--- aliases: - William Richard Higgins - Colonel Higgins - Rich Higgins born: 1945-01-15 category: Intelligence & Government died: 1989-07-31 location: Danville, Kentucky, USA summary: William Richard Higgins was a Marine Lieutenant Colonel who served as chief of the United Nations Military Observer Group Lebanon. tags: - Person - Hostage - Lebanon - Military - Stargate updated: 2026-09-22 --- William Richard Higgins was a Marine Lieutenant Colonel who served as chief of the United Nations Military Observer Group Lebanon. On February 17, 1988, he was abducted in [Lebanon](/places/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](/organizations/pentagon/). Prior to joining the UN team, he had served as a military aide to Secretary of Defense [Caspar W. Weinberger](/people/caspar-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 [DIA](/organizations/defense-intelligence-agency/) believed his abduction had been carefully orchestrated by [Imad Mughniyah](/people/imad-mughniyah/), the leader of Hezbollah's terrorist operations[^1]. The [Project 8808](/programs/sun-streak/) remote viewers, including [Angela Dellafiora](/people/angela-dellafiora/), [Paul Smith](/people/paul-h-smith/), and [Ed Dames](/people/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](/people/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](/places/israel/) 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 [Federal Bureau of Investigation](/organizations/federal-bureau-of-investigation/) forensics team determined Higgins had died before he was hanged, based on the position of his feet[^1]. 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]. ### The Documents The DIA's Sun Streak file on Project 8808 opens with tasking sheets of February 17, 1988, and an interim operational report of February 24 on a redacted Amal officer, "a 47 to 50 year-old Lebanese christian" with "the rank of Major," whom viewer 079 found "aware of the abduction" but "not directly involved in the planning or execution of the kidnapping," the information "shielded from the remote viewers and maintained by the customer at the DIAC, Bolling AFB." Sessions continued into June 1989. A viewer on February 19, 1988, placed him "next to BEAUFORT CASTLE"; one on February 25 had him "blind-folded, hands tied behind his back and placed in a canvas-covered cargo truck" and moved east; a tasking sheet of May 17 recorded that "the intelligence community reportedly has all but given up on the status of LTC Higgins" while DIA's counterterrorism analysts "have found Sun Streak input consistent with their own" information; on May 21 two viewers put him aboard a fishing vessel off Tyre, one describing "the hold of a fishing vessel which looks something like a tug boat in form" and his emotions as "akin to 'confused contentment.'" On September 29, 1988, a viewer reported that "the release of LTC Higgins remains a foregone conclusion"; through 1989 the summaries placed him "alive, secluded" in a succession of villages; a session that discussed "the Obeid" as a prisoner of the Israelis found "that the group who claim that LTC Higgins was executed is not the terrorist group who is currently holding him"; and an undated solo session "to determine whether USMC LTC William Richard Higgins is dead or alive" reported "an extremely rotten smell" and that he "died between 8-10 months after he was captured." No document in the released file names the viewers.[^2] [^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. [^2]: Defense Intelligence Agency, "SUN STREAK Operational Report - 8808," February 24, 1988, CIA-RDP96-00789R003400980001-7; Project 8808 task papers and handwritten papers, CIA-RDP96-00789R003400940003-9, -006-6, -012-9, -013-8 and -014-7; session reports of February 19, 1988 (CIA-RDP96-00789R003400600001-8), February 25 (R003401100001-2), February 28 (R003401110001-1), May 21 (R003400590001-0 and R003401310001-9), September 29 (R000400080001-9, read from the page images), and the summaries of information of viewer 079 of 1988 and 1989 (CIA-RDP96-00789R000400780001-2 to R000401000001-6 and R000400960001-2), and the undated solo session on Higgins's death (CIA-RDP96-00789R000401050001-1). Session dates and viewer numbers are as typed on the cover sheets; the handwritten transcripts are largely illegible in OCR. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.