William Richard Higgins

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 after meeting with the Amal Militia in the coastal city of Tyre¹.

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 hostage¹.

It was feared that Higgins would be tortured to death by Hezbollah terrorists in their effort to extract classified information. The DIA believed his abduction had been carefully orchestrated by Imad Mughniyah, the leader of Hezbollah's terrorist operations¹.

The 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 identified¹.

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 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 forensics team determined Higgins had died before he was hanged, based on the position of his feet¹.

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 Beirut¹.