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+---
+aliases:
+  - William Richard Higgins
+  - Colonel Higgins
+  - Rich Higgins
+tags:
+  - Person
+  - Military
+  - Hostage
+---
+William Richard Higgins was a [[U.S. Marine Corps|Marine]] Lieutenant Colonel who served as chief of the [[United Nations Military Observer Group Lebanon]]. On February 17, 1988, he was abducted in [[Lebanon]] after meeting with the [[Amal Militia]] in the coastal city of Tyre[^1].
+
+Higgins's abduction became an international incident, generating a crisis at the [[Pentagon]]. Prior to joining the UN team, he had served as a military aide to Secretary of Defense [[Caspar W. Weinberger]], giving him in-depth knowledge of classified military matters and making him a high-value hostage[^1].
+
+It was feared that Higgins would be tortured to death by [[Hezbollah]] terrorists in their effort to extract classified information. The [[Defense Intelligence Agency|DIA]] believed his abduction had been carefully orchestrated by [[Imad Mughniyah]], the leader of Hezbollah's terrorist operations[^1].
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+The [[STARGATE PROJECT|Project 8808]] remote viewers, including [[Angela Dellafiora]], [[Paul Smith]], and [[Ed Dames]], were tasked with helping to determine if Higgins was alive and to locate him. Dellafiora perceived him to be alive and held in a "small structure" on a hill near a major road, a location later corroborated by a released hostage, [[Rudolf Cordes]], who confirmed he had been held in a specially constructed shed near the area Dellafiora identified[^1].
+
+Despite initial perceptions, Higgins was likely killed between four and six weeks after his capture. His body was kept on ice by the terrorists. In the summer of 1989, after [[Israel Defense Forces]] captured Hezbollah leader [[Sheik Obeid]], Hezbollah released a video of Higgins's dead body with a noose around his neck, demanding Obeid's return. An [[FBI]] forensics team determined Higgins had died before he was hanged, based on the position of his feet[^1].
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+Higgins's body was not recovered for another two and a half years, when his mummified remains were found in a bag left in a school parking lot in southern Beirut[^1].
+
+## Footnotes
+[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.