.

H

Also, British aviation archaeologists will not be having anything to do with the P-38 as it’s never going to be recovered.

D. Vahe..

Frequent poster M. Fowler has already commented on the forthcoming book.

He keeps a sharp eye on the group.

If you search his many updates, you’ll learn a great deal about the group.