Part 70, page 196

Transcript

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

FD-350 (Rev. 10-19-77)

(Mount Clipping in Space Below)

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FBI calls off search for more hijack money

The FBI has, at least temporarily, called off its search along the Columbia River for more of the money obtained eight years ago by the airplane hijacker who used the name Dan Cooper.

Jack Pringle, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Seattle office, said, the search was called off late Thursday night after several days of sand-sifting produced no new evidence. The Seattle office has coordinated search efforts in the Cooper caper, the only unresolved hijacking on record since it occurred in 1971.

Pringle said search efforts might be renewed next week, after the results of laboratory tests are received on the several thousand dollars in badly decayed $20 bill fragments found by a picnicking family Sunday about nine miles downstream from Vancouver.

He said there was a chance the tests "could find additional debris that might give us an idea where (the money) may have been" before it washed onto the river bank.

A geologist serving as consultant to the FBI has said he believes the money had spent most of the past eight years underwater and was deposited on the sandy beach only within the past year.

The Northwest Airlines plane was hijacked between Portland and Seattle by a man who said he had a bomb. The hijacker obtained $200,000 in $20 bills when the plane landed in Seattle and then parachuted with the money over Southwest Washington.

The bills found Sunday represented the first trace of the hijacker or money since the Thanksgiving Eve hijack occurred.

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

Page A8 The Oregonian Portland, Or.

Date: 2/16/80 Edition:

Title:

Character: 164-81 or Classification: Submitting Office: [guess: SEA] M

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SUBS: B, E, G, M

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#6

FBI/DOJ

DB Cooper-30004