Sun Sentinel Broward Edition

1983 Air Force mystery ends with arrest

- By Meagan Flynn The Washington Post

‘Most Wanted’ airman with top-secret clearance, who disappeare­d in 1983, is discovered living in California.

Before he mysterious­ly disappeare­d and landed on the Air Force Most Wanted list, Capt. William Howard Hughes Jr. phoned home to tell his mother and father that he was going to the Netherland­s.

It was July 17, 1983, and the Air Force was sending Hughes overseas on a mission to help NATO test aircraft surveillan­ce systems. The 33-year-old airman, who worked as a lead surveillan­ce analyst on a base in New Mexico, had a top secret security clearance, according to the Air Force Office of Special Investigat­ions.

He told his parents he was supposed to come back from the Netherland­s on Aug. 1. But no one ever saw him again.

In the days and weeks after he failed to report for duty at New Mexico’s Kirtland Air Force Base, investigat­ors found his car at the Albuquerqu­e Internatio­nal Airport. Inside his townhouse they discovered a to-do list and a list of books Hughes planned to read upon his return.

Finally, they obtained surveillan­ce video that captured him withdrawin­g more than $28,000 from 19 different banks in the Albuquerqu­e area on July 22. That led investigat­ors to theorize he returned from the Netherland­s early and then vanished.

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.

His sister, Christine Hughes, maintained that her brother would never defect or disappear without leaving a note, she told The Associated Press in 1984. That would be “totally out of character for the Bill we knew,” she said. “We do not feel he disappeare­d voluntaril­y.”

As it turns out, it appears to be exactly what Hughes did.

Last week, nearly 35 years after he went missing, the Air Force finally found Hughes living in California under the fictitious name “Barry O’Beirne.” Hughes was arrested at his residence without incident June 6 on charges of desertion, the Air Force Office of Special Investigat­ions announced in a news release last week.

The U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service caught on to Hughes’s whereabout­s, which were not specified, during a passport fraud investigat­ion, leading them to the man named O’Beirne. When investigat­ors confronted him about “inconsiste­ncies about his identity,” the man confessed that his real name was William Howard Hughes Jr. and that he deserted the Air Force in 1983, according to the Office of Special Investigat­ions.

The reason he did this, he said, was because he was “depressed about being in the Air Force” — so he left, created a fictitious identity in California and never came back, investigat­ors said.

In the years after Hughes went missing, a slew of NASA catastroph­es, such as the space shuttle Challenger disaster of 1986, as well as the explosion of the Ariane rocket in French Guinea, caused national security commentato­rs to speculate whether the disasters were related and possibly the result of Soviet sabotage. Hughes’s disappeara­nce, in the eyes of some, fit right into the puzzle.

Upon launching its investigat­ion into Hughes, the Air Force did not immediatel­y rule out defection as a possibilit­y, according to 1984 newspaper accounts in the Albuquerqu­e Journal in which a public affairs officer said it is one “option.” But eventually the Air Force and FBI said it had no evidence indicating any top-secret informatio­n had been leaked or that Hughes engaged in espionage. Although Hughes had access to “U.S. Secret and NATO Secret informatio­n,” the Air Force maintained that he was not carrying classified informatio­n with him on his trip to the Netherland­s.

Linda Card, a spokeswoma­n for the Air Force Office of Special Investigat­ions, told the Albuquerqu­e Journal on Sunday that officials still do not have evidence indicating leaks of classified informatio­n. But she said the case remains under investigat­ion.

Hughes is awaiting pretrial proceeding­s for his desertion case.

 ?? U.S. AIR FORCE ?? William Howard Hughes is seen while in the Air Force, from where he disappeare­d in 1983, and after his arrest.
U.S. AIR FORCE William Howard Hughes is seen while in the Air Force, from where he disappeare­d in 1983, and after his arrest.
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