The "mysterious death" of Hale Boggs, anyone?

[Lance Payette]

I will be soooo happy - and so will you! - when my Achilles heals and I can return to normal (i.e., non-JFKA) life ...

There is a thread at the Ed Forum about Louisiana Congressman (and House Majority Leader) Hale Boggs, one of the JFKA "mystery deaths" if there ever was one. He was a member of the WC and, as CTers would have it, was about to blow the lid off the WR just before he died. (Dorothy Kilgallen would’ve beaten him to it, of course, but she became a "mystery death" seven years before he did.)

Boggs did have substantial doubts about the WR, specifically the SBT. The Los Angeles Star supposedly had reported on November 22, 1973 that “Boggs had startling revelations on Watergate and the assassination of President Kennedy.” (I wasn't able to trace the Los Angeles Star thing beyond Mae Brussell, and all other references to it seem to be CT-oriented, so it may be yet another factoid. The only reference that fleshed it out at all said the source was a “former aide” to Boggs, not Boggs himself. Since this is pretty much the foundation of the “mysterious death” speculation, I would think it would behoove we “mysterious death” folks to nail it down.)

There is also all sorts of stuff about Boggs supposedly being the motivation for Garrison’s investigation, with Joan Mellen going so far as to say Boggs told Garrison that Oswald was an FBI informant. Oh, dear. I didn’t wade into that, although I did see that Boggs’ daughter, the late journalist Cokie Roberts, described Garrison as “100% nuts” and conspiracy theories as “coping mechanisms.”

Anyway, Boggs' small plane went down in Alaska in 1972, shortly after the Watergate thing. He was 58. The pilot had 17,000 hours of flying experience. On board were Alaska Congressman Nick Begich and one of his aides. Boggs was going to campaign for Begich.

Despite one of the most MASSIVE searches in the history of aviation, NOTHING was ever found. It's right up there with Amelia Earhart and young Frederick Valentich (whose small plane was possibly abducted by a UFO in Australia in 1978, but I digress ...).

Normally, I'd say Who cares? However, I discovered that the case has a major Tucson connection! As a Tucson native, this demanded my attention. Well, not really, except that I am laid up with my ruptured Achilles.

You literally can't make this stuff up: A mere 14 months after Congressman Begich was declared dead, his widow married a Tucson Mafioso "eventually linked to as many as five murders and three bombings, including a 1968 blast outside the Tucson home of retired state Supreme Court Justice Evo DeConcini."

You can read all about it here: https://tucson.com/news/local/article_57f0c38f-d013-5fde-9e26-b452023f9e6c.html. All the Mafia names in the story were well-known to everyone in Tucson, which was Joe Bananas' territory. Homes and cars and restaurants blowing up was just business as usual. Even the Kon Tiki restaurant that figures prominently in the story was one of my alcoholic parents' favorite haunts. Another of their favorite haunts, Paulos Italian restaurant, actually did blow up while I was in high school. Lasagna was found up to a half-mile away.

The subject of the article is an intrepid reporter, Jon Walczak, who has spent as much time on the Boggs case as any rabid CTer has spent on the JFKA. He completed a multi-part podcast, "Missing in Alaska," https://plinkhq.com/i/1569883308?to=page. I have not yet listened to it, but it received rave reviews.

The original story was that Boggs' plane was brought down by a Mafia-placed bomb and that the woman who became Begich's widow (the mother of former Senator Mark Begich) had met with Bonanno prior to the crash, all having something to do with drugs, prostitution, money and the usual Mafia stuff. Alas, Walczak does not believe there was any JFKA connection at all and apparently even doubts the Mafia-bomb story. Anyway, you may find it interesting if you're into the "mysterious deaths" stuff.

One wrinkle occurred to me: Boggs was succeeded in office by his widow, Lindy. She served in office until 1991 and lived to be 97, dying of natural causes in 2013. We "mysterious death" folks can only conclude that her husband never said anything to her about his JFKA bombshell and thus there was no need for her to be whacked or marry a Mafioso or whatever. (Lindy even enthusiastically welcomed the ARRB folks to New Orleans in 1995, when she could’ve saved them a lot of trouble if she’d just shared those dang startling revelations: https://speakingwhilefemale.co/testimony-boggs/.)

We "mysterious death" folks are also agog at how the conspirators managed to arrange the crash so no remains would ever be found, as opposed to crashing someplace where evidence of the bomb would've been obvious. When they weren’t being the Three Stooges, the conspirators were pretty ingenious, weren’t they?

[Lance Payette]

Mama Mia, what a rabbit hole!

I felt that I owed it to you, my reader(s), to listen to some of the Missing in Alaska podcasts. I listened to numbers 11 and 12, which seem to be the last or at least the most recent.

