(FD-350): 'Report about hijacker could be scoop - or just a duped newsman'

FD-350 (Rev. 7-16-63) (Mount Clipping in Space Below)

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Report about hijacker could be scoop—or just a duped newsman

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ALEXANDER AUERBACH LA Times-Washington Post Service

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 everest hoax since Clifford Irving's bogus autobiography of Howard Hughes, or (C) both?

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

Only at the end of the series did LA tell its readers that the whole account was an apparent hoax perpetrated on 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.

Hijacking told—Loss—Loss fraud claimed

The first installment told of Dan (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 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 in newspapers around Oregon and Washington, asking Cooper to contact him.

Later, while Fleming and millionaire Max Palevsky 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, 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 Fleming—and who allegedly took his $30,000 — have been arrested by the FBI on charges of defrauding Fleming of his money.

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 [illegible]

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

/8 THE OREGONIAN PORTLAND, [guess: Ore.]

Date: 11-9-72 Edition: Author: Editor: Title:

Character: or Classification: Submitting Office:

☐ Being Investigated

/6 4 41 Sub 1

SEARCHED ___INDEXED___ SERIALIZED ___ [illegible] ___

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DB Cooper-22975

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 inter- viewed 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 inter- views, 30 minutes of filmed interviews 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 con- tract."

.. The story was to have been in the opening issue of LA. To avoid charges of aid- ing a fugitive from justice, Fleming turned his material over to the FBI 10 days be- fore publication (he had told Cooper not to tell him any- thing he didn't want the po- lice 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 FBI documents ex- perts said that the photoco- pies indicated that the bills were counterfeit.

With all the information Fleming's subjects h[ad] sup- plied, the FBI [in]d[icted] [a] rouble rounding the[m] ..

With the[ir] [in-] [dicted] [tur]ning [cult] [illits]

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 mir- ror-within-a-mirror . [sto]ry 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. Ed- gar 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 possi- bility that he was both smart enough to pull off the hijack- ing, 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 hijack- ing, as readers of part one might have thought, not the account of how a reporter got duped, as part three indi- cates, or perhaps it would be both.

Fleming may have some lingering doubts about the man he interviewed, but Pla- typus Publications, publisher of LA, appears to have none. It has filed a $30,000 civil suit against the m[en] a[nd] [a ci]v[il] the FBI, clai[min]g frauded beca were not the claimed to be