FBI's nightmare - D. B. Cooper

The FBI is still searching for D. B. Cooper, the protagonist of the only unsolved airline hijacking in American aviation history. In 1971, this man jumped from Boeing 727, carrying $ 200,000 of ransom money in his bag - and simply disappeared. 

The good guys from the FBI absolutly hate it when someone commits a very serious and very well-known criminal offense and then just – disappears. Then they have to scan the available evidence hundreds of times, year after year, and sometimes they are waiting for several decades only to start the investigation from scratch. Their working motto can be summed up in just one sentence: the suspect cannot be allowed to disappear so that no one can find him. 

Well, one man has done just that. And no one – how about that, FBI guys? –hasn’t found him. Neither him nor his money.

On the eve of Thanksgiving in 1971, a certain Dan Cooper – probably a false name – arrived at the international airport in Portland, Oregon. When he approached the flight counter of "Northwest Orient Airlines", he had with him just a black attaché case. He bought a one way ticket on Flight 305 - a 30-minute trip to Seattle, Washington. With the purchased ticket, Cooper entered the "Boeing 727-100" and took seat 18-C, which was near the tail. He lit a cigarette - then, in those happy times, you were allowed to do that - and ordered a bourbon and soda.

According to witnesses, he looked quite relaxed. The witnesses also said that he seemed to be in mid-forties, and about 180 centimeters tall. He was wearing a raincoat under which was a nice dark suit and nicely ironed white shirt.

When the plane took off – around 2:50 pm, local time – Cooper approached the flight attendant Florence Schaffner and thrust a piece of paper into her hand. Beautiful Florence, who was often approached by lonely businessmen, thought that he was just giving her his phone number. Without looking at it, she put the paper into her bag.

“Miss, you'd better look at that note.” - Cooper leaned towards her and began to whisper. Decisively, not at all erotic.

On the piece of paper, written in capital letters, it said: “I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked.”

Schaffner did what he asked of her, and then quietly asked to see the bomb. Cooper opened his black bag just enough for Florence to see a red infernal machine.

“I want $200,000 in unmarked 20-dollar bills. I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes. When we land, I want a fuel truck ready to refuel. No funny stuff or I’ll do the job.” – he said quietly. 

Flight 305's pilot, William Scott contacted Seattle-Tacoma Airport air traffic control, and they alarmed the local police and the Feds. Dan Cooper wasn’t nervous and behaved very politely. He ordered another bourbon and soda, paid the bill (while insisting that Schaffner keeps the change) and ordered a good lunch for the crew when they land in Seattle.

At exactly 4:39 pm, Cooper was informed that his demands are accepted. Six minutes later the plane landed. The kidnapper got what he wanted, and allowed all passengers, Schaffner, and another flight attendant, Alice Hancock, to leave the aircraft. He then went to cockpit and agreed details with the pilot and co-pilot:

“We’ll fly southeast, toward Mexico City, with a speed below 190 kilometers per hour and altitude below 3,000 meters” – said Cooper. “We’ll land in Reno, Nevada to refuel, so that we can get to Mexico.”

At 7:30 pm, “Boeing 727” took off again. Two F-106 fighter jets followed him at a safe distance. At 8:00 pm red light flashed in the cockpit – the sign that the pressure in the passenger compartment has suddenly changed. They offered help to Cooper through the intercom, but there was no response from him. Neither at that point nor in the next two hours.

At 10:15 pm, the plane landed in Reno. It was immediately surrounded with FBI agents, the sheriff, local police officers… After long deliberation, they decided to enter the plane. The crew was all right, but there was no sign of Cooper. 

He jumped from a plane with $ 200,000 in his bag, right into the vastness of the State of Washington. His body was never found. Nor money, of course. The weather was terrible that night, so everyone assumed that he died. No man couldn’t survive that. Especially if no one is waiting on the ground to provide him with assistance, drive him where he needs to…. But, what if he indeed survived?