The reporter doesn't completely dismiss pilot error, weather and/or mechanical failure, but he clearly leans toward the Mafia bomb angle. It all gets REALLY weird. If you are interested in the Boggs crash, you must listen to some of these podcasts even if there is no JFKA angle because this guy has spent nine years on the story and has done a fantastic amount of research.

The lead figure in the bomb angle is a low-level Mafioso named Paisley, who is the guy who married Congressman Begich's widow Pegge (mother of Senator Mark Begich). It is not entirely clear whether Pegge was knowingly involved, but her marriage was strained, there was a large insurance policy, and she went into business with Mafia cronies (but the marriage didn't last long). It's not even clear which Tucson Mafia family was behind the hit - Bonanno or Licavoli. At the wedding of Paisley and Pegge, pretty much everyone in attendance was Licavoli-connected.

In one believable version, Congressman Begich was the target. The Mafia wanted him out of the way in favor of a more Mafia-friendly candidate. By all accounts, he was the ultimate straight shooter.

But wait: While in prison for other things, Paisley confided in a serial killer named Day. In this version, HOOVER WANTED BOGGS DEAD! There are several problems with this scenario, not the least being that Hoover died five months before the Boggs crash. Day clearly did speak with Paisley because he got too many details right to be fabricating, but Paisley may have been using the Hoover angle for leverage with the FBI, with whom he was then negotiating.

Oh, the hell with it. It's fascinating, but it's all too much for me and my Achilles. I am satisfied Boggs was a "mysterious death" but not a "mysterious JFKA-related death." The plot probably did center on Begich.

Here is a photo of Pegge Begich. Her face pretty much screams "Gulty" and "A woman who will stop at nothing." Or maybe not. Damn suspicious-looking kid, too.

[Lance Payette]

Well, that's kind of suspicious: After Begich's death, his office was filled by Salvatore "Sal the Knife" Roselli.

OK, not exactly. Even though he was missing, Begich was reelected. When he was declared dead, a special election was then held. Don Young, who had lost to Begich in 1972, won the GOP primary without opposition. On the Democratic side, Pegge Begich (!) lost to Emil Notti. While Notti sounds vaguely Mafia-like, he was in fact of Koyukon Athabaskan (what?) heritage, and about as un-Mafia-like as one could get. Don Young, who also seems distinctly un-Mafia-like, then defeated Notti, was reelected 24 times, and is the longest-serving Republican House member in history (49 years).

So, the only suspicious thing in all that is Pegge running for the seat. Maybe that was part of the plot, if there was a plot.

[Benjamin Cole]

Love this post. Any story featuring a guy with the name Bananas, and lasagna being blown a half-mile from a bombed Italian restaurant is worth reading.

I have long wondered about the Boggs crash, along with everyone else.

But read up on "barium acetate."

Not sure the "Deep State" would resort to such dramatic murders, when they could just give someone a heart attack.

(Scarily enough, anyone with a kid's home chemistry kit in the 1960s could do as much. Eeek!)

[Lance Payette]

Still on the case ...

A diligent Boy Scout (are there any?) could earn the coveted Factoid-Hunting Merit Badge on the Boggs case alone.

Over at the Ed Forum, Simkin repeats both the Los Angeles Star canard (citing Bernard Fensterwald’s book Coincidence or Conspiracy?) and the Garrison canard (citing Joan Mellen). What caught my factoid-hunting eye, however, was this:

“Thomas H. Boggs came under considerable pressure when he began questioning the Warren Report in Congress. On 5th April 1971, Boggs made a speech on the floor of the House accusing the FBI of tapping his phones and keeping dossiers on members of Congress. Boggs said the files consisted of information on seven persons who had written critically of the commission's findings. He accused J. Edgar Hoover, of being ‘incompetent and senile’ and that the FBI under Hoover's most recent years 'adopted the tactics of the Soviet Union and the Hitler's Gestapo.'"

For this, Simkin cites the speech itself. It is clear from the entry on Boggs at the Spartacus site, however, that Simkin is merely parroting the 1974 edition of Fensterwald’s book.

Zowie! Calling the 76-year-old Hoover “incompetent and senile” (remember, that’s a quote) on the floor of Congress could get you whacked, no? Hoover just picks up the phone to Pete Licavoli in Tucson and barks, “I WANT BOGGS WHACKED AND I WANT HIM WHACKED NOW!!!” Pete assures Jedgar the deed will be done, asks Sal the Knife who the heck this Boggs character is that old Jedgar is ranting about, and then tells bomb-guy Paisley to add it to his to-do list. Paisley indeed makes it happen, although it takes him 18 months and by that time Jedgar has been dead for five. Well, these things take time even for the Mafia.

