Part 54, page 92

Transcript

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

FD-350 (Rev. 7-16-63)

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D.B. Cooper: Another Year And He's a 'Bye-jacker'

PORTLAND. Ore. (UPI) — Just one more year and D.B. Cooper will be home free.

Thanksgiving begins the 365 day countdown for Cooper—the nation's first and only successful parachuting skyjacker—who used highway flares as a bomb threat to extort $200,000 from Northwest Airlines.

The statute of limitations on the hijacking charge against Cooper is five years. The phantom figure vanished after parachuting from a Northwest Airlines 727 with his loot on Thanksgiving eve, 1971.

Whether he survived the jump or his body is down at the bottom of a deep lake, hung in a tree or his remains scattered by animals are some of the intriguing questions left unanswered by the extensive investigation thus far.

"It's a very much active investigation," said a senior FBI agent who has spent many hours on the case. "We have run down literally thousands of leads, and eliminated hundreds of people as suspects."

"My personal guess is that there is just a 50 per cent chance that he is still alive."

The sheer lack of distinguishing characteristics about Cooper and his ability to move unobtrusively before the hijacking has balked the FBI's intense efforts to determine how he arrived at Portland In-

ternational Airport that wet, squally night. He paid cash for his flight from Portland to Seattle, then spent 50 minutes in an airport waiting area before boarding without one fellow passenger remembering him.

Shortly after takeoff, Cooper handed a note to a stewardess that said, "I have a bomb in my brief case."

The FBI agent said the stewardess described what she thought was the bomb as wires attached in Cooper's attache case to eight sticks of dynamite, the same red color as her uniform.

"Dynamite is not [guess: color] coded this way. She was describing highway flares," the agent said.

The agent said there was doubt Cooper was an experienced parachutist since when he jumped he took the two worst possible choices of the four parachutes given him at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport where he obtained the $200,000 in $20 bills.

He said the chest chute he took was one that was sewn together for use in a parachute-assembling class and could not even be used for jumping, and the back chute was much smaller than the large chute he cut up to wrap the money in and tie it to him.

A world champion parachutists was quoted by the agent as saying "no amount of money" could induce him to make the jump Cooper did.

Jumping from 10,000 feet into heavy rain clouds, there was no way Cooper could have known where he was coming down, according to the FBI man.

But the FBI is positive that Cooper came down about 12 miles north of Portland in an area four miles by six miles. Despite aerial and ground searches, including one the next spring using soldiers from Ft. Lewis, Wash., no clues to Cooper's disappearance have ever been found.

None of the 10,000 bills in ransom have shown up either, even through the Oregon Journal offered a $1,000 reward for the first $20 from the Cooper haul turned in to the Portland newspaper.

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(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.)

p.A18 Seattle Post- Intelligencer Seattle, Wash.

Date: 11/23/75 Edition: Final Author: Editor: Jack Doughty Title:

NORJAK

Character: or 164-81-SubB Classification: Submitting Office: Seattle

☐ Being Investigated

SEARCHED _____ INDEXED ___ SERIALIZED ___ FILED ___ NOV 28 1975 FBI — SEATTLE

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DB Cooper-23018