Part 2, page 19

Transcript

The scan is the source; the transcript is machine-generated from it.

[illegible top line] ...anymore until after the story was published.

Criminal At Large

Contemplating publication... was [a] dilemma. To print it would lead most certainly to Cooper's capture. For the law to catch Cooper would be fine. [It was] for him to be caught on the bas[is of] information I had gathered as a reporter I didn't like it. Nonsense, Morgan ur[ged] the man was criminal; he knew what he was doing. To print the story and quit worrying about it. I couldn't. At one time I strongly considered destroying all the tapes, photos, notes—everything—and forgetting the story. That posed a grim- mer prospect: I would thus forfeit Con- stitutional press freedom protection and would be guilty of actually destroying evidence. I had seen enough brutal jail[s] from the outside to know I didn't want to see one from the inside at[.]

In any case, it seemed important to publish the story, if it was true, Cooper's account of how he robbed the airline, and the eloquent explanation of why he did it—striking back at the Establish- ment for selling him an American Dream that turned out to be a nightmare—seem- ed an important if perhaps clichéd com- mentary on the problems of mass produc- tion capitalism. And Madison Avenue huckstering.

As I discussed a possible book with McCauley, it occurred to me Cooper might be induced to turn in the money, by giving him a share, say 20 per cent, of the book proceeds, or arranging with a publisher a plan by which royalties would be put into a legal defense fund. The return of the $200,000 in $20s would, naturally, be proof that we had the right man.

I had stored the tapes and other docu- ments in a friend's safety deposit box and was reading stories in the press that posses of 500 military [hands] were search- ing the woods around Lake Merwin for Cooper's body. In New York, McCauley made a quiet inquiry about a book with a friend at Harpers Magazine Press. Any negotiations he could make would have to be extremely discreet because of a chance the story would get out. Har- per & Row was eager to do it, especially after McCauley told them any contract [contingent] on Cooper returning [the money...]