Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr. (Feb. 15, 1914 – disappeared Oct. 16, 1972) was an American Democrat politician and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Orleans, Louisiana, from 1947 to 1972. He was the Majority Leader of the House and member of the Warren Commission.

Boggs vanished in an airplane flight between Anchorage and Juneau, Alaska. The airplane was never found. Three others on board vanished as well: the pilot, U.S. Congressman Nick Begich and Begich’s aide. Boggs was on a fund raiser for Begich.

There is a legitimate theory that Boggs was targeted for assassination. Grounds for murder?

• April 1971, Boggs made a speech on the floor of the House in which he strongly attacked FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the whole of the FBI.
• In a conversation on April 6, 1971, between President Richard M. Nixon and the Republican Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford, Jr., 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 on pills as well as alcohol.
• In a conversation with an aide, Boggs said, “Hoover lied his eyes out to the [Warren] Commission on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the gun, etc.
• Later that month, Boggs went on to say, “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.” Boggs stated that under Hoover the FBI had adopted “the tactics of the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Gestapo.”
• Boggs dissented from the Warren Commission’s majority, which supported the single-bullet theory. Boggs commented: “I had strong doubts about it.” In the 1979 novel “The Matarese Circle,” author Robert Ludlum portrayed Boggs as having been killed to stop his investigation of the Kennedy assassination.
• From Bernard Fensterwald and Michael Ewing [“Coincidence or Conspiracy?” cited here]: “It is a myth that the Warren Commission was united in its conclusion that a lone assassin killed President John F. Kennedy. On the seven-member Warren Commission, there were three dissenters: Senator Sherman Cooper, Senator Richard Russell, and Congressman Hale Boggs. As Dallas journalist Jim Marrs pointed out, ‘The most vocal critic among Commission members [was Hale Boggs]. Boggs became frustrated with the panel’s total reliance on the FBI for information.’”
• Several years after Bogg’s death in 1972, a colleague of his wife, Lindy (who was elected to fill her late husband’s seat in the Congress), recalled Mrs. Boggs remarking, “Hale felt very, very torn during his work [on the Commission] … he wished he had never been on it and wished he’d never signed it [the Warren Report].”
• “Richard Russell, Hale Boggs and Cooper believed there was a conspiracy in the JFK assassination. Russell and Boggs both said so publicly,” according to Richard E. Sprague in “Taking of America.”

Even more important than JFK rumblings, Boggs angrily railed that the U.S. was becoming totalitarian. As a civil libertarian, he was openly feuding with J. Edgar Hoover, who died on May 2, 1972 — just five months before Boggs’ disappearance. However Boggs’ feud was as much about the FBI as a corrupted intrusive institution as it was about Hoover. The death of Hoover did not change this equation, and Boggs was working to roll back the agency’s budget. Furthermore, as Majority Leader, Boggs may have had the power and ability to deliver.

Operation Octopus, according to federal files, was a surveillance program that turned any television set with tubes into a broadcast transmitter. Agents of Octopus could pick up audio and visual images with the equipment as far as 25 miles away. Hale Boggs was investigating Operation Octopus.

Around 11:30 p.m. on July 23, 1970 — two years before he disappeared — a Lincoln Continental ran Boggs’ car off the road in Washington, D.C. Boggs chased the car, wrote down the license plate number, and called the police, but there is no record that the incident was investigated. The Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police would have been the agency in charge of the investigation, but they now say they can find no relevant records relating to the case.

In April 1971, Boggs claimed the FBI tapped his telephone. He said several other representatives also believed their phones had been tapped. Boggs said he knew why the FBI tapped his phone and how they intended to use the information. He refused to say what that information was, but he said once his lawyers finished their investigation he would release the details to the public. Boggs then called for the immediate resignation of Hoover. Attorney Gen. John Mitchell denied Boggs’ allegations about the FBI, but Boggs said he was “absolutely certain” the FBI had placed a tap on his phone.

