CooperNWO305

Yea, it came back as Max David Gunther. I think I just put in Max Gunther. What did you do to get a more extensive search? I offered to pay more $, but it ended up being free. I've since appealed, but I don't know if that means just a more extensive search. Gunther wrote the book in 1985. The FBI had to have talked about it, but there is no guarantee that those conversations are cataloged in their files. We just don't know what the FBI talked about. The 302s are always just summaries. I talked to Jo a few times, and I am not convinced she even talked to Gunther. Someone might have been fooling her. She got real vague when I asked her for her notes. Gunther may have talked to her just for fun, but things just did not add up. I asked her for the Christmas cards he sent and she got quiet. She claims Gunther tracked Clara to California, but there is no other reference to that anywhere. A lot does not add up with her story, and the Gunther family is not talking. As for FOIA's. I've been on the receiving end of a few requests from the public through the years. I'm not FBI, but in my organization there would be a liaison for FOIAs and congressional requests, etc. Here is the issue. That person would not be knowledgeable about the content (just like I doubt the FBI FOIA person knows much about DB Cooper). So if I got a request for information, it would be on me to provide the information I had. I would also have to do this quickly. If I had spent many years in the job, I'd know where all the files were, and where the information was. But if I was new, I might only know a little bit. So, in summary, we are asking for details on the DB Cooper case, but it is not Larry Carr who is going searching in the files, it is probably someone who does not know where everything is or does not have background knowledge, or does not have the time or motivation to get everything. That is what we are dealing with on these FBI Vault releases. I'm going to speculate here, but I imagine there is some lower level government employee who has been told to find 500 pages a month, and then is told to redact those files, and then publish. I'm also going to say that I think they are abiding by the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law. They are releasing 300-500 pages of files a month like they've been told, but are under no obligation to release the good files, hence us getting month after month of duplicates or pages upon pages of them investigating some suspect from Kansas City who we know is not related to the case. I trust most of the people in the government, I don't trust all the politicians, and I certainly don't trust the system.

I got one too, days after I submitted my request, and I can tell you the US government does not move that fast, even for FOIAs. They are not looking hard for anything we request. Maybe there is Gunther info, maybe there isn't. It could be there and not indexed, or they could have gotten it and just not put it in the file. Maybe he didn't send anything (which I doubt). My guess is that the FBI still does not have all the files indexed and easily available, just like many of us in this case, to include myself. Organization takes a lot of time. It took a lawsuit from Mark Zaid to get any movement. Very little in terms of FOIA has come back to people on this case.

There seems to be disagreement as to if these redactions even exist. If they do exist, I'm curious as to what they might be hiding. I enjoy R99's posts. He's done great research. Although, I am not a big believer in the 3 letter agencies being involved, or the Western Flight Path, or that he burned in. It would be cool to find out that there is some small nugget of info that we as citizen sleuths don't have yet.

Robert. I saw your post on the redacted transmissions. Any idea what might have been said? Something important or just typical redactions?

Does anyone know the source of Mitchell’s comment about Cooper wearing long underwear? https://www.historynet.com/legend-of-d-b-cooper-what-happened-to-historys-most-famous-hijacker/

Its been a while since I've looked at the details, but there was mention of Batelle and Sprauge Electric as well, also Timet (Titanium Metals Corporation).

Based of the Facebook Live broadcast, it sounds like Nicky is looking into another suspect, totally unrelated to Klansnic. I do not know if this means he has dropped Klansnic. I assume that if something comes out about the new suspect that makes Nicky not interested in pursuing, then he might go back to Klansnic.

There was a Facebook post about the new Walter Reca book. Amazon shows it published in January 2022, but all the reviews are from August to now. Interesting that every single review is 5 stars and highly praises the book. That is not suspicious at all. https://www.amazon.com/Search-DB-Cooper-Cracked-People/dp/1614853290/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Going off Sluggo's timeline, the plane takes off at 7:33 PM, and Cooper jumps at 8:12. Sometime around 7:45 he is messing with the stairs, so there is potentially a 30 minute window where those stairs could have been flapping or moving, etc. That also could be the time that he threw the briefcase out or other items. What I'm wondering is how much of that area under the flight path has been searched, and if any of it is off limits.

