Part 53, page 242

Transcript

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

FD-350 (Rev. 10-19-77)

(Mount Clipping in Space Below)

---

6 years after jump Despite search, tips, still no sign of Cooper

By LEVERETT RICHARDS of The Oregonian staff

Dan Cooper, where are you? After six years and some of the most intensive searches on record the fate of this first high-finance, high-jumping hijacker remains a baffling mystery. "We really don't know any more today than we did 8:10 p.m. Wednesday Nov. 24, 1971, when a man who called himself Cooper dived out the rear end of a Northwest Airlines Boeing 727 with $200,000 and vanished without a trace," said Ralph Himmelsbach, veteran FBI agent. "Not one of those 10,000 $20 bills has turned up," Himmelsbach said. "Neither has his parachute, money bag, or any solid evidence of any kind." Thousands of reports have been investigated, scores of suspects checked out and hundreds of "clues" studied, but to no avail. "A dozen or so new suspects were reported and investigated this year, only to be eliminated," Himmelsbach said. "We still don't know his identity. No one by that name or description has been reported missing." No organized searches have been conducted in the past year, but dozens of individuals have asked for maps of the "target area," two miles east of La Center, Wash., where the hijacker is believed to have landed on that wild and windy night after boarding the airliner in Portland. "From my investigations I lean to the hypothesis that Cooper landed in the dense woods either dead or mortally hurt," Himmelsbach said. "It could be years before his remains are found. That country is too rugged, too steep and too choked with brush to be searched thoroughly. A lot of hunters have probably been through there, but they don't plough through the thickets. They walk around them, just as the wild animals do."

---

Cooper's skyjacking inspired a wave of hijackings for large ransoms, leading to a rigid airport security system. The increased security has cut the number of hijacking attempts dramatically. No one has hijacked a plane and escaped since the the system went into effect, Himmelsbach said. In the first six months of this year, Federal Aviation Administration security agents apprehended 370 individuals for carrying firearms at 71 airports around the country. Every anniversary of Cooper's hijacking brings a flood of calls from people reporting they have suspicious $20 bills, Himmelsbach said. "Anyone finding a $20 bill that he thinks is suspicious should first look at the face of the bill. "At the lower right hand of the picture of Andrew Jackson you will find a date and a letter — like 1973, with a C under it. That is the date the bill was issued. "Obviously, if it was issued after 1971 it could not be one of the missing bills," Himmelsbach pointed out. In Ariel, Wash., near where Cooper is believed to have bailed out, the mysterious skyjacker will be feted Saturday, Nov. 26. Ariel residents have extended an invitation for Cooper to come back and spend a few $20 bills at a buffalo stew feed in the general store.

---

(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) C-1 The Oregonian

Date: 11-24-77 Edition: Sunrise

Title:

Character: or Classification: Submitting Office: [illegible handwriting] SEARCHED ______ [illegible] SERIALIZED ____

NOV 3 1977

b6 b7c

---

DB Cooper-22580