Part 53, page 39

Transcript

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

CRIMP OF THE MONTH

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SKYJACKING: THE PLANE STORY OF D.B. COOPER

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It's the crime with the "young look." Everyone hates the airlines. Everyone loves a hijacker. If the thought of being considered anti-social has kept you from a life of crime, consider the crime with the wings on!

Before 1960 there were only 33 air- craft hijackings. In the last ten years there have been 150. More than half of these have been in the U.S. Clearly air- line hijacking is as American as apple pie.

The beginnings of this new amateur sport were Cuban but anti-, not pro- Castro. After the revolution, thousands of Cubans, unhappy with the new gov- ernment, finding exit visas scarce, began hijacking Cuban planes, forcing the pi- lots to fly to Miami. During the first such flight, the crew of an entire Cuba- na airliner asking for asylum came as sweet news to Uncle Sam. The plane was not returned. Castro asked but Washington did not answer. In October of 1960, it happened again: This time the Cuban pilot wasn't a part of the rip- off and as a result, he was wounded, a guard was killed, and the plane limped into Key West, Florida. The gunmen were hailed as Freedom Fighters.

Then on July 24, 1961, the worm turned.

An American plane, an Eastern Air- lines Electra with 38 passengers on board, was forced to fly to Cuba. The U.S. Air Force was notified of the ac- tion when the plane was en route. They sent up a F-102 which flew helplessly alongside the Electra till the plane neared Cuba. It had only been 3 months since the Bay of Pigs. America wasn't looking for more trouble.

The Electra made a safe landing. The passengers and crew—only 3 months after a Bay of Pigs invasion—were sent back to Miami.

Not the Electra. Why should it be sent back? Uncle Sam had kept the last 6 Cuban ships. Was a new Age of Adven- ture about to begin? Would we have pi- rate-ship battles in mid-air? Errol Flynns in airtight cabins, battling it out in the stratosphere with Olivia de Havillands in space suits?

Alas, no. Law and Order rules the world. Castro, the Arab countries, America are all members of the same world airplane organizations. They in- sure each other against losses. How can

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The new American hero, right up there with Jesse James and Sergeant York: super- skyjacker D.B. Cooper, complete with wig and putty makeup.

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there be a war when each side has to pay the other for losses? When Israel destroyed several planes in Lebanon it was among the countries which had to pay the fee to the central insurance fund for their replacement.

But if the nations of this world do not love hijackers, the people do. The hijackers caught the front pages and soon the race was on. It was so easy! All you had to do was hold up an object, declare to the stewardess it was a gun or a bomb, and tell them where you want- ed to go.

Romance! The sky, the night, the ex- citement, the fainting pregnant women, the FBI clumsily disguised as repairmen surrounding the plane when it stopped to refuel. Many flocked to the new Thing: the patriotic, the young, the ro- mantic, the demented. Cuba, a false em- blem of Freedom, was the favorite tar- get. The reality was harsh. The hijackers were treated with suspicion. Several re- turned home.

There were metal-detecting devices put around the airlines, but these have proven ineffectual. Everyone has metal somewhere on them, and lots of bombs are non-metallic.

The game was good. The question was—the goal: One hijacker, Raphael Minichiello, a Vietnam vet, took his cap- tive airplane to Italy and was greeted

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'M ALIVE AND doing well in HoMe town P.I.D. The system that beats the system.

D B cooper

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DB Cooper-22377

NORTHWEST

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PAGE 14/MOBSTER TIMES

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