For other persons named Thomas Boggs, see Thomas Boggs (disambiguation). For the other similarly nicknamed Member of Congress from the same time period, see Cale Boggs.
In 1972, while still majority leader, Boggs was on a fundraising drive in Alaska when the twin engine airplane on which he was travelling along with Alaska congressman Nick Begich and two others disappeared en route from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska.
A Democrat running as an anti-Long candidate in the 2nd congressional district, Boggs defeated incumbent Paul H. Maloney in the 1940 Democratic primary and won the general election unopposed. When he was sworn in he was, at 27, the youngest member of Congress.
His initial election was not without controversy; five of his political allies who served as Orleans Parish election commissioners were convicted of changing 97 votes for Boggs's Democratic primary opponents into votes for Boggs. The case, United States v. Classic, reached the Supreme Court, where it established the federal government's authority to regulate local primary elections, setting a key precedent for later civil rights decisions.[4]
After the war, Boggs began his political comeback. He was again elected to Congress in 1946 (on Maloney's retirement) and was then re-elected thirteen times, once just after he disappeared, but before he was presumed dead. In 1951, Boggs launched an ill-fated campaign for governor of Louisiana. Leading in the polls early in the campaign, he was soon put on the defensive when another candidate, Lucille May Grace, at the urging of long-time southeastern Louisiana political bossLeander Perez, questioned Boggs's membership in the American Student Union in the 1930s. By 1951, the ASU was thought to be a Communist front. Boggs avoided the question and attacked both Grace and Perez for conducting a smear campaign against him. In his book, The Big Lie, author Garry Boulard suggests strongly that Boggs was a member of the ASU but tried to cover up that fact in the different political climate of the early 1950s.[citation needed]
The Boggs Act of 1952, sponsored by Hale Boggs, set harsh mandatory sentences for drug-related offenses. A first-offense conviction for marijuana possession carried a minimum sentence of 2 to 10 years with a fine of up to $20,000.[5]
Boggs was the youngest member of the Warren Commission, which, from 1963 to 1964, investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[11] Boggs has been reported to have differing positions regarding the Warren report. Based upon Office of the House Historian and Clerk of the House Office of Art and Archives, Politico reports that "Boggs dissented from the commission's majority report which supported the single bullet thesis — pointing to a lone assassin. Boggs said he "had strong doubts about it".[12] But in a 1966 appearance on Face the Nation, Boggs defended the commission's findings and stated that he did not doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy.[13][14] He said that all the evidence indicated that Kennedy was shot from behind and that the argument that one bullet hit both Kennedy and Texas GovernorJohn Connally was "very persuasive".[14] Boggs took issue with the assertions of Warren Commission critics and stated that it was "human nature" that "many people would prefer to believe there was a conspiracy".[13][14] It is unknown why his position was stated in such opposite terms, but conspiracy theorists have pondered that difference as significant. In Oliver Stone's film JFK, it is Sen. Russell Long who prompts Jim Garrison the District Attorney of Orleans Parish to reopen his investigation into Lee Harvey Oswald's activities in New Orleans during the summer of 1963, beginning with association with David W. Ferrie and Guy Bannister. According to author Joan Mellen in her book A Farewell to Justice, Jim Garrison told her it was actually Boggs that prompted him to reopen his investigation into the assassination of the President.
In the 1979 novel "The Matarese Circle", author Robert Ludlum portrayed Boggs as having been killed to stop his probe into the assassination.[15]
He served as majority whip from 1962 to 1971 and as majority leader from January 1971 to his disappearance. As the whip, he ushered much of President Johnson's Great Society legislation through Congress. In late 1966, Boggs was asked to help the AFL-NFL merger by having the merged league receive an exemption from antitrust law sanctions. He helped get the merger attached to a bill that would get to a vote (as assisted by state senator Russell Long), which resulted in both a successful merger and a professional football team in Louisiana, which soon became known as the New Orleans Saints.[16]
On August 22, 1968, while Secretary of State Dean Rusk was testifying in a hearing concerning the Vietnam War, Boggs interrupted the session to announce the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Soviet Union, after hearing of a recent Radio Prague broadcast telling the Czechoslovaks not to take any action against the occupying forces. That caused Secretary Rusk, who was previously unaware of the situation, to excuse himself immediately, mid-testimony, to attend to the issue of the invasion.[17] (Source: Walter Cronkite: The Way It Was: The 1960s)
That led to a conversation on April 6, 1971 between President Richard M. Nixon and the Republican minority leader, Gerald Ford. Nixon said that he could no longer take counsel from Boggs as a senior member of Congress. In the recording of this call, Nixon asked Ford to arrange for the House delegation to include an alternative to Boggs. Ford speculated that Boggs was either drinking too much or taking pills that were upsetting him mentally.[19]
On April 22, 1971, Boggs went even further:
"Over the postwar years, we have granted to the elite and secret police within our system vast new powers over the lives and liberties of the people. At the request of the trusted and respected heads of those forces, and their appeal to the necessities of national security, we have exempted those grants of power from due accounting and strict surveillance."[20]
Disappearance in Alaska
As majority leader, Boggs often campaigned for others, including Representative Nick Begich of Alaska. On October 16, 1972, Boggs was aboard a twin engine Cessna 310 with Representative Begich, who was facing a possible tight race in the November 1972 general election against the Republican candidate, Don Young, when it disappeared during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau. Also on board were Begich's aide, Russell Brown; and the pilot, Don Jonz;[21] the four were heading to a campaign fundraiser for Begich.
An Emergency position-indicating emergency locator transmitter (ELT) was not required at this time. But this accident influenced the adoption of the ELT requirement in 1973.[23]
No emergency transmission signal determined to be from the plane was heard during the search. In its report on the incident, the National Transportation Safety Board stated that the pilot's portable emergency transmitter, permissible in lieu of a fixed transmitter on the plane, was found in an aircraft at Fairbanks. The report also notes that a witness saw an unidentified object in the pilot's briefcase that resembled, except for color, the portable emergency transmitter. The safety board concluded that neither the pilot nor aircraft had an emergency location transmitter.[22]: 6–8
On November 24, 1972, the search was suspended after 39 days. Neither the wreckage of the plane nor the pilot's and passengers' remains were ever found. After a hearing and seven-minute jury deliberation, his death certificate was signed by Judge Dorothy Tyner.[24]
After Boggs and Begich were re-elected posthumously that November, House Resolution 1 of January 3, 1973, officially recognized Boggs's presumed death and opened the way for a special election. The same was done for Begich.
In summer 2020, Boggs's disappearance was investigated in a podcast produced by iHeartMedia called Missing in Alaska.[25][26]
Personal life
In 1973, Boggs's wife since 1938, Lindy, was elected as a Democrat to the 93rd Congress, by special election, to the second district seat left vacant by her husband's death.[27] She was reelected to the eight succeeding Congresses (March 20, 1973 – January 3, 1991) and retired after the 1990 election.[28][29] In 1997, President Bill Clinton appointed Lindy Boggs U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, in which capacity she served until 2001.[30]
Boulard, Garry (2001), The Big Lie - Hale Boggs, Lucille May Grace and Leander Perez in 1951-52
Maney, Patrick J. "Hale Boggs: The Southerner as National Democrat" in Raymond W Smock and Susan W Hammond, eds. Masters of the House: Congressional Leadership Over Two Centuries (1998) pp 33–62.
Strahan, Randall. "Thomas Brackett Reed and the Rise of Party Government" in Raymond W Smock and Susan W Hammond, eds. Masters of the House: Congressional Leadership Over Two Centuries (1998) pp 223–259.
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