The upshot of all of this is simple: Whenever an influential challenger of the New Underworld Order (NUO) Crime Syndicate dies, the prime suspect is the NUO. Whenever he or she is fired, incarcerated or smeared, the probable reason is not the officially-stated one but rather the threat the challenger posed to the powers that be.

Related articles on Winter Watch:

• • Re-Examining the Untimely Death of a President’s Son: John F. Kennedy, Jr.
  • The Assassination of US Sen. Paul Wellstone, One of the Last Anti-War Populist Progressives

Don Jonz, 38, of Fairbanks piloted the Cessna 310 airplane. Jonz was a military veteran with 17,000 hours of flight time, and he logged 15 years as a pilot in Alaska. He was also heavily in debt from flight business setbacks. Flight weather that morning was described as marginal.

To our eyes an iHeartpodcast Network show called “Missing In Alaska” lays out the results of an investigation that may lead to clues, motives and methods of the case.

New Orleans-based freelance journalist Jon Walczak said, “What I found is one of the strangest stories you’ve never heard.” His investigation began in 2011 and has included the review of thousands of pages of government documents, interviews with dozens of sources and took him from Arizona to the Arctic Circle. “What I’ve learned is bizarre and until now, largely untold,” he said.

The podcast segment “Anchorage” describes some details about the Cessna and the flight that are sketchy. The plane was flown down from Fairbanks by Jonz and was provided gratis (a lure?) to the congressmen. The characters associated with providing the plane are mentioned — one of whom was interviewed in this segment — was hard to parse, but perhaps Winter Watch readers can try their hand.

Despite a 39-day search that was said to have been the largest in U.S. history, nothing was located. The podcast team discovered that a fishing boat turned up a Cessna tail in seawater in 1980. The debris was taken away by a tender, but no follow up is known and the numbers on the tail were not recorded.

The Cessna 310 involved was required to carry an emergency locator transmitter (ELT) per Alaska state statutes section 02.35.115. However, no ELT signal was determined to emit from the plane during the search. In its report on the incident, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) stated that the pilot’s portable ELT, permissible in lieu of a fixed ELT on the plane, was later found in an aircraft at Fairbanks, Alaska. The NTSB concluded that neither the pilot nor the lost aircraft had an ELT.

The “Missing in Alaska” podcast here. It’s well done but lengthy with many secondary issues. To get to the core of the account, Winter Watch would suggest focusing on the following segments: The Transcript, Murder and Me, in particular Bonus: The P.I. Report, Don’t Knock Arizona and Anchorage.

I really applaud Walczak for his hard work and persistent journalism, which is a rarity in today’s inverted world. He brings a lot to the table. But unlike most readers of Winter Watch, he doesn’t seem to appreciate the corruption and kompromat ops of Hoover and the Deep State nature of elements of the FBI and other U.S. intelligence. He dismisses with little explanation this obvious fonte of the assassination plot that is staring everyone in the face. Such is the case with Boggs, who was the real target. Begich was collateral damage in this ruthless black op. There is considerable history of the Deep State using Mafia as hit men.

Related content on Winter Watch:

• • Roy Cohn and the New York City Cesspool Matrix 

The constant refrain against such conspiracy theories is that “eventually someone would talk.” Yet, once again, we find that someone did. The problem is not that nobody’s talking. It’s that nobody’s listening.

The FBI case files includes a 1994 account inside prison from convicted murderer and mobster Jerry Max Pasley who said he delivered a bomb from Arizona to Anchorage at the behest of the Joe Bonanno crime syndicate. He spoke with investigators from the Anchorage Police Department, Alaska State Troopers and Arizona Department of Public Safety. Three of these investigators confirmed the Pasley interview in the podcast with Walczak.

As is typical of black operations, the assassination was compartmentalized, so Pasley did not know with certainty what the fate the bomb was. Incredibly, a month later, the Boggs-Begich plane vanished in flight.

