FD-350 clipping (duplicate copy): 'The Hero Left a Victim After All', Seattle Times

(Indicate page, name of paper, city and state.) p.A1 Seattle Times Seattle, Wa. Date: 2/15/80 Edition: Final Title: NORJAK Character: or /64-81 Classification: Submitting Office: Seattle

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The Hero Left a Victim After All

By Darrell Bob Houston

The big 727-100 shot spray as it pow- ered down the runway at Sea-Tac, leaving an oily rainbow in its wake. The pilot began his climb, grabbing altitude at more than 3,000 feet per minute. He leveled off at 30,000 in the vicinity of Mount St. Helens, home of the legend- ary Sasquatch and a landmark in the nine-year ground search for D. B. Cooper.

I looked up from my manuscript and studied the cabin. Seat C, Row 18. That's where Cooper had sat on Flight 305, chain-smoking his Raleighs and fondling that attache case with the five phony sticks of dynamite inside. Mr. Nice Guy with the Rotary Club smile and the cheap business suit. Tobacco stains on his teeth — and larceny in his heart.

I glanced at the ventral stairwell. That had been the key to D. B.'s dream- ship. Located under the center engine, it allowed him to climb out and jump without being sucked into a turbofan or sliced to carrots on the flaps.

Now, a large red sign proclaimed: This stairway cannot be opened in flight. The D. B. door was closed — for good. Cooper had changed the specifi- cations of a fleet of $5 million airplanes. He had also made me a hero worshiper.

The stewardess came up the aisle. She stopped at my seat. "I'm curious . . ." she began. My paranoia mounted. I fumbled around, trying to hide the manuscript that was open on my lap.

The stewardess was charmed by my modesty. "You're a writer, aren't you?" I mumbled a confession. ". . . . And that's a book manuscript?" Her smile was very white. I thought of the froth on a Wyoming trout stream.

Faking a coughing attack, I bent over the thick pile of pages that consti- tuted my D.B. Cooper novel. "What's your book about?" I sat up straight. "It's about a man," I said. "A man who figured that we're all riding on an airplane. Its name is Earth — and its zooming through the Void at some- thing like 63,000 miles an hour. "But even at that speed — or so his

theory went — most people are still bored spitless. "This man gave us the answer: The only way to get off that angst ridden airplane IS TO JUMP!"

I saw it coming — all the way to the nearest FBI interrogation room. "What was his name?" "D. B. Cooper," I whispered. "Any relation to James Fenimore?"

The stewardess' wink said it all. I closed my eyes. I wanted to slip on my dark glasses — but why tempt fate any further? I would have to cringe openly. I pretended to sleep all the way to San Francisco.

★ ★ ★

Emerson said that the trouble with heroes is not their ceramic feet. It's that eventually they become a pain in the ass.

I wonder if the Sage of Concord would have been all that blase about the acturial little gent who called him- self Dan Cooper — especially if D. B. had kept him in groceries for almost 10 years. .

When I think back to that stormy Thanksgiving Eve of 1971, the night Cooper half-gainered his way to im- mortality, I find it hard to label him the criminal he officially is — dead or al- ive.

I was huddled in bed in my $50-a- month pad on Summit Avenue, listen- ing to the radio and eating noodles with a pair of borrowed chopsticks. The noodles were even colder than the apartment. But after the first flash about the parachute skyjack, it didn't matter.

Apologizing to my pet cockroach, William S. Burroughs III, I scratched around on the floor and found a dime. I called the Los Angeles Times. The edi- tors assigned me to do a D. B. story. I was elated. I would eat again. So would Burroughs, who was as sick of monosodium glutamate as I was.

The first national D. B. Cooper epic was laid out in the March 19, 1972 issue of the L.A. Times' West Magazine. It covered seven full pages with six dia- grams and photographs. Included, too, was a song called "The Ballad of D.B. Cooper." The lyric was catchy — and forgettable.

Then, after the huge presses at Times Mirror Square had already kicked in, the editors had second thoughts. With several thousand copies

run off, the Times pulled my story and replated — at considerable cost. They said they loved the headline: "Coffee, Tea — or $200,000?" But they didn't want to glorify the skyjacker who, after all, was a dangerous fugi- tive.

Now how in the hell was I going to rationalize that to a cockroach?

★ ★ ★

My hero-fixation surfaced next on a Seattle television show.

By that time I was really into my role. I had my own tacky attache case to go with my black suit and skimpy tie. I encouraged people to call me D. B. I wore my sunglasses — even on rainy days.

When my television host asked me if I thought Cooper was a new Ameri- can hero, I was ready. "Yes," I said. "He was a terrific hero. He screwed the System back — nonvi- olently, nonpolitically. He didn't hurt anybody, and he only took 200 grand. "And best of all" — I had rehearsed the line for a week — "he didn't leave any footprints in the clouds."

The switchboard at the station turned into a pinball machine. The most irate of the callers was Ernest K. Gann, the author and former airline pilot.

I still have a copy of the telegram he sent to the station the next day. "The true depiction of all hijackers for what they are, instead of as he- roes," it said in conclusion, "must be shown now or you and your loved ones may well, and very soon, be aboard the next of another Robin Hood's terrible adventures."

I fired back at Gann through Em- mett Watson's column in The P-I. I re- peated my favorite argument: D. B., with his lopsided grin and gentle man- ner, had left no victims. I was not only smug. I was wrong.

★ ★ ★

The door to my apartment was ajar when I returned. A tall young [guess: woman] sat at my writing desk. Blonde hair fell [illegible] to her shoulders. Her posture [guess: struck] [illegible] FILL.D [illegible] me as incongruent to her beauty. Her slump was one of weariness — and de- feat.

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SUB F---- FEB 19 1980 FBI * SEATTLE

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FBI/DOJ

DB Cooper-17376