Thomas Hale Boggs Sr. (February 15, 1914 – disappeared October 16, 1972; declared dead December 29, 1972) was an American Democratic Party politician and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Orleans, Louisiana.

The case, United States v. Classic, reached the Supreme Court, where it established the federal government's authority to regulate local primary elections, setting a key precedent for later civil rights decisions.

[4] After an unsuccessful bid for renomination in 1942 against his predecessor Paul Maloney, Boggs joined the United States Navy as an ensign.

Leading in the polls early in the campaign, he was soon put on the defensive when another candidate, Lucille May Grace, at the urging of long-time southeastern Louisiana political boss Leander Perez, questioned Boggs's membership in the American Student Union in the 1930s.

In his book, The Big Lie, author Garry Boulard suggests strongly that Boggs was a member of the ASU but tried to cover up that fact in the different political climate of the early 1950s.

[12] But in a 1966 appearance on Face the Nation, Boggs defended the commission's findings and stated that he did not doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy.

[14] Boggs took issue with the assertions of Warren Commission critics and stated that it was "human nature" that "many people would prefer to believe there was a conspiracy".

According to author Joan Mellen in her book A Farewell to Justice, Jim Garrison told her it was actually Boggs that prompted him to reopen his investigation into the assassination of the President.

[citation needed] In the 1979 novel "The Matarese Circle", author Robert Ludlum portrayed Boggs as having been killed to stop his probe into the assassination.

In late 1966, Boggs was asked to help the AFL-NFL merger by having the merged league receive an exemption from antitrust-law sanctions.

That caused Secretary Rusk, who was previously unaware of the situation, to excuse himself immediately, mid-testimony, to attend to the issue of the invasion.

[18] (Source: Walter Cronkite: The Way It Was: The 1960s) On 5 April 1971, he made a speech on the floor of the House in which he strongly attacked Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover and the whole of the FBI.

[20] Boggs demanded the resignation of Hoover and accused the FBI of utilizing "the tactics of the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Gestapo".

[22] On April 22, 1971, Boggs went even further: "Over the postwar years, we have granted to the elite and secret police within our system vast new powers over the lives and liberties of the people.

At the request of the trusted and respected heads of those forces, and their appeal to the necessities of national security, we have exempted those grants of power from due accounting and strict surveillance.

On October 16, 1972, Boggs was aboard a twin-engine Cessna 310 with Representative Begich, who was facing a possible tight race in the November 1972 general election against the Republican candidate, Don Young, when it disappeared during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau.

In 1993, Boggs was among 13 politicians, past and present, inducted into the first class of the new Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.