Was everything possible done to locate or to extricate Bill Buckley?

Buckley's abduction became the impetus for the Iran-Contra deal.

Mmmm. Yes. I was in Boston not long after that and remember seeing t-shirts with Ollie for President on them!
Seriously, though, I would give anything to be able to read Buckley's file which I assume is still in the Registry at Langley--oops, I mean, the George Bush Center for Intelligence.
Do you know if his star really is the 51st one on the wall? The graph with the timeline of the stars on the CIA website confused me in this regard.