Part 54, page 153

Transcript

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

we don't know who D.B. Cooper is and to the best of my knowledge, we're not any closer to knowing who D.B. Cooper is.

Asked whether he thought the Rackstraw arrest in Fullerton was a break in the Cooper skyjacking, Mathis refused comment.

According to court records in Ca- laveras County, Rackstraw left the army early in 1971 and took a job with a petrochemical firm in the San Fran- cisco Bay area. As a trained helicopter pilot, he also is reported to have taken on private flying assignments for various corporations between 1971 and 1974, when he formed his own helicopter service.

Rackstraw went into the construc- tion business with his stepfather in Calaveras County in 1976. The busi- ness took a bad turn, and Rackstraw late in 1977 was charged with writing $75,000 in bad checks at two San Joa- quin County banks.

It was at about that time that Rack- straw dropped out of sight. eventual- ly, the FBI located Rackstraw in Iran, where he had taken a job as a flight instructor for Bell Helicopter Interna- tional.

He was deported from Iran and was arrested Feb. 20, 1978, when he arrived on a flight to New York City.

Two days later, the body of his step- father was found in a shallow grave near his home in Valley Springs, Calif.

Rackstraw was acquitted of charges in the murder of his stepfath- er, but illegal explosives charges and charges on the bad checks remain to be disposed of in San Joaquin County.

And it was last October, a few days before he was due in court on those charges that Rackstraw and an uni- dentified companion rented a plane at a Stockton airport and disappeared. The last that was heard from Rack- straw, until his arrest last week, was his "mayday" call supposedly broad- cast from somewhere in the Monte- rey, Calif. area.

During an interview with a Stock- ton newspaper reporter last summer, Rackstraw claimed the FBI considers him "a James Bond who had gone wrong."

He also said that he was a member of a "top secret special intelligence organization while in Vietnam in 1969."

A San Joaquin County prosecutor, Clark Sueyres, said he once ques- tioned Rackstraw about being Cooper. He said Rackstraw "invoked his rights" to have an attorney present and the inquiry stopped there.

The questioning took place shortly before Rackstraw's disappearance in October.

He was being held last night in lieu of $650,000 bail after arraignment on the past charges.

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D.B. COOPER Artist's sketch

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ROBERT RACKSTRAW Soldier of fortune

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DB Cooper-23082