FD-350 mounted Los Angeles Times clipping: "'D.B. Cooper' Got $30,000 - Weekly's Hijacking Story Turns Into Tall Tale"

[form number illegible] (Rev. 7-[1]6-63) (Mount Clipping in Space Below)

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D. B. COOPER' GOT $30,000 Weekly's Hijacking Story Turns Into Tall Tale--Later

BY ALEXANDER AUERBACH Times Staff Writer

"What happens to people is news. What happens to reporters isn't," [a saying of a] Boston city editor [who would] shout at reporters who [gave] first-person accounts of [events] they had witnessed. What happens if the reporter is the sleuth who solved one of the most publicized crimes in recent [history], or (B) the victim of the cleverest hoax since Clifford Irving's autobiography of Howard [Hughes], or (C) both? [There is] a new weekly newspaper in the Los Angeles area, [that] just [launched] a three-installment series [about] the "solution" of the suc[cessful] $200,000 hijacking of a Northwest Orient Airlines jet last Nov. 24. Only at the end of the series did [it] tell its readers that the whole account was an apparent hoax that [cost] the paper's backers $30,000. Karl Fleming, LA's editor, says he [wanted] to tell the story in a way that [made] the readers found misleading in [order] to let them vicariously under[stand] the same experience he did. [Without] realizing it, they were reading a story about Fleming, not simply by him. The first installment told of D.B. Cooper ("an ordinary, God-fearing, patriotic, country club-oriented, upward-climbing WASP engineer") leaving his suburban Seattle home with a briefcase stuffed with two wigs, an altimeter and compass, a makeup kit, gloves and three red flares wired to look like a dynamite bomb. Fleming, a respected veteran newsman (formerly bureau chief [illegible]) and contributing editor with Newsweek for 11 years) went on to describe every detail of Cooper's hijacking, in an article that ran some 4,000 words and took five pages of the tabloid, not counting a cover photo and a last-page teaser for the next installment. One illustration showed Xerox copies of three $20 bills given to Fleming as proof of Cooper's identity; their serial numbers matched those on the FBI's list of bills that made up the ransom paid by the airline. The second piece described how Fleming got the story. While still on Newsweek's staff, he put a classified [ad...]

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(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.)

I-10 Los Angeles Tim[es] Los Angeles, Calif[ornia]

Date: 11/8/72 Edition: Wednes[day] [illegible] Author: Alexander A[uerbach] Editor: William F. Th[omas?] Title: Norjak

Character: or 164-[L]97[3?] Classification: Los An[geles?] Submitting Office: Los An[geles?] [ ] Being Investigated

164-2111-3[0]4

Continued from 10th Page ad in newspapers around Oregon and Washington, asking Cooper to contact him.

Later, while Fleming and millionaire Max Palevsky were organizing LA, an in- termediary offered to put the newsman in contact with Cooper—for $30,000. Palevsky put up the money and Fleming flew up to meet Cooper, dragging along two tape recorders, a motion picture camera, two cameramen and $30,- 000 in cash.

The headline on the third and final installment read: "Is D. B. Cooper the real D. B. Cooper?" There is considerable reason for doubt, since the men who police say talked to Flem- ing — and who allegedly took his $30,000 — have been arrested by the FBI on charges of defrauding Fleming of his money.

Arrested Before Story

The arrest took place on May 2, long before Flem- ing wrote his story for LA.

Why did Fleming pub- lish the story in a manner that led some readers, un- aware of the fraud arrest, to believe that the early installments were the real thing?

Fleming doesn't feel that the initial installment was deceptive, noting that "there were disclaimers in it," referring to two lines near the end: "The fore- going narrative was relat- ed to me by the man I be- lieved to be Cooper . . ." and, "Doubts about wheth- er I had the right man would arise later. . . ."

"I wanted the reader to experience it just exactly as I did," Fleming says. "It's an adventure story, as much about me as about D. B. Cooper, and I wanted to put the reader in my shoes. If the reader was reasonably alert, he would have seen in the press that these guys had been busted by the FBI."

If the man Fleming in- terviewed was not D. B. Cooper — and Fleming isn't totally sure he was not the hijacker—then he was a masterful con man, to hear Fleming tell it.

Paid at First Meeting

"I gave him the whole $30,000 at our first meet- ing, after I was convinced that this was D. B. Coop- er," Fleming says. "At that point a con man would have taken the money and run like hell, but this guy, Cooper, came back and submitted himself to eight hours of taped interviews, 30 minutes of filmed inter- views and still photo- graphs. His intermediary signed a contract (saying the $30,000 would be used for Cooper's legal defense) with his real name and left his fingerprints all over the contract."

The story was to have been in the opening issue of LA. To avoid charges of aiding a fugitive from jus- tice, Fleming turned his material over to the FBI 10 days before publication (he had told Cooper not to tell him anything he didn't want the police to know.) Included were Xe- rox copies of the $20 bills Fleming had been shown as proof of Cooper's iden- tity. The serial numbers matched those on the list of ransom bills but FBI documents experts said that the photocopies indi- cated that the bills were counterfeit.

With all the information Fleming's subjects had supplied, the FBI had no [TEXT CONTINUES ON NEXT PAGE — CUT OFF]

trouble rounding them up. With their trial scheduled to begin Nov. 27, Fleming says he still finds it "difficult to accept" the possibility that he was duped. "I asked that guy questions no con man could have prepared for," he says. "I went over him like a vacuum cleaner." Fleming notes that "Cooper" went into detail on matters of air navigation and parachute procedure—and [are/aware] that Fleming is a licensed private pilot with some 700 hours in the air. Because of the magnitude of the story and because of its intended role as the kickoff piece for his new newspaper, Fleming says, he was extremely careful in his questioning. "At the risk of sounding immodest," he adds, "I wouldn't want to do anything to damage my own very good reputation as a reporter." He has an ingenious, mirror-within-a-mirror theory of his own. "I'm not saying that the FBI was wrong, and I would never suggest that they would deliberately distort the facts—though if I, one lonely reporter, could get the story when 8,000 FBI agents couldn't, then that's not the kind of publicity that J. Edgar Hoover, then alive, would want for the FBI." Noting that "Cooper" was aware the information would be published and get to the police, Fleming says, "It is very, very difficult for me to accept the fact that a mind brilliant enough to concoct a story as sophisticated as the one this guy told me, would be stupid enough to turn around and expose himself to capture this way. "I don't exclude the possibility that he was both smart enough to pull off the hijacking, sell me the story and spread enough false clues in the story so it would not look right and the FBI would say he isn't the hijacker. So, if he does do any time, it's for fraud, not for hijacking. And when he comes out, the $200,000 is still there." In that case, of course, Fleming's series would be a true account of the hijacking, as readers of Part [Three] indicates, or perhaps it would be both. In any event, Fleming has no regrets about the adventure. "I've always been a reporter who takes risks. You don't get the plums at the top of the tree unless you jump high." Fleming may have some lingering doubts about the man he interviewed, but Platypus Publications, publisher of LA, appears to have none. It has filed a $30,000 civil suit against the men arrested by the FBI, claiming it was defrauded because the men were not the people they claimed to be.

NEXT WEEK: Why D.B. Cooper Did It, And Why He Demanded Only $200,000.

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A NON-STORY—When L.A. began this series it knew—but didn't tell its readers—that its "D. B. Cooper" was not an airplane hijacker but, according to FBI charges, only a con man.