The story of D. B. Cooper – how he would be called later – is the only unsolved airline hijacking in American aviation history. It is also the only one where no one doesn’t know the identity of the kidnaper, nor his motives. Thanks to that, Cooper became part of American folklore, some kind of Billy the Kid and Jesse James. He is the hero in movies, series, and he is also the guy according to which the main character of the legendary “Twin Peaks” is named. He is a daring thief for whom everyone who has ever heard of him is cheering.

Even those Americans, who have no problem with their state or the law, love such outsiders.

“Here is a little guy who all by himself hijacked an airliner and got away with $200,000 of a big corporation's money, tweaked Uncle Sam's nose and has gotten away with it” - Ralph Himmelsbach evaluates today, a retired FBI agent, and one of many who, having given up looking for Cooper, wrote a book about his unsuccessful mission.

This case is probably still open because Cooper managed to embarrass one entire organization. The sum he took as ransom is not huge, even for standards at the time of the hijacking.  No one died, and no one was even hurt in his campaign - except FBI’s pride, something that this organization never publicly admitted.

In 2008, the Feds once again began to dig through the memory of Dan Cooper. 

“Would we still like to get our man? Absolutely.  And we have reignited the case.” - said a senior FBI official, and invited general public to visit the official website of the Bureau, where are, for the first time, uploaded sketches of Dan Cooper as he looked on that day, and how he would look today, 40 years later. There are also several 20-dollar bills that one boy found in 1980.

In these forty years, FBI has investigated more than 1,000 people and had, at one point, a list of ten suspects. Eventually, none of them completely fit Cooper’s description, or had a very good alibi. The case is now in the hands of agent Larry Carr, who is born in Seattle and was only four years old when  Cooper went on his mission, from which he emerged as a winner or a dead man, or maybe both.

The choice is yours, and there are plenty of versions. If you believe to a taxi driver who collects his customers from San Diego airport, D. B. Cooper was a gambler who died from cocaine overdose in California 15 years ago. If you believe to a persistent real estate agent, D. B. Cooper was her late husband, a heavy smoker and a former prisoner, who told her his most kept secret as he lay dying in Pensacola hospital. If you believe the FBI, D. B. Cooper died on that very night.

The best “lead” the Feds ever had was a Vietnam veteran named Richard McCoy. Just a few months after the famous November of 1971, he tried to imitate Cooper, but this time over Utah. Everything went according to plan - a bit gluttonously, he demanded $ 500,000 instead of "modest" 200,000 that D.B. Cooper took.  But when he jumped from the plane, he was caught and arrested. He was convicted, but he didn’t served his sentence for very long, because, in 1974, he was killed by prison guards for allegedly trying to escape.

In 1991, former FBI agent Russell Calame wrote a book in which he brought “strong evidence” that Cooper and McCoy were the same person. His former colleagues were not so convinced in his story, mainly because the descriptions given by both aircraft flight attendants did not match.

Then there is the Lyle Christiansen, Minnesota resident who spent years trying to convince the FBI that Cooper was, in fact, his deceased brother, Kenneth Christiansen, a former paratrooper. From 2003 and onwards, he regularly sent letters to the Feds, bringing new evidence that would substantiate his thesis. FBI never believed him. Just like they eliminated Duane Weber, who said on his deathbed that he is, in fact, Cooper. However, DNA tests showed that he was lying.

Mr. Carr, who is now in charge of the investigation, will say that a lot of things happened on that November, but that only a fraction from what was later told is actually the truth. In the first place, he actually doesn’t believe that Cooper was still alive when he fell on the ground.

“We originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper” – says agent Carr. “We concluded after a few years this was simply not true. No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 200-mile-an-hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was simply too risky. He also missed that his reserve 'chute was only for training, and had been sewn shut—something a skilled skydiver would have checked.”

If everything went according to his plan, Cooper would have landed somewhere in the Cascade Mountains, a mountain range of western North America  and southern west of Canada, where the highest peak is  about 4,300 meters above sea level. That part of America is far away from civilization, but not that much far that it is necessary more than 40 years for someone’s body to be found.

What is interesting is that, in 1980, near the Columbia River, a boy found a bundle of 20-dollar bills - the same ones that Cooper received on that November afternoon at the Seattle-Tacoma airport. But there was only $5.800 - What about the rest?