What did that incendiary speech look like, I wondered? You can see it here, in the Congressional Record of April 5, 1971: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/sites/default/files/pdf_documents/library/document/0204/1512895.pdf (it’s on page 12 of the PDF).

Boggs asked for one minute to address the House. His speech isn’t even one full column in the Congressional Record. HE NEVER USES THE TERM “INCOMPETENT” OR “SENILE.”

He begins, “What I am going to say I say in sorrow, because it is always tragic when a great man who has given his life to his country comes to the twilight of his life and fails to understand it is time to leave the service and enjoy retirement.” He says the time has come for the Attorney General to ask for Hoover’s resignation. Not because Hoover is senile and incompetent but because the FBI is tapping the telephones of members of the House and Senate, stationing agents on college campuses to infiltrate student organizations, and adopting tactics of the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Gestapo.

HE SAYS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT “KEEPING DOSSIERS ON MEMBERS OF CONGRESS” OR “FILES CONSIST[ING] OF INFORMATION ON SEVEN PERSONS WHO HAD WRITTEN CRITICALLY OF THE [WARREN] COMMISSION'S FINDINGS.”

Weirdly, Hoover sycophant Gerald Ford immediately asks for the floor and acknowledges that what Boggs said was somewhat accurate but strongly objects to the statement that the FBI uses Gestapo-like tactics. OK, Gerry, we'll amend that to KGB-like tactics.

Boggs’ speech was hardly breaking news. As the New York Times noted the next day, “At a political dinner March 19 in Denver, Senator Joseph M. Montoya, Democrat of New Mexico, said: ‘There is wiretapping on Capitol Hill of the telephones of Senators and Congressmen.’” https://www.nytimes.com/1971/04/06/archives/boggs-demands-that-hoover-quit-accuses-fbi-of-tapping-congressmens.html. The Times also noted that the FBI's infiltration of student organizations had likewise been known since March, thanks to documents stolen from an FBI office.

Did Boggs’ little speech and the coverage it received make Hoover happy? One would think not. Was it enough to get Boggs whacked by the Mafia 18 months later, five months after Jedgar had died? One would think not.

Was Fensterwald’s description of the speech, in a book published just a couple of years after it, accurate? HELL, NO. Does Simkin and every other CT enthusiast simply repeat Fensterwald’s factoid until it becomes conspiracy gospel, without taking the 45 seconds it takes to check the Congressional Record?. OF COURSE, because that’s how the Conspiracy Game works and how factoids become Conspiracy Gospel!

If I were inclined to attempt to craft a serious conspiracy theory, and hoped to be taken seriously by serious historians and academics, I would make damn sure every quotation, citation and footnote checked out. This is simply not the Conspiracy Game, which is in fact a game. The game is to overwhelm the audience with factoids and speculation on the safe assumption that no one will ever check anything out. The objective appears to be little more than hoping the next public opinion poll shows that 78% of the populace now believes "Dang right, there had to be a conspiracy. You cain't have 25 conspiracy theories without at least one of them being sorta kinda true." That's victory in the Conspiracy Game.

[Lance Payette]

OK, now I’m just goofing around while my Factoid Buster cape is in the washer ...

Believe it or not, Pegge Begich is apparently still with us. She was born Margaret Jean Jendro on April 21, 1938 and married Begich in 1957, when she was 18. She is still listed on the board of the Nick Begich Scholarship Fund, which they would seemingly not do if she were deceased. One site says she is living in Nevada (but of course, wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more). I could find no other scandals associated with her, although I suppose plotting with the Mafia to have the father of your six children whacked in a midair explosion would be enough excitement for most women. When I finally got her on the phone and asked for a comment, she simply said “Crashes happen, pal.” (Yes, I made that up; it’s called “CT license,” sort of like poetic license.)

Here are the FBI files on Jerry Max Paisley. What our little Pegge ever saw in him, I have no idea. He died in prison in 2010 at age 69.

https://ia803204.us.archive.org/28/items/Jerry_Max_Pasley/E77f64e4b4beda201fbf7797949b82c0045980eb3_Q86302_R359655_D2542449.pdf

https://dn790006.ca.archive.org/0/items/Jerry_Max_Pasley/E77f64e4b4beda201fbf7797949b82c0045980eb3_Q86302_R359655_D2542450.pdf

Here’s a pretty good article by an airline captain who thinks ice was the culprit: https://www.twinandturbine.com/impenitent-ice/.

According to the Washington Post, the pilot, Don E. Jonz, was “a daring bush pilot who had argued in an aviation magazine that a ‘sneaky’ pilot could ‘disregard 99 percent of the B.S. you hear about icing,’ [and thus] decided he could make it” despite the iffy weather.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/national/2010/08/15/in-alaska-crash-the-echo-of-a-mystery/72a72635-a55f-46ac-bb46-a02aa1ddf51c/.

