William Howard Hughes, Jr. went AWOL from the Air Force in 1983 after a trip to the Netherlands. He had a TS clearance and worked on NATO command, control and communications surveillance projects. Because of his clearance, the government thought he might have defected.

Turns out, he just got depressed and walked away. He was found living in California the other day (now under arrest).

I don't have an encylopedic knowledge of all the UM cases, and figured I'd ask if this was ever featured.

Short write-up from USA Today:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/06/11/us-air-force-fugitive-missing-35-years-found-living-california/689776002/

William Howard Hughes, Jr. went AWOL from the Air Force in 1983 after a trip to the Netherlands. He had a TS clearance and worked on NATO command, control and communications surveillance projects. Because of his clearance, the government thought he might have defected.

Turns out, he just got depressed and walked away. He was found living in California the other day (now under arrest).

I don't have an encylopedic knowledge of all the UM cases, and figured I'd ask if this was ever featured.

Short write-up from USA Today:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/06/11/us-air-force-fugitive-missing-35-years-found-living-california/689776002/

No... but it does make me second guess cases like Paul Whipkey, Curt Borton, and others. By all accounts, this guy was long gone. The fact he was living in plain site is pretty crazy.

I think it was a lot easier to do this years ago when documents where easier to fake or obtain. I'm by no means an expert, but I have to believe someone's ability to do this today would be pretty tough (at least for the average person).

I've always thought that Whipkey's disappearance was possibly health related as a result of exposure to radiation, then someone went into CYA mode.

I'm curious what kind of sentence this guy could expect to get for desertion. There's another deserter (http://www.osi.af.mil/About/Air-Force-Fugitives/David-A-Hemler/) that was apparently still alive in recent years, possibly residing in Sweden and a few more that disappeared in the eighties and nineties.

It would have been a good segment for UM to feature, with all of the intrigue of being high level military involved.