“Maybe a hydrologist can use the latest technology to trace the $5,800 in ransom money found in 1980 to where Cooper landed upstream. Or maybe someone just remembers that odd uncle.” – said Carr.

If investigators find just a bone that belongs to Dan Cooper, that will be enough for them to close the case with DNA analysis. But, as long as there is no body, the thought that he is still alive somewhere – or that he was alive for many years after 1971 – and that he is enjoying the Caribbean sun and drinks cocktails while watching movies and reading books about himself, will not disappear. And even agent Carr doesn’t want to write off this possibility.

“If he's alive today, he'd be about 85 years old. Maybe one day I'll be sitting at my desk and I'll get a call from an old man who says, 'You're not going to believe this story'”.

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John – the man who located Bin Laden.

To CIA's shame, Associated Press has recently published a profile and several photos of certain John, an agent that was most likely the main link in the capture of the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. 

The scene is almost cinematographic – A middle-aged CIA analyst begins to inform the gathered crowd that the Agency is almost certain that in one complex in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, Osama Bin Laden, leader of the terrorist group al-Qaeda, is hiding.

When he finished with his presentation, President Obama asks him how sure is he that Bin Laden is still there.

About eighty percent - says John, pointing out that they never managed to capture him with satellite surveillance, but, nevertheless, he was never so sure about Bin Laden’s location like he was now.

The rest is history.

Obama accepts his opinion and asks Admiral Mullen whether the army is prepared to complete this mission. Mullen answers affirmatively and sends a command to the commander of a special unit, known as SEAL Team Six, which finished the job.

If mentioned names were different, this little story would look like some scene from a spy novel – and our John is matching perfectly to some main character of such novel. The news agency Associated Press has recently published a great story about him – he is a CIA veteran who has for the last ten years searched for Bin Laden everywhere around the world. And he was undoubtedly confident that he would find him.

His name is fictional, but he is a man who proved himself while working in the CIA’s departments for the Balkans and Russia.

After the terrorist attack on America, on 11 September 2001, John was transferred to the anti-terrorist department. From that point, his analytical hunt for Osama Bin Laden began. In those ten years, John had several offers for promotion, but he decided to stay in that department until they achieve their goal and found the most wanted terrorist. It was he who played a key role in all significant arrests of terrorists (Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Nashiri, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramzi bin Alshib, Hambali and Faraj al-Libi). But the main target was still at large.

He and his team were reading and analyzing thousands of documents in order to find any type of clue - the last one they had was a hideout in Tora Bora, the mountainous part of Afghanistan. Besides that, John dealt with all aspects of Bin Laden’s  life in order to find an answer to his key question: what kind of shelter would a man like Bin Laden seek? He constantly repeated to his team members to check any information on all family members and associates who might be in contact with Bin Laden.

“He's there somewhere. We'll get there.” – was his favorite line.

His reputation in the Agency's grew with each year. And then, finally, a breakthrough. In 2007, one female agent whose identity is not revealed, tracked Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, Osama’s trusted courier. This made everyone in the team absolutely convinced that they will reach their goal.  In August 2010, they finally located Bin Laden in Abbottabad. The CIA sent a team to a house near Bin Laden’s complex and waited for the final confirmation.

But the confirmation didn’t arrive until Obama was completely convinced in their story. Meanwhile, John was warning the members of his team: “Right up to the last hour, if we get any piece of information that suggests it's not him, somebody has to raise their hand before we risk American lives.”

No one got such information. Two days after the operation, John appeared in front of Senate Intelligence Committee. He was calm and restrained like always. But then he finally gave in - when he began to present details of the operation, he suddenly choked, paused and started crying.

John's identity came out in the open the way it shouldn’t have. At least when it comes to “top secret” operations. It was, in essence, very simple: the editor of “NY Observer”, the weekly edition of reputable daily "Guardian", has managed, thanks to certain blogger John Young, to find out the name of this agent, and then all that he needed to do was to google John’s name and his name appeared in Northern Virginia Division.