What a wild story. What a cast of characters. What perfect fodder for a conspiracy factoid or two or 12. Well, back to the real world, wherever that is.

[Lance Payette]

OK, I’m done – and with the entire JFKA for a while because this stuff is just silly.

You will recall from the above discussion that the Los Angeles Star supposedly reported on November 22, 1973 that Hale Boggs had said he had “startling revelations” about the JFKA.

I’ve attempted to research this quotation everywhere I could. It appears – always in the exact same language – in the CT literature and only in the CT literature.

But here’s the kicker: There was no Los Angeles Star. The only newspaper called the Los Angeles Star had ceased publication almost 100 years earlier.

In 1973, there were only two publications in the area called the Star. One, the Star, is described as a “proto-punk teen magazine” that first published in February 1973 and went belly-up after five issues. The other was the Valley Star, the student newspaper of Los Angeles Valley College.

I even looked for the quotation substituting the Los Angeles Times. Nope, nada.

OK, let’s forget the newspaper. We’ll just Google “Hale Boggs” + “startling revelations” + “Kennedy.” Nope. Nothing but the Star quote and nothing but CT-oriented materials.

So we have a newspaper that doesn’t exist supposedly reporting a quotation that I can’t verify in its edition of Thursday, November 22, 1973 that “just happens” to be the tenth anniversary of the JFKA. Hmmmm. And this factoid quotation has been repeated and repeated and repeated for 50 years until it has hardened into conspiracy gospel.

Prove me wrong, someone. Track down the newspaper or at least the quotation. Right now, it smells bogus. And it appears as the deal-clincher in virtually every book, article and online thread about the “mysterious, JFKA-related death” of Hale Boggs.

[Lance Payette]

Sorry to intrude on your revels with Actual Research again - I know, it's so boring - but this is too good not to include ...

I think it’s all starting to come together. The key – or perhaps the villain – is Bernard Fensterwald, Jr.

Suffice it to say, Bernie was a piece of work. There is a 523-page FBI file on him, dating back to long before the JFKA. As a lawyer, he defended State Department employees accused of Communist affiliations by Joe McCarthy; he called the Warren Report a “fairy tale” when it was barely off the press; he was closely involved in Garrison’s circus; he cofounded the Committee to Investigate Assassinations, which focused on the JFKA; he represented Watergate burglar James McCord and MLK assassin James Earl Ray. All this and more. Yes, Bernie was a piece of work. He died in 1991 at age 69.

Here's the FBI file: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-fensterwald-jr/Bernard%20Fensterwald%20Jr.%20Part%2001%20%28Final%29/view

Here's the Spartacus entry on him: https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKfensterwald.htm.

In 1977, he published Coincidence or Conspiracy? about the JFKA. I don’t have it; perhaps you do. I had thought it had been published in 1974 because that’s what the Spartacus entry on Boggs says, but booksellers all say the first edition was 1977.

This book is where the Los Angeles Star factoid about Boggs apparently originated. You know, the one where Boggs supposedly said he had startling revelations about Watergate and the JFKA just before he died, but in fact the Star didn't exist and the quotation was actually attributed to an unnamed former aide.

But wait, it gets worse. As with the Star factoid, you will find this startling quotation throughout the CT literature, likewise attributed to Boggs:

“Hoover lied his eyes out to the Commission – on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the gun, you name it.”

Zowie! Did Boggs say that?

Actually, no.

Like the Los Angeles Star non-quotation, the source is Fensterwald’s book. The quotation is actually attributed by Fensterwald to an unnamed “former aide” to Boggs, as was the “startling revelations” quotation supposedly published in the Star. The actual Fensterwald text reads, “Hale always returned to one thing: Hoover lied his eyes out to the Commission – on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the gun, you name it.”

Not quite the same as Boggs having said that, eh? As CT factoids tend to do, however, it has evolved into something Boggs said because that’s way better than an unnamed former aide.

For both of these incendiary factoids widely attributed to Boggs, therefore, what we actually have are unnamed former aides (or pehaps only one) being quoted in a CT-oriented book by a truly radical CT fanatic. As CT factoids are wont to do, they have improved as the decades have gone by, and the fact that Fensterwald’s book was the source has been lost to memory. Literally every big name in CT world has used these quotations as though they were authoritative.

I’m not suggesting Boggs was a diehard Warren Report enthusiast. I am not even suggesting Fensterwald made all this up out of thin air, although I wouldn’t be surprised. I am suggesting, once again, that Conspiracy Gospel factoids simply cannot be trusted.

If you have the book, dig it out and allay my suspicions if you can.