Part 3, page 17

Transcript

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

[form number illegible] (Rev. 7-[1]6-63) (Mount Clipping in Space Below)

---

D. B. COOPER' GOT $30,000 Weekly's Hijacking Story Turns Into Tall Tale--Later

BY ALEXANDER AUERBACH Times Staff Writer

"What happens to people is news. What happens to reporters isn't," [a saying of a] Boston city editor [who would] shout at reporters who [gave] first-person accounts of [events] they had witnessed. What happens if the reporter is 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 autobiography of Howard [Hughes], or (C) both? [There is] a new weekly newspaper in the Los Angeles area, [that] just [launched] a three-installment series [about] the "solution" of the suc[cessful] $200,000 hijacking of a Northwest Orient Airlines jet last Nov. 24. Only at the end of the series did [it] 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 [wanted] to tell the story in a way that [made] the readers found misleading in [order] to let them vicariously under[stand] 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 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 [illegible]) 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...]

---

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

I-10 Los Angeles Tim[es] Los Angeles, Calif[ornia]

Date: 11/8/72 Edition: Wednes[day] [illegible] Author: Alexander A[uerbach] Editor: William F. Th[omas?] Title: Norjak

Character: or 164-[L]97[3?] Classification: Los An[geles?] Submitting Office: Los An[geles?] [ ] Being Investigated

164-2111-3[0]4