Then other details emerged. The guy played basketball in college and had an unusual shooting style, for which he was remembered by his coaches. He also had a respectable college G.P.A. Recently his wife launched a charity campaign to help the school in which their children are attending. The reporters also discovered and that his son is a good athlete. 

The journalists were able to learn all that, and the U.S. officials could only scratch their heads and wonder - how?

Spied on KGB – Created Putin’s profile

This CIA’s analyst has gained fame when he made a profile of then new Russian leader Vladimir Putin. In fact, at the beginning, many perceived this former KGB agent as just another interim solution when Yeltsin's rule ended. But John conducted a thorough analytical work and concluded that Putin is a person who will firmly take control and manage Russia for many years. At that point, John proved his greatest quality - the ability to perceive important from something that might look unimportant.

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The elections – Andrew Jackson

The first attempt of former U.S. President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), who is remembered by his nickname “Old Hickory”, to win the presidential function was during presidential election in 1824. 

Although he led in all opinion polls, at the end of the elections neither he nor the other three candidates received enough votes.

Since none of the candidates had enough votes, the House of Representatives decided the election, whose speaker Henry Clay was also a candidate for president. To make this decision, Clay withdraw his nomination (the number of votes he won placed him at forth place so he didn’t had any chance to win).

Excluded from the race, Clay used his influence to bring John Adams on the presidential position. In exchange, Adams appointed Clay as Secretary of State.

For Jackson, this was enough to accuse them of conspiracy against him. The next four years, the “Old Hickory” and his supporters led a campaign in which they accused the President of corruption and fraud.

This had an effect on the next election, in 1828, which are remembered for vicious tricks of both electoral teams.

During that campaign, Jackson was accused to be a multiple murderer, his wife Rachel of bigamy, and Adams of selling American virgins to the Russian emperor. 

In any way, Andrew Jackson won that elections, he rewarded his most loyal supporters with positions in the cabinet and unsuccessfully tried to change the electoral law because of which he lost the previous elections.

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Political Love – Harry Truman and Richard Nixon

During one official dinner at the White House, at the time when Harry Truman (1884-1972) was the President of the United States, it was decided that someone has to hold a toast. And not only that – the one that toasts, has to speak of love.

The young politician named Richard Nixon (1913-1994), who later became the President of United States, stood up.

At the cocktail before that dinner, Nixon desperately tried and failed to persuade Truman to have a drink with him. Therefore, the offended Nixon raised a glass and said:

"When Harry Truman will accept a drink from the hand of Richard Nixon without having someone else taste it first - that's love!"

Harry Truman settled the score later by saying:

“Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.”

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Arnold Schwarzenegger - Conan the Destroyer of California

After two terms as the Governor of California, Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger probably finished his political career. While he will be remembered in California for the debts that he left, the rest of the world will probably link Schwarzenegger’s political career with his proposal to ban the use of words "Mom", "Daddy", "husband" and "wife" in California public schools, because these words "offend feelings of children from gay marriages".

He became the Governor of California in 2003, and thus, he became the second actor, after Ronald Reagan, who got hold of high political positions. That he will run for Governor, on the Republican side, he revealed in a Comedy show. To be even able to participate in general elections he first needed to obtain permission from his wife, because his wife, Maria Shriver, is niece of Edward Kennedy, one of the members of the Kennedy clan, who belong to the Democrats.

With a little help of media and 25 million dollars that he invested in his two election campaigns, but mostly thanks to his acting career, Schwarzenegger won a landslide victory in both elections, in 2003 and 2006. His victories were not endangered even with charges that he used drugs, speculation that his father Gustav committed war crimes in World War II, or insinuation that he had sexually harassed 13 women.

Back in the early nineties, George H.W. Bush cast an eye on him and appointed him as the president of a smaller committee, calling him "Conan the Republican". 

Because of the skepticism about the strength of the U.S. economy, he called the Democrats "economic girlie men”. During Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, he said that he will make him "do squats" to "do something about those skinny legs”, and later that he will make him "do some biceps curls to beef up those scrawny little arms ".

“If he could only do something about putting some meat on his ideas”, Schwarzenegger said.

