Possible new clue in Earhart mystery

Amelia Earhart was attempting to circumnavigate the globe in 1937. She was roughly 20 hours into the trip, flying from New Guinea to Howland Island, when she and her navigator vanished over the Pacific Ocean. Now a new clue may solve the decades-old mystery. This picture was taken a few months after Earhart disappeared. It's off the Pacific Atoll Nicomoraru in Kiribati, formerly Gardner Island. Rick Gillespie has spent more than 20 years searching for Earhart. This is a ship that went aground on the reef in 1929. It was an old wreck then. And what struck us is that there's something sticking up out of the water over here. This is a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that fits right in with the other pieces we had. So yeah, I think it's probably the landing gear of her airplane. Forensic imaging specialists say it could be part of her plane's landing gear. And there are more clues. Items common in the 1930s were found on excavation sites on the island. The artifacts we found on this site are bottles from personal care items that an American woman in the 1930s would have. The parts of a mirror and makeup from a woman's compact. Navy planes searched around the island in the days after she went missing, but found no sign of her Lockheed Electra aircraft. Gillespie believes most of it had already slipped below the ocean's surface. At a news conference at the State Department, Gillespie, whose group recovers historic aircraft, announced a high-tech deepwater search will begin this summer off the Pacific island using a small robotic submarine. The U.S. government is lending its support. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she's been captivated with Amelia Earhart since her mother first told her the aviator's story. She embodied the spirit of an America coming of age and increasingly confident, ready to lead in a quite uncertain and dangerous world. Gillespie says the photograph gives them a starting point of where to look. The only thing we can do is make a best effort to go and search and look and see what we can find. And it's the searching that's important. The search for Earhart has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but the haystack may be a lot smaller now. That expedition trip this summer is privately funded. It will take off from Hawaii. They will spend 10 days on the site scanning the waters off the coast. So fingers crossed, just maybe, we will have some answers. Lisa Sylvester, CNN, Washington.