FD-350 clipping, Herald Examiner: 'Trying to withdraw cash from the Columbia's banks'

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

A-1 HERALD EXAMINER LOS ANGELES, CA Date: 2/14/80 Edition: Thursday Latest

Title: FBI CONTINUES HUNT FOR D.B. COOPER CASH Character: or DAMV Classif 164-496b6 Submitting Officer b7C Los Angeles

---

Trying to withdraw cash from the Columbia's banks

VANCOUVER, Wash. — FBI agents continued to sift through silt and sand along the banks of the Columbia River yesterday in an attempt to piece together a solution to the 1971 D.B. Cooper skyjacking.

Additional fragments of $20 bills were discovered yesterday and an FBI spokesman said the portion of the ransom unearthed so far may have been buried in a Columbia River 1974 dredging operation.

The search followed a disclosure Tuesday that several thousand dollars from the $200,000 ransom paid to the legendary hijacker was found last weekend by a Vancouver, Wash., family during a weekend picnic.

The ransom was paid Nov. 24, 1971, to a man who identified himself as Dan Cooper when he hijacked a Northwest Orient Airlines flight en route from Portland to Seattle.

Cooper released the 36 passengers and all but three of the crew when the plane arrived in Seattle. There he demanded $200,000 in $20 bills and four parachutes.

The plane flew on to Reno, but Cooper apparently stuffed the 21 pounds of money into a parachute bag, tied it to his waist and jumped from the plane as it flew over southwestern Washington.

It is the only unsolved plane hijacking in U.S. history.

On Monday FBI agents identified serial numbers from the tattered bills, and began searching for additional clues along the river bank, at a site about five miles northwest of Vancouver and just north of Portland.

"Some of the bills were wads as big as a quarter or a 5-cent piece," Tom Nicodemus, FBI agent in charge of the search, said of the subsequent discoveries.

"Apparently they were the remains of other bills that had eroded away."

---

Agaping pit, about 20 yards from the water's edge, showed the spot where Brian Ingram found the three packages of bills on Sunday. On Tuesday, agents digging as deep as three feet came up with more bits and pieces of $20 bills. The site has been underwater at various times in the past as the river level fluctuated.

Any would-be treasure seekers were barred from the area by a sheriff's deputy and a locked gate. The only spectators were three local fishermen, a crowd of reporters and a herd of dairy cattle that munched away in a pen about a hundred yards from the digging.

Searchers used a backhoe to dig a three-foot trench at the site of Sunday's discovery, and a Portland State University geologist was called in to examine sand layers and determine how deep the excavation should be.

Leonard Palmer, an associate professor at PSU, said the trench showed coarse sand varying from about six inches deep at the water's edge to two feet and deeper farther toward shore.

Officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told the FBI the coarse sand was deposited on the north bank in August 1974, when a 40-foot ship channel was dredged to provide greater access to the ports of Portland and Vancouver, FBI agent Bill Williams said yesterday in Portland.

"We are trying now to determine if the bills were sucked in by the dredge at that time," he added. Williams said Cooper's body would have jammed the dredging equipment, and hence would have been discovered, had he died with the ransom still tied to his waist. However they (the bills) got there, they must have been deposited within a couple of years after the hijacking," said Ralph Himelsbach, the FBI agent who has led the investigation since 1971.

---

SEARCHED............INDEXED...... SERIALIZED........... FEB 1 4 1980 FBI — LOS [ANGELES]

---

DB Cooper-25907 ORIGINAL TO THE BUREAU

Himmelsbach said the money was found Sunday in one location, secured by rubber bands in the same way the original bills were given to Cooper. "Rubber bands deteriorate rap- idly and could not have held the money together long," he said.

---

DB Cooper-25908

A container or some other wrapper must have held the money together or the bills would not have been found side by side after eight years, he said. But agents have no trace of such a container, or even the parachute bag Cooper was believed to have used.

Williams said the FBI has not determined whether the money could have survived the force of the dredging equip- ment if it had been sucked from the bed of the river.

He also said hydrolo- gists were being con- sulted about how the money might have reached the site, about 20 miles south of where Cooper was believed to have jumped. Williams said the FBI was consider- ing the possibility that the money may even have drifted upstream, guided by the force of ocean tides during periods of low water in the Colum- bia River.

"It does probably raise as many questions as an- swers — perhaps more," said agent Paul Hudson, coordinator of the dig- ging efforts. "In my own mind, I can rule out the possibility that it was bur- ied here."

The site, about five miles northwest of Van- couver, Wash., is several miles downstream from the flight path of the airliner on its way to Reno from Seattle.

Using cabin-pressure data from the 727's flight recorder, the FBI plotted a trapezoid-shaped area in which Cooper was likely to have landed.

"This, of course, is out- side of that trapezoid," agent Tom Nicodemus said.

Hudson said the money and the hijacker could have come down in a number of drainages, all of which end up in the half-mile-wide Columbia. He said the round shape of the crumbling wads of money indicated that the cash could have tumbled along a stream bed.

The search was broken off at nightfall yesterday, and the excavation site was kept under guard. [guess: The search] is to continue today.

---

DB Cooper-25909

FBI agents armed with a back hoe, rake and screen search for more of D.B. Cooper's ransom cash.

---

DB Cooper-25910