National Post (National Edition)
U.S. Air Force officer who vanished in 1983 found
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. • A U.S. Air Force officer with top security clearance who disappeared in New Mexico 35 years ago has been found in California after using a false name for decades, authorities said.
William Howard Hughes Jr. was apprehended at his home after a fraud investigation, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations said in a statement.
He told authorities after his capture Wednesday that he was depressed about being in the air force and decided to leave, saying he created a fake identity and lived in California since he vanished in 1983.
Linda Card, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, told the Albuquerque Journal Sunday that to this day officials still do not have any evidence indicating leaks of classified information. But still, she said, the case remains under investigation.
“Until we have the whole story,” she said, “we don’t have the story.”
Hughes is awaiting pretrial proceedings for his desertion case at the Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, Calif. He faces up to five years of confinement, forfeiture of all pay and dishonourable discharge from the air force.
He had been involved in classified planning and analysis of NATO’S control, command and communications surveillance systems during the Cold War. He specialized in radar surveillance.
Hughes, a captain at Kirtland Air Force Base, was 33 and single when he vanished, according to news reports from the time of his disappearance. He was last seen withdrawing more than $28,000 in Albuquerque in summer 1983 after returning from a two-week vacation in Europe.
He had just completed a stint in The Netherlands, where he worked with NATO on the Airborne Warning and Control electronic surveillance aircraft. He was supposed to be back in Albuquerque by August 1983.
His family feared that he had been abducted. Others speculated that he had defected — possibly to the Soviets — with the highly classified information, a notion that fomented conspiracy theories for years.
There’s no indication Hughes was involved with the Soviet Union.
It’s unclear if he had an attorney who could comment on his behalf.
Several other fugitives are on the Air Force’s wanted list, including others who have been on the run since the 1980s for various reasons that stem from drug charges to security issues. Last year, investigators caught a fugitive in Florida who had been living under another identity since 1972.