None of that what he said didn’t bothered him to recently publicly recommend himself to Obama - Schwarz said that he would like to get a job in the Obama administration, something regarding ecology. True, Americans admit that he achieved maximum on that field during the seven years he served as the Governor of California. Everything else was a complete fiasco.

During his term, the budget deficit has tripled, reaching 28 billion dollars. Unemployment rate is 13%. This is followed with speculations about a possible economic fiasco of California. At one point, California had no money for payment of regular monthly infrastructural obligations.

Schwarzenegger explained that the state wouldn’t have borrowed that much money if he knew that the global economic crisis will occur. He also said that his political opponents sabotaged his efforts to bring the house in order and improve the state of California's economy. It remains unknown what happened to his ambitious pre-election plan to make each of 36 and a half million residents of California eligible for health insurance, rather than one in five as it was.

“Arnold Schwarzenegger had no idea what it was like to govern. Sacramento isn't Hollywood. I also believe that he gave too big promises because probably he did not realize that he will not be able to fulfill them, which somewhat resembles Obama’s failure in fulfilling great promises. Residents of California expected too much. We did not giggle the way the rest of the world did at the Governator assuming office”, said Dr Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior fellow at the School of Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California.

It turned out that Schwarzenegger was far from behaving as a terminator when it comes to economic problems, which is why California citizens completely lost confidence in him.

Schwarzenegger’s new political engagement doesn’t seem too likely: he often worked and operated in contrary to California's Congress, and Republicans went against him when he invited them to cooperate with Obama in order to jointly find a solution for economic recovery and deficit control. The Republicans were not happy and with his proposition of budget deficit of California which he agreed with Washington's administration. The support of his family is also unlikely: although she never prevented her husband to be involved in politics, Maria Shriver was never thrilled with his new job.

But, Schwarzenegger doesn’t have to worry about his future, even if he gives up from the announced intention to write biographical books. In his 30’s he was already a millionaire, and that was before he achieved great success with his movies. He earned his first millions with postal sale of bodybuilding equipment and real estate investments. With Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and Demi Moore he invested money in the restaurant chain Planet Hollywood. And despite all costs that he had as a politician, Schwarzenegger’s wealth is now estimated at 800 to 900 million dollars. This amount includes income from bodybuilding, real estate, earnings in the financial market and, of course, earnings from his films.

Nevertheless, the films were the ones that had influence on the magazine TIME and their decision to place him among the 100 people who shaped the world in 2004 and 2007.

The crucial year in Schwarzenegger’s Hollywood career was 1982, when he appeared in "Conan the Barbarian". Until the appearance of "Conan", Schwarzenegger made eight films. He won his first role (lead role) in 1970, in the comedy "Hercules in New York". He even today speaks English with a strong German accent, but at a time of making “Hercules”, he was saying it so badly that the producers were worried about whether the public will understand him at all. The fear was unjustified - the movie itself was terrible, but because of the accent, Arnold is even today called Ahnold.

"Conan the Barbarian", and two years later "Conan the Destroyer", were his first major commercial successes, in which his physical appearance was fully exploited. Neither before nor after these films, no one was counting on a some great acting performance from him. He became mega-star with action movies "Terminator" (1984, 1991, 2003), "Predator" (1987), "Red Sonja", "Commando", "Red Heat", "Total Recall", "Eraser ", "Collateral Damage" and many others.

Besides action movies, among total of 38 movies that he made, he made and a few comedies, like, for example, “Kindergarten Cop".

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The man with 104 wives!

Some people, just, like to get married often.

One of those was the Giovanni Vigiolotto (1929-1989), originally from Syracuse in Sicily. On the last day of December in 1981 he was arrested in Florida (USA) on charges that he was married 104 times!

No one would have anything against his marriages if Giovanni ever divorced. But, he did not want to leave any of his women, and each of them was convinced that she was the only one!

Over forty years of married life, Vigiolotto has found a bride in fourteen different countries and in twenty-seven Member States. Most prosper year for him was 1968. That year, during a cruise, he imposed four ladies who were on the same cruise, and – got married with them.

What do you think? Is this some kind of record? ;)

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