Part 62, page 206

Transcript

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

FD-350 (Rev. 12-5-78)

(Mount Clipping in Space Below)

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

A-2 HERALD EXAMINER Date: LOS ANGELES, CA Edition: 2/16/80 Saturday Latest

Title: D.B. COOPER

Character: or Classif[ication]: 164-457 Submitting Office: Los Angeles

b6 b7c

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D.B. Cooper money hunt ends

VANCOUVER, Wash. — D.B. Cooper remains at large — dead or alive.

FBI agents ended their search of sandy Tena Bar on the Columbia River yesterday and returned to their Seattle headquarters to re-group.

Aside from the fragmented $20 bills found Sunday by a picnicking Vancouver family and some additional fragments of bills unearthed Wednesday by agents, there were no more signs of the infamous skyjacker.

If Cooper bailed out of the hijacked Northwest Airlines Boeing 727 jet-liner over southwest Washington on Nov 24, 1971, with $200,000 in cash extorted from the airline, He has not been seen since.

"There was "nothing more" to find," said John Pringle, assistant special agent in charge of the Seattle FBI office. "We'll wait until all the people (agents) get back early next week and see what we have."

Further breaks in the 8½ year old case, agents said, depend on further clues that they [guess: may] or tourists — happen to uncover. It's not likely there soon will be any tourists digging around the 300-yard stretch of river shoreline where the money was found.

"We're keepin' 'em out," said Richard Fazio, part owner of the Fazio Brothers Farm where the FBI agents were digging. "Maybe later, when things cool down, we'll start letting people in."

"I'm sure there will be plenty of people in here after we leave, regardless of the cold," said FBI agent Kenneth Moore, who super-vised the dig.

Meanwhile, a Portland State University geologist who examined the moldy money found Sunday said the bills probably spent eight years in the river.

Leonard Palmer reached his conclusion after examining the river bank earlier in the week, throwing into question one FBI theory, that the cash had been deposited on the shore during a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers channel dredging opera-tion in 1974.

The money probably hit the water not long after the hijacking, Palmer speculated, then took nine years to move downstream. The oval shape of the bundled, rubber band-wrapped bills appeared to have been caused by a rolling motion, Palmer said, like the movement of a river.

Most of the three bundles of cash were shipped to an FBI laboratory in Washington, D.C., for analysis — including fingerprint tests that could lead to Cooper's identity. Preliminary results are expected next week.

The FBI will eventually give the money back after determining whether the proper owner is Northwest Airlines or the Royal Globe Insurance Company of New York, which covered the loss. Only about $3,000 of the $200,000 in ransom was found last Sunday by 8-year-old Brian Ingram.

Despite Palmer's theory, FBI agents on the scene leaned more to the idea that the money had been frozen — mostly because rubber bands are not likely to withstand the punishment of a rushing river for nine years.

"It obviously hadn't been in the water that long," said Moore. [illegible]

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SEARCHED......INDEXED...... SERIALIZED.....FILED...... FEB 6 1980 FBI — LOS ANGELES

ORIGINAL TO THE BUREAU DB Cooper-25913

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FBI/DOJ