FD-350 clipping, Herald Examiner: 'FBI agent to leave Cooper case behind' (Himmelsbach)

FD-850 (Rev. 12-5-78)

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

A-8 HERALD EXAMINER LOS ANGELES, CA Date: 2/17/80 Edition: Sunday Latest

Title: FBI:COOPER CASE

Character: or Classification: D.B. COOPER 164-497 Submitting Office: Los Angeles

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FBI agent to leave Cooper case behind

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Ralph Himmelsbach probably knows D.B. Cooper better than anyone, but that says very little. "We still don't know who Cooper was or is or where he came from or where he went," he said briskly. And that's how the case will likely stand when Himmelsbach -- the principal FBI agent on the Cooper case -- retires Feb. 29 after 28 years with the bureau.

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164-497 -1008 SEARCHED......INDEXED...... SERIALIZED...FILED... FEB 17 1980 FBI -- LOS ANGELES

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ORIGINAL TO THE BUREAU BI/DOJ DB Cooper-25914

Despite the chance dis- covery of ragged bundles of the skyjacker's loot by a picnicking Vancouver, Wash., family last week on the banks of the Col- umbia River, Cooper re- mains as much a mystery in the Pacific Northwest as Bigfoot. "It's perplexing," Him- melsbach said, jamming an index finger into a leather couch at the Port- land FBI headquarters. "It's really a perplexing question." Yet the tightly built, 54- year-old special agent boasts an analytical de- tachment from the vex- ing Cooper case. He seems more bothered by his pending retirement. "I'd rather not retire

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because I'm very fit. I'm too young to retire in my estimation, but it's mandatory in the FBI when you reach 55," he said, smoothing the lapel on his gray double-knit suit.

"I've never got so personally involved as to get either very elated or just crash — you don't survive in this business that way. People who have that idea parachute. either don't know enough about law enforcement or have seen too much TV."

These are the words of the man who, minutes earlier, had condemned the people of Ariel, Wash., for holding annual "D.B. Cooper Days," which feature Cooper look-alikes bailing out of airplanes with attache cases.

"They're making fun out of a humorless situation," Himmelsbach said flatly. "I regret seeing a man I consider to be a common criminal, who terrorized and threatened the lives of others, celebrated in this manner.

"And some people probably stand to profit from the attraction."

D.B. Cooper has haunted Himmelsbach for nine years — ever since the night of Nov. 24, 1971, when the agent listened to the skyjacking unfold via the traffic control tower at Portland International Airport.

Like it or not it has been his biggest case.

"I think that most likely the greater probability is that he is dead. I have a lot of reasons for that being the greatest likelihood. Would you like to hear them?"

"If Cooper wanted to survive, he should have had a lot of equipment needed to make the jump," Himmelsbach said. "He should have had a hard hat. He should have had goggles, a leather flight jacket, a flight suit, small hand tools or side cutters so as to extricate himself from whatever he might have gotten hung up in.

"He could have had no idea where he was. He couldn't possibly have estimated where he would have landed. Either he didn't know or he didn't care.

"He was going for broke. It was an enormous gamble. He was wearing a business suit, a stickpin, alligator shoes, a narrow black tie, a black raincoat, dark glasses and was carrying a black attache case. It was, 'If I make it, OK, if I don't, so what.'"

Then came a flood of long-memorized particulars: "The aircraft was flying 10,000 feet at 170 knots, or 196 miles per hour. Outside, the air temperature was minus 7 degrees. When he jumped out, the airplane was on instrumental and was flying through clouds.

"Winds in Portland were gusting at ground level at 25 to 45 knots — 30 to 50 miles per hour. His vertical descent was estimated at 26 miles per hour. So he's descending straight down at 26 miles per hour. Add to that the 30 to 50 miles per hour, and you figure he struck the ground at least 56 miles per hour and possibly as high as 70 miles per hour.

"It is difficult to conceive of how he could have landed uninjured."

Cooper had requested four parachutes and got his wish. He left two on the plane. The one chute he strapped on was a non-functioning trainer sent by mistake, Himmelsbach said, and the other was a sky-diver's acrobatic parachute — which contained only a small drag canopy used in stunt work.

The day after Cooper jumped, Himmelsbach and his friend, Art Enderlin, Portland's chief of police, flew over the area in the agent's airplane. A week later, Himmelsbach retraced the entire route of the 727 from the air.

Six years passed before the first substantial clue appeared in the case. A skull was found in an area in the mountains of La Center, the Washington town Cooper said his prayers over and jumped into the swirling night.

In a tree over the skull were the remnants of a parachute.

"It turned out to be a chute, meteorological balloon," Himmelsbach said plainly. "And the skull turned out to be a lost hunter who was 29 instead of the 48 that Cooper was estimated to be."

The next clue came last Sunday when 8-year-old Brian Ingram yelled to his father about finding some money on the shore of the Columbia River at Tena Bar. Harold Ingram, of Vancouver, Wash., had his family picnic turned into a national event by three decaying bundles of money — and he called the FBI.

"Marge Gillam, who works in the office, took the call and found that the serial numbers matched the Cooper bills," Himmelsbach recalled.

"With quick, quiet hands, the agent reached inside his coat and produced a small white envelope. In it was the only real clue in the mystery of D.B. Cooper — four of the recovered bills. He fingered them gently.

"You see how they appear to have been rolled by a river, like they were moved underwater a long way," he explained.

He had a theory about the money.

"Well, I've been doing non-stop interviews the past few days, so I haven't done much research, and I frankly don't know how the money got there.

"My feeling is that it was probably lying there for quite some time, because the people said when they picked up the bundles, the rubber bands just crumbled away."

So how did the money travel 15 miles from the supposed jumpsite?

"That's a puzzling question. I would really be interested in explaining how this money found its way upstream on the Columbia — that's assuming it made its way down from the jump area by the Lewis River. Was it floating at the time, and did the wind blow it? Did the tide carry it? Was it just a freak eddy?"

Himmelsbach again looked out the window at the Willamett as bound-for-work Friday morning autos skidded across bridges left icy from a night of snow.

"I just don't know," he said. "I just don't know."

His sandy hair, mustache and sideburns now streaked with silver, Himmelsbach put a hand to the side of his angular face. It looked like the most infamous air piracy case in history was closed.

Surely, it was suggested, after 8½ years of investigation, the "D.B." in D.B. Cooper must stand for "dead and buried."

"Oh no," said Himmelsbach. "I have not reached that conclusion. I do not state or claim that he didn't survive."

Ralph Himmelsbach

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