Part 50, page 345

Transcript

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

They said 6 [feet?] ... about [illegible] ... in a judge Sirena [illegible]

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are conducting the hunt for the olive-complexioned, middle- aged hijacker in a 10-by-15-mile stretch of rough, fir-covered country just south of the Lewis River in the Cascade foothills. At the City Hall in Wood- land, a river town of about 1,300, where search headquar- ters have been established under the direction of Tom Man- ning, an F.B.I. agent, officials said that poor visibility had led the Army to withdraw its helicopters from the hunt. Other Copters Used However, other helicopters provided by Weyerhaeuser, the mammoth lumber company, and the Bonneville Power Ad- ministration, were still making intermittent passes over the area. The search was halted at nightfall until tomorrow. The hunted man has been identified by the F.B.I. only as D.B. Cooper, the name he used Wednesday afternoon when he bought a ticket in Portland, 20 miles south of here, and boarded a Northwest plane to Seattle. On the way to Seattle, the hijacker, who was described as being about 6 feet tall, weighing 170 pounds and wear-

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the cabin with the rear door open and steps down. Although earlier reports had said that the hijacker ordered William Scott, the pilot, to fly south over Washington and Oregon, rather than over the rugged Cascade Mountains, a Northwest spokesman in St. Paul, denied that today. Walter Helmer, the North- west official, said that Mr. Scott had told him he chose the route without consulting the hijacker. He also quoted the pilot as having said that when he landed the plane in Reno, Nev., for refueling, he thought the hijacker was still on board. Instead, the man, the money, two of the parachutes and the suitcase containing the red cylinders were missing. The F.B.I. said that the search was being concentrated in this area on the basis of information provided by the crew. Officials said that the crew's last communication with the hi- jacker came a little after 8 P.M. Wednesday when the jet would have been near Ariel, southwest of Woodland. If the man bailed out then, the authorities said, the aircraft

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THINGS COULD HAVE BEEN WO[RSE] Point Pleasant Beach (N.J.) Rescu[e]

ing and there were southwest winds of 25 to 45 knots. At search headquarters here officials said that a computer at Fort Lewis, Wash., had been fed this information and had predicted a likely area of the hunt. Meanwhile, Sheriff Gene [Cor-] ton of Clark County said that [earlier?] several [earlier] reports that a man fitting the hijacker's de- scription had been sighted in the area had all proved false. In Portland, The Oregon Jour- nal reported that the F.B.I. was seeking a former south[west] Washington sky diver for ques-

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DB Cooper-21037