Part 61, page 263

Transcript

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

There were imitators. Around the world, there were more than a dozen skyjacking attempts patterned after Cooper's. Cooper is the only one not known to have failed. With increased airport se- curity and modification of the Boeing 727 so the rear door wouldn't open in flight, the fad stopped. The flow of clues, hints, and tips from the public about Dan Cooper has slowed to a trickle now. After checking out more than 1,000 suspects, the FBI says it knows little more about Cooper than it did on that stormy night when he leapt into history. Himmelsbach said the whole thing was probably put together with minimal plan- ning and that the bomb was a bundle of relatively harmless highway flares. The bomb was red. Dynamite isn't. If the crew members had re- alized that, they might have called his bluff at the time, Himmelsbach said. "He's lucky he got as far as he did with a plan like that." Even if the statute holds up, Cooper will have problems. The Internal Revenue Ser- vice computes his tax debt, including penalties and in- terest, at about $198,000. And the Globe Indemnity Co., which had to pay $180,000 to the airline, may want to talk to him. So now, what? "We have to accept the possibility that we may never know," Himmelsbach said. "I guess we can live with that - we have to."

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