Part 54, page 81

Transcript

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

FBI refused comment Thurs- day on the significance of the reports about the small plane.

The airstrip is on prop- erty owned by the McClel- lan family. Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. McClellan Jr. live in a new house at the south end of the airstrip. McClellan formerly owned a plane but sold it. His par- ents live in an older house a little farther from the landing field.

Deer hunters and others flying light planes fre- quently set down on the strip, which is surrounded by foot-high weeds, but seldom at night in a rain- storm.

A flight recorder in the commandeered Northwest Orient 727 indicated that the hijacker opened the rear door of the plane at 8:13 p.m.

Mr. and Mrs. Emil Neiger, who live just down the road from the McClellan airstrip, said that a little after 8 p.m., they saw what seemed to them a puzzling sight, con- sidering the severity of the storm.

"We were gone for a while and came home about 8 o'clock," said Mrs. Neiger.

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"I was washing the dishes when both of us saw this plane swoop down low. We thought it was going to land and it put its landing lights on. Then we thought it took off again."

Two miles down the road to the west, Mrs. Frank Distefano saw something that made an impression on her [guess: about] 8:30 p.m.

"I was home alone [illegible]

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plane. It was raining and the wind was blowing. I thought, 'What's he doing out here this time of night?' It was weird to me because we don't see many planes at night here."

Plane seen

Mrs. Melvin Andersen, who resides just across the road from the north end of the McClellan landing strip, said she heard a plane land there and saw lights indicating that it was turning around.

"He was parked an hour or so and then it left," she said.

Opinion on what happened

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to the hijacker is divided in Woodland, population 1,650, but interest in the subject runs high because the FBI used an office in the attrac- tive new city hall here as a command post.

"We had more newsmen here than ever before in Woodland's long history," said Bob Reed, editor and publisher of the Lewis R[guess: iver] News.

"Woodland is the gate[illegible] to great camping and ing country in the su[illegible]. We got a half a milli[illegible] [guess: dollars] worth of publicity that hijacking."

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DB Cooper-23007