Part 51, page 233

Transcript

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

[...]osure 5 [illegible] Ltr 0l0ct97 to SAIC Burdena G. Pasenelli, FBI

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Snow, ice still play havoc with Spokane-area power

SPOKANE -- Snow and ice continued to hit electric companies when they were down Sunday, and keeping thousands of people in the Spokane area without power.

"It's real frustrating because we no more than get a line back up than another tree comes back down," said Dave Clinton, Inland Power and Light Co. assistant manager for operations and engineering.

Sunday was the sixth day where aftereffects of an early winter storm could still be felt. Since last Monday when the storm first blew through the Northwest, at least six people have died in the state, including three in the Spokane area.

Inland Power had 2,500 customers Sunday in rural Eastern Washington without power, but by the afternoon that number increased to 3,000.

Washington Water Power still had 20,000 customers without power, down from 25,000 Saturday. About 500 customers in the Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, area were still without power Sunday.

Saturday night 301 people stayed in six emergency shelters, said Peggy Berkaana, Executive Director of the Inland Northwest chapter of the American Red Cross.

Since Tuesday, 8,000 meals have been served.

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D.B. Cooper is still missing, and the legend lives on

25 years since most famous hijacking

By George Tibbits The Associated Press

It's been 25 years since he took that big step out of a Boeing 727 at 10,000 feet, yet tips on D.B. Cooper still trickle in.

One of the most daring -- or dumbest -- criminals ever remains at large, having either flouted the laws of society or been foiled by the law of gravity.

"It's still a pending investigation," says Seattle-based FBI agent Ray Lauer, who adds that the case will stay open "probably forever."

The FBI still stores 60 volumes of interviews and other documents telling how Cooper hijacked a jetliner, demanded and received $200,000, then jumped from the plane over the Cascade Mountains of Southwest Washington and into legend.

He hasn't been heard from since, although $5,880 of his loot was found by a boy playing on the banks of the Columbia River in 1980.

A few taverns and restaurants mark the anniversary of the nation's only unsolved skyjacking case. And now and then someone calls the FBI

with a tip or suggestion.

"Surprisingly, yeah, we still get quite a few of them," Lauer says. "They tend to come in spurts, when they might get two to four in a week, then might not get any more tips for several months."

Wherever Cooper is, it's a safe bet his skydiving days are over: If he survived, he'd be 70 or older now.

On Nov. 24, 1971, the day before Thanksgiving, a man in his mid-40s wearing dark glasses boarded a Northwest Airlines plane in Portland.

He bought a ticket under the name Dan Cooper -- he was later erroneously referred to him as "D.B." and the initials stuck -- and took seat 18F in coach. He ordered a bourbon and water and handed flight attendant Flo Schaffner a note.

The busy Schaffner stuck the pa-

per in her pocket, thinking it was a mash note. Not until takeoff did she bother to read the message: "Miss, I've got a bomb, come sit next to me -- you're being hijacked."

Fellow cabin attendant Tina Mucklow Larson recounted how she and Schaffner relayed dozens of messages from Cooper to the cockpit -- including his demands for $200,000 in used $20 bills and four parachutes.

He had no unusual characteristics, Larson recalled. He wore a dark suit, dark tie, white shirt and the sunglasses, which he never took off, and chain-smoked.

He also had a black briefcase, which he opened for Larson, showing her a couple of red cylinders, wires and a battery.

He collected the money, provided by the airline, during a stop at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where the 36 passengers and two flight attendants were released. Larson and the two pilots remained on

board. Cooper demanded the plane be flown to Mexico, agreeing to a refueling stop at Reno.

Just after takeoff, Larson said, Cooper asked how to lower the rear stairs of the 727, the only jetliner equipped with that feature. He then told her to go to the front of the plane and pull the first-class curtain shut.

About 40 minutes after takeoff, a stair signal light flashed on. When the jet landed in Reno, the stairs were down and Cooper, the money and parachutes were missing.

Such an exit would be impossible today: Cooper's lasting contribution to aircraft design is the "Cooper Vane," a latching device on Boeing 727s that prevents the tail stairway from being lowered in flight.

Cooper dove into a freezing rainstorm at 10,000 feet, wearing only a business suit and loafers. The temperature was 7 below zero, not counting a wind chill factor estimated at minus 70 because of the plane's speed of 200 mph.

Ralph Himmelsbach, the FBI agent on the case before his retirement in 1980, has long maintained Cooper was a bumbler and a fool.

If the cold didn't kill him, if he withstood the powerful turbulence, Cooper was still parachuting into dense forest at night, at the onset of winter, with no food or survival gear.

"It was a bad place to land, and it is doubtful we would ever find the body," Himmelsbach said in a 1991 interview. "This was a desperate act you wouldn't expect from a normal man in his mid-40s. This was something you would expect from somebody who had nothing to lose."

Himmelsbach believes Cooper either landed in the Columbia and drowned, or died in the mountains and the money was washed out.

An extensive search turned up no traces. Nine years later, Mount St. Helens erupted and blanketed much of the area with ash. If hikers or hunters have stumbled across Cooper since, they've kept his secret.

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Cooper drawing

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DB Cooper-21352