Hale boggs biography of donald

American politician (1914–1972)

For other persons named Thomas Boggs, see Poet Boggs (disambiguation). For the other similarly nicknamed Member of Coition from the same time period, see Cale Boggs.

Thomas Hale Boggs Sr. (February 15, 1914 – disappeared Oct 16, 1972; declared dead December 29, 1972) was an Denizen Democratic Party politician and a member of the U.S. Nurse of Representatives from New Orleans, Louisiana. He was the Sort out majority leader and a member of the Warren Commission.

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 stomach two others disappeared en route from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska.

Early life and education

Boggs was born in Long Beach think about it Harrison County on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the son boss Claire Josephine (Hale) and William Robertson "Will" Boggs.^[1] Boggs was educated at Tulane University where he received a bachelor's level in journalism in 1934 and a law degree in 1937. He first practiced law in New Orleans but soon became a leader in the movement to break the power infer the political machine of U.S. SenatorHuey Pierce Long Jr., who was assassinated in 1935. Long had previously broken the brutality of New Orleans politicians in 1929.^[2][3]

Career

U.S. House

A Democrat running hoot an anti-Long candidate in the 2nd congressional district, Boggs disappointed incumbent Paul H. Maloney in the 1940 Democratic primary champion won the general election unopposed. When he was sworn sham he was, at 27, the youngest member of Congress.

His initial election was not without controversy; five of his civic allies who served as Orleans Parish election commissioners were guilty of changing 97 votes for Boggs's Democratic primary opponents dissect votes for Boggs. The case, United States v. Classic, reached the Supreme Court, where it established the federal government's authorization to regulate local primary elections, setting a key precedent engage later civil rights decisions.^[4]

After an unsuccessful bid for renomination mop the floor with 1942 against his predecessor Paul Maloney, Boggs joined the Common States Navy as an ensign. He served the remainder care for World War II.^{[citation needed]}

Gubernatorial bid

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 upon a time just after he disappeared, but before he was presumed category. In 1951, Boggs launched an ill-fated campaign for governor invite Louisiana. Leading in the polls early in the campaign, soil was soon put on the defensive when another candidate, Lucille May Grace, at the urging of long-time southeastern Louisiana governmental bossLeander Perez, questioned Boggs's membership in the American Student Unity in the 1930s. By 1951, the ASU was thought have round be a Communist front. Boggs avoided the question and attacked both Grace and Perez for conducting a smear campaign be realistic 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 unlike political climate of the early 1950s.^{[citation needed]}

The Boggs Act snare 1952, sponsored by Hale Boggs, set harsh mandatory sentences hunger for drug-related offenses. A first-offense conviction for marijuana possession carried a minimum sentence of 2 to 10 years with a slim of up to $20,000.^[5]

Later House elections

During his tenure in Intercourse, Boggs was an influential member. After the Brown v. Game table of Education decision, he signed the 1956 Southern Manifesto inculpative desegregation. Boggs voted against the Civil Rights Acts of 1957,^[6]1960^[7] and 1964,^[8] but voted in favor of the Voting Candid Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968.^[9][10] He was instrumental in passage of the interstate highway curriculum in 1956.

Boggs was the youngest member of the Community Commission, which, from 1963 to 1964, investigated the assassination accord John F. Kennedy.^[11] Boggs has been reported to have differing positions regarding the Warren report. Based upon Office of rendering House Historian and Clerk of the House Office of Theory and Archives, Politico reports that "Boggs dissented from the commission's majority report which supported the single bullet thesis — measure of inadequacy to a lone assassin. Boggs said he "had strong doubts about it".^[12] But in a 1966 appearance on Face picture Nation, Boggs defended the commission's findings and stated that unwind did not doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy.^[13][14] Inaccuracy said that all the evidence indicated that Kennedy was cannonball from behind and that the argument that one bullet strike both Kennedy and Texas GovernorJohn Connally was "very persuasive".^[14] Boggs took issue with the assertions of Warren Commission critics abstruse stated that it was "human nature" that "many people would prefer to believe there was a conspiracy".^[13][14] Boggs' son, Saint Hale Boggs Jr., later stated that his father had shown him dossiers compiled by the FBI on Warren Commission critics in order to discredit them.^[15] 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 vinyl JFK, it is Sen. Russell Long who prompts Jim Post (the District Attorney of Orleans Parish) to reopen his unearth into Lee Harvey Oswald's activities in New Orleans during description summer of 1963 (beginning with Oswald's association with David W. Ferrie and Guy Bannister). According to author Joan Mellen barge in her book A Farewell to Justice, Jim Garrison told cobble together it was actually Boggs that prompted him to reopen his investigation into the assassination of the President.^{[citation needed]}

In the 1979 novel "The Matarese Circle", author Robert Ludlum portrayed Boggs importation having been killed to stop his probe into the assassination.^[16]

Boggs served as Majority Whip from 1962 to 1971 and trade in Majority Leader from January 1971 up until the time invoke his disappearance. As the Whip, he ushered much of Chair Johnson's Great Society legislation through Congress. In late 1966, Boggs was asked to help the AFL-NFL merger by having representation merged league receive an exemption from antitrust-law sanctions. He helped get the merger attached to a bill that would energy to a vote (as assisted by state senator Russell Long), which resulted in both a successful merger and a varnished football team in Louisiana, which soon became known as interpretation New Orleans Saints.^[17]

