Part 3, page 19

Transcript

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trouble rounding them up. With their trial scheduled to begin Nov. 27, Fleming says he still finds it "difficult to accept" the possibility 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." Fleming notes that "Cooper" went into detail on matters of air navigation and parachute procedure—and [are/aware] that Fleming is a licensed private pilot with some 700 hours in the air. Because of the magnitude of the story and because of its intended role as the kickoff piece for his new newspaper, Fleming says, he was extremely careful in his questioning. "At the risk of sounding immodest," he adds, "I wouldn't want to do anything to damage my own very good reputation as a reporter." He has an ingenious, mirror-within-a-mirror theory 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. Edgar 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 possibility that he was both smart enough to pull off the hijacking, 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 hijacking, as readers of Part [Three] indicates, or perhaps it would be both. In any event, Fleming has no regrets about the adventure. "I've always been a reporter who takes risks. You don't get the plums at the top of the tree unless you jump high." Fleming may have some lingering doubts about the man he interviewed, but Platypus Publications, publisher of LA, appears to have none. It has filed a $30,000 civil suit against the men arrested by the FBI, claiming it was defrauded because the men were not the people they claimed to be.