Part 97, page 96

Transcript

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

SKYJACKING SAGA CONTINUES D.B. COOPER

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Himmelsbach was an investigator and training officer with the Portland FBI field office until he retired. From February 1981 to this September, Himmelsbach was an investigator with the Oregon Department of Justice.

Besides investigating organized crime, fraud and extortion for the state attorney general, Himmelsbach also uses his skills as a pilot to fly police officers across the state looking for patches of marijuana. Himmelsbach said he and other officers had spotted hundreds of fields of the bright green plants from his private plane as he flew missions for various police agencies in the state.

Himmelsbach is a handsome and polite man whose smooth voice booms with authority and excitement as he recounts with stunning accuracy names, dates, physical features and other attributes of suspects he has faced and interesting tidbits of information on cases he has investigated.

He is clearly a man who enjoyed his 28 years and 10 months as an FBI agent and his four years as an investigator for the state Justice Department.

He is also a man who is clearly annoyed at the glamour given to D.B. Cooper's escapades — the same glamour that produced a number of books, magazine and newspaper articles, and even a Hollywood movie, about the incident.

It's unfortunate, Himmelsbach said, but because Americans tend to cheer for the underdog, Dan Cooper has become a symbol of an air pirate who got away with $200,000 in ransom money and who has yet to be identified or prosecuted for the crime.

It's that mystique that has people in the Pacific Northwest marking the November anniversary of the skyjacking each year with parties and speculation. It's also that mystique that has made Himmelsbach famous for what he called his "biggest failure."

"It's the only unsolved skyjacking case of its kind in the world," Himmelsbach said. "Here's a guy who reaches up and tweaks Uncle Sam's nose and steals $200,000 and possibly gets away with it. People are looking at it from the standpoint that nobody got injured. Everyone on that plane escaped whole, maybe some with some psychological scars."

Even after all these years, does Himmelsbach feel he has chased a worth opponent?

"I don't have a shred of admiration for the hijacker," he said. "He was not bold or courageous. I think he was stupid and desperate, and criminal.

"I would like to see the case solved. I would like to see it concluded. As a practical matter, I have become famous because of my biggest failure."

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Dan Cooper, whom the Portland-area media dubbed "D.B. Cooper" after a Portland Police Bureau check of an area man by that name who police thought was the hijacker, was [partially illegible] not the type of person to be considered a hero, Himmelsbach said.

In fact, if the truth ever comes out, Himmelsbach said the real D.B. Cooper probably was a man with a lengthy criminal history who was a loner and only committed the most famous skyjacking after he saw someone else try a similar parachute escape plan in the hijacking of a Canadian airliner only weeks before Northwest Airlines' Flight 305 out of Portland was taken hostage that day in late 1971.

The parties, the celebrations and the odd tips about possible suspects could all come to an end if, Himmelsbach said, the FBI could only get a break that would lead to the capture — or recovery — of D.B. Cooper and the missing loot.

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I didn't catch him, but I think he's still lying close to where he fell because that's where he died

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DB Cooper-43525