At the time, this was the biggest search in the history of the country, involving 40 military and 20 civilian aircraft. Everything from Coast Guard helicopters and cutters, to Air Force spy aircraft, as well as numerous private aircraft. After thirty-nine days the air search was abandoned.
Click here to see the official NTSB mishap report (1.07 MB in size, Requires Abode Acrobat)
The Washington-based newspaper, Roll Call, which reports on Capitol Hill, found information through the Freedom of Information Act that two FBI telexes had come in from the FBI office in Los Angeles, indicating that someone had contacted the FBI and that they had knowledge of the whereabouts of the plane and that two people were still living at the site and they gave the coordinates. This was followed up by another telex two days later in which the FBI said that they had verified the authenticity of the source and established their credibility. The source was working in surveillance technologies for an undisclosed firm and they had located the plane.
Some of the other interesting points surrounding the disappearance include; Boggs was taken to the airport for the first leg of the trip by a young democrat named Bill Clinton who later, as President, appointed Congressman Boggs' wife, Lindy, to the position of US Ambassador to the Vatican after she served eighteen years in the Congress after her husband's disappearance.
Boggs also served on the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Some web sites and conspiracy theorists have reported that Boggs wasn't happy with the commission's findings and was pushing for the investigation to be reopened at the time of his death.
However, according to his daughter Cokie Roberts, the nationally known television journalist, she told listeners to a talk radio show in April 2004 that her father had no problems with the commission's finding that he was not pushing for the investigation into the Kennedy assassination to be reopened. She said, "I just don't know where people get these ideas from."
The host replied, "The Internet."
UPDATE: We have uncovered never-before-seen records regarding the FBI telexes and the search efforts for Hale Boggs and Nick Begich! These documents summarized the search efforts performed by the U.S. Coast Guard, and detail information received from various "tips" regarding the case. These papers chronicle the Coast Guard's knowledge of the information the telexes contained, and that they searched the area the telexes suggested (after the FBI established the identification of the source). The search of the prescribed area yielded negative results, and the source was deemed to be erroneous and unreliable. Hale Boggs, Nick Begich, Don Jonz, and Russ Brown have yet to be found |
For more information, view the following:
