FD-350 clipping: LA Times on Karl Fleming's 'solved' Cooper series

FD-350 (Rev. 7-16-63)

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How the D.B. Cooper case was 'solved'—or the plot thickened

By ALEXANDER AUERBACH Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — "What happens to people is news. What happens to reporters isn't," a cigar-chewing Boston city editor used to shout at reporters who turned in first-person accounts of events they had witnessed.

But what happens if the reporter is (A) 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 bogus autobiography of Howard Hughes, or (C) both?

LA, a new weekly newspaper serving the Los Angeles area, has just concluded a three-installment series recounting the "solution" of the successful $200,000 hijacking of a Northwest Orient Airlines jet November 24.

Only at the end of the series did LA 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 chose to tell the story in a way that some readers found misleading in order to let them vicariously undergo 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 clito-oriented, upward-climbing WASP engineer") leaving his suburban Seattle home with a briefcase stuffed with two wigs, an altimeter and compass, a make-up kit, gloves and

three red flares wired to look like a dynamite bomb.

Fleming, a respected veteran newsman (formerly bureau chief 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 Federal Bureau of Investigation'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 in newspapers around Oregon and Washington, asking Cooper to contact him.

Later, while Fleming and Max Palevsky, millionaire, were organizing LA, an intermediary offered to put the newsman in contact with Cooper — for $30,000. Palevsky put up the money and Fleming flew up to meet Cooper, taking 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 man who police say talked to Fleming — and who reportedly took his $30,000 — have been arrested by the F. B. I. on charges of defrauding Fleming of his money.

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

Why did Fleming publish the story in a manner that led some readers, unaware 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 foregoing narrative was related to me by the man I believed to be Cooper . . ." and, "Doubts about whether 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 F. B. I."

IF THE MAN Fleming interviewed 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.

"I gave him the whole $30,000 at our first meeting, after I was convinced that this was D. B. Cooper." 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 in-

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

p.A21 Seattle Times Seattle, Wash.

Date: 11/9/72 Edition: Final Author: Alexander Auerbach Editor: Henry McLeod Title: NORJAK

Character: or Classification: 164-81 Submitting Office: Seattle

☐ Being Investigated

COPY SENT TO BUREAU

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SEARCHED.......... INDEXED.............. SERIALIZED........FILED......[illegible] NOV 15 1972 FBI—SEATTLE

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DB Cooper-22355

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Sur [illegible]

[terviews?], ~30 minutes of filmed interviews and still photographs. "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 justice, Fleming turned his material over to the F.B.I. 10 days before publication. (He had told Cooper not to tell him anything he didn't want the police to know.) Included were Xerox copies of the $20 bills Fleming had been shown as proof of Cooper's identity. The serial numbers matched those on the list of ransom bills, but F.B.I. documents experts said that the photo-copies indicated that the bills were counterfeit. With all the information Fleming's subjects had supplied, the F.B.I. had no trouble rounding them up. (The meeting with Fleming, according to police reports, took place at the Swept Wing Inn near the Seattle-Tacoma Airport.)

WITH THE trial scheduled to begin November 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." He has an ingenious, mirror-within-mirrors theory of his own.

"I'm not saying that the F. B. I. was wrong," he said, "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 F. B. I. agents couldn't, then that's not the kind of publicity that J. Edgar Hoover, then alive, would want for the F.B.I." Noting that "Cooper" was aware the information would be published and get to the police, Fleming said, "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 F. B. I. would say he isn't the hijacker," Fleming said. "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."

account of how a reporter got duped, as Part Three indicates, or perhaps it would be both. Fleming may have some

IN THAT CASE, of course, Fleming's series would be a true account of the hijacking, as readers of Part One might have thought, not the

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 F. B. I., charging that it was defrauded because the men were not the people they purported to be.

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