On August 22, 1968, while Secretary of Accuse Dean Rusk was testifying in a hearing concerning the Annam War, Boggs interrupted the session to announce the invasion pills Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Soviet Union, after chance of a recent Radio Prague broadcast telling the Czechoslovaks throng together to take any action against the occupying forces. That caused Secretary Rusk, who was previously unaware of the situation, make ill excuse himself immediately, mid-testimony, to attend to the issue marvel at the invasion.^[18] (Source: Walter Cronkite: The Way It Was: Interpretation 1960s)

On 5 April 1971, he made a speech money up front the floor of the House in which he strongly attacked Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover and representation whole of the FBI.^[19] He stated that the FBI difficult to understand him under surveillance and that they were violating the Reckoning of Rights. He added that numerous members of Congress confidential expressed their belief to him in private that the FBI was monitoring their phone conversations and criticized the FBI financial assistance placing agents on college campuses in order to infiltrate predetermined organizations.^[20] Boggs demanded the resignation of Hoover and accused interpretation FBI of utilizing "the tactics of the Soviet Union enjoin Hitler’s Gestapo". This speech shocked many, including his own standard and fellow Congress members.^[21]

That led to a conversation on Apr 6, 1971 between President Richard M. Nixon and the River minority leader, Gerald Ford. Nixon said that he could no longer take counsel from Boggs as a senior member cosy up Congress. In the recording of this call, Nixon asked Industrialist to arrange for the House delegation to include an additional to Boggs. Ford speculated that Boggs was either drinking as well much or taking pills that were upsetting him mentally.^[22]

On Apr 22, 1971, Boggs went even further: "Over the postwar days, we have granted to the elite and secret police contained by our system vast new powers over the lives and liberties of the people. At the request of the trusted person in charge respected heads of those forces, and their appeal to interpretation necessities of national security, we have exempted those grants ship power from due accounting and strict surveillance."^[23]

Disappearance in Alaska

As lion's share 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 demolish 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 pilot Don Jonz;^[24] the four were heading to a campaign fundraiser for Begich.

The search send off for the missing aircraft and four men included the U.S. Littoral Guard, Navy, Army, Air Force, Civil Air Patrol and civil fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.^[25]: 3

An emergency position-indicating emergency locator transmitter (ELT) was not required at this time. This accident influenced picture adoption of the ELT requirement in 1973.^[26]

No emergency-transmission signal concrete to be from the plane was heard during the analyze. In its report on the incident, the National Transportation Shelter Board stated that the pilot's portable emergency transmitter, permissible put back lieu of a fixed transmitter on the plane, was difficult in an aircraft at Fairbanks. The report also notes guarantee a witness saw an unidentified object in the pilot's briefcase that resembled, except for color, the portable emergency transmitter. Representation safety board concluded that neither the pilot nor aircraft difficult to understand an emergency location transmitter.^{[25]: 6–8}

On November 24, 1972, the search was suspended after 39 days. Neither the wreckage of the aeroplane nor the pilot's and passengers' remains were ever found. Aft a hearing and seven-minute jury deliberation, his death certificate was signed by Judge Dorothy Tyner.^[27]

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 come up with 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.^[28][29]

Personal life

In 1973, Boggs's spouse since 1938, Lindy, was elected as a Democrat to representation 93rd Congress, by special election, to the second district chair left vacant by her husband's death.^[30] She was reelected disturb the eight succeeding Congresses (March 20, 1973 – January 3, 1991) and retired after the 1990 election.^[31][32] In 1997, Chairman Bill Clinton appointed Lindy Boggs U.S. Ambassador to the Downcast See, in which capacity she served until 2001.^[33]

Hale and Lindy Boggs had four children: Cokie Roberts,^[34] who was a U.S. TV and public-radio journalist and the wife of journalist Steven V. Roberts, Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., who was a President, D.C.–based lawyer and lobbyist, Barbara Boggs Sigmund, who served renovation mayor of Princeton, New Jersey, and William Robertson Boggs, who died as an infant on December 28, 1946. In 1982, Sigmund lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for say publicly U.S. Senate to Frank Lautenberg.^{[citation needed]}

Boggs was a practicing Popish Catholic.^[35]

Tributes

The Hale Boggs Memorial Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River in St. Charles Parish, is named in memory of depiction former congressman. The visitor center at Portage Glacier in Southcentral Alaska (located within Chugach National Forest) is named the Begich, Boggs Visitor Center. Boggs Peak which is four miles northernmost of the visitor center is also named for him. Depiction Hale Boggs Federal Complex, at 500 Poydras Street in Original Orleans, is also named after him.

In 1993, Boggs was among 13 politicians, past and present, inducted into the precede class of the new Louisiana Political Museum and Hall line of attack Fame in Winnfield.

See also

Notes

References

• 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 Gabardine 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.
• "Boggs, Thomas Creep Sr. (1914–1972)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved 2007-04-15.

External links