According to Pasley, the bomb was placed on the Cessna 310 N1812H before it left on its final flight with Begich, Boggs, Brown and Jonz on board.

Read this next part carefully: Walczak then learned that on March 4, 1974, less than 17 months after the disappearance of her husband, Pegge Begich, the widow of Congressman Nick Begich, married the same Jerry Max Pasley, the Mafia-connected killer and bomber. The marriage lasted only three years.

After they were married, the couple then went into business in Anchorage with several Tucson mob characters. Pegge Begich refused to be interviewed to explain all this.

Pasley worked for mobsters Peter Licavoli, Sr. and Joe Bonanno, Sr., and he admitted to five murders and several bombings, including the house of an Arizona Supreme Court Judge. He died in prison in 2010. According to the podcast, the newly married couple was accompanied on their honeymoon to Mexico by mob chief Licavoli and his sister.

At minute 00:08:00 in the “Anchorage” segment, a statement (refused to appear on podcast) in response to the Pasley inexplicable marriage and his allegations is given by Begich’s son, Tom Begich.

Tom called Pasley a liar, fraud and crook. Nothing new there. We already knew that, but it’s not at all clear what Pasley gained from the revelation. He really sought no new notoriety or financial or legal benefit. In fact, there was downside, as Pasley was convicted of another murder based on these interviews.

Pasley refused to directly incriminate Congressman Begich’s widow in terms of playing a role in the bombing. The Anchorage-to-Juneau flight route is well known for downed planes, which provided perfect cover.

In 1994, Pasley told investigators that in 1972, he was handed a locked briefcase by a Licavoli lieutenant in Arizona. He was instructed to take the briefcase to Anchorage where he handed it to two men. He flew back to Arizona the following day. He said he was told “something big” was about to happen. Soon afterward, the plane carrying Begich and Boggs disappeared. It’s no secret that the Mob handles Deep State hits and both organizations have tentacles throughout the sistema.

Here is a quote from the NSA archives 1954 assassination manual: “The contrived accident is the most effective technique. When successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated.”

The important segment “Prison Vent” covers prison letters from spree murderer William Scott Day (deceased 2006) about verbal exchanges in prison with Pasley, including the topic of the Alaska assassinations. Day confirms that Boggs was the target for Hoover and his Deep State minions after Hoover died shortly before the Boggs hit. Licavoli ordered the hit, according to Day. Pasley in this account admitted to assembling the bomb and also placing on the plane.

Our takeaway: There is no way the incarcerated Day could have heard these details any other way but from the horse’s mouth.

Pasley said he then moved to Anchorage and began dating Pegge Begich, a woman he had met through Bonanno syndicate mutual friends in Arizona and had “dated with” (sex) before the plane went missing and while Pegge was married to the congressman. Pasley, another associate and Begich met Joe Bonanno for dinner at the Kon Tiki in Tucson a month before the hit. 

The investigators were shocked by Pasley’s claims and immediately notified the FBI, which sent agents to interview Pasley in 1995.

Retired Anchorage Police Sergeant Mike Grimes told Walczak he was stunned by Pasley’s claims. When he returned to Anchorage from his interview with Pasley in the Arizona prison, he immediately contacted an FBI agent he knew in Anchorage. When Grimes didn’t hear back from the agent for several weeks, he again contacted her, and she insisted they meet somewhere other than her office.

The agent told Grimes that when her boss called FBI headquarters in Washington with the information, he was told, “You will do nothing there. You will send everything you have to us.” The FBI shut down the investigation immediately. 

Our takeaway: This is par for course in many instances throughout Deep State/Crime Syndicate hidden history.

Other investigators also told Walczak they were surprised the FBI did not vigorously investigate Pasley’s claims of a bomb. Pasley agreed to take a polygraph, but it’s not clear whether the FBI ever administered one to him.