Fly. Did you make the sketch just from the KK and pieces of the kit? In other words, it looks like you got to sketch B without using any drawing or pencils. Didn’t Roy Rose draw?

True. But the DZ is not likely Tena Bar and not likely near the river. Heck, that $ may have left the plane at a different time than Cooper or left with someone else. Tena Bar does help us at least say that this incident occurred and I guess it does show that he likely jumped then and not near Reno.

If God came and told me the money was never spent, then these would be my guesses. 1. It went into the river with the other money and went out to sea. 2. Cooper burned it all. 3, and very unlikely. The FBI got it back. Or the bank. Etc. For it to still be on land would be unlikely. Possible but not probable. Or in someone’s house, same deal. I do wonder if Cooper spent just a little bit. And if I can think of doctoring the bills a little bit, then he could too. I’ve said it many times, all he had to do was change the 1963A to a 1963 and he is free and clear. I also would have been looking for close matches, but back in 1972 they may not have had that tech.

It’s been a while since I’ve messed with probabilities. But if you have say 1 Cooper $20 in a group of 100 bills, and you pull out a $20 in say Cleveland, you have a 1 in 100 chance of getting a Cooper bill. Repeat this again next week and you still have a 1 in 100 chance of getting a Cooper bill. Your probability does not change. It would change if you removed a non Cooper bill each time and now were looking for 1 bill in 99. That’s with/without replacement in probability speak. Also, as Cooper bills are circulating, Cooper bills are being taken out of circulation, and new $20s are being added. Billions of $20s were in circulation. No one has made a logical argument for how the bills would have been found. It would rely on someone checking a $20 that they found, and doing one or two at a time would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. The FBI should have gathered up 10s of thousands of San Francisco $20s and increased their odds of finding a $20. Looking for a few at a time is really a shot in the dark. 10,000 $20s out of a total of over a billion. Actually a lot more. Odds are very low. None of us would make a bet if the odds were a million to one or even 1000 to one. The trouble I have is that only 3 percent of the money was found. Very rarely do we discuss this from the opposite angle, which is focusing on the 97%. Where did it go? Tena Bar does not tell us much, it really doesn’t. Does it tell us Cooper left the plane? That he lived? It’s fun to look at, but is that really just because it’s one of our only clues? A memento?

If someone wants to believe it was all made up, then it might be fun for them to speculate as to why. I have no interest in that. From day one reading it, there seemed to be more than just a made up story. Where people go from there is up to them.

My assessment of Gunther is that he was a well off "rich kid" so to say. Father was in banking, Gunther was born in Switzerland, lived well, went to Princeton, was well off as an adult, lived in a wealthy town in Connecticut in his adult years. My impression is that his True Magazine articles and books were more centered on men being men, meaning they were separate from women and different. One might use the terms male chauvinist or womanizer. To your point, he could have been a member of some of those clubs. I read his book The Weekenders, which as I remember focused on more higher society people than blue collar. So essentially you have a man's man from a club/money perspective, but maybe not from the hunting, fishing, shooting, boozing at bars type. I see True as appealing to more middle class to lower middle class men versus Gunther's upper middle class to middle class. Gunther's LeClair probably watched football and worked on his car, where Gunther and friends may have gone to polo matches and had maids. Long and short, Gunther would not have related to Dan LeClair in real life, but Dan LeClair may have related to Gunther through the articles, even though Gunther was not necessarily that type of guy. My impression is that Cooper was blue collar, and maybe not too happy with his current lot in life. If it is all made up, then someone had quite an imagination. I've read different accounts of undercover agent training, both law enforcement and government. One theme is to have the agent/faker use as much info as possible that is real, so that it is easier to remember. So for instance, if I was to make up a fake history for fun, I might use the life of a cousin of mine in Ohio who is around the same age, using his friend's names, his town or a town close, his cars, his girlfriends, etc. His house. Gunther's book seems to have this. He writes about a real life. In Gunther's book there are three made up names that I can see. Dan LeClair, Clara, and then Paul Cotton (aka Dan LeClair). Clara and LeClair are almost homophones, sounding alike. Tracking down Paul Cotton might shed some light on the issue.

Sample page of The Readers Guide to Periodical Literature. So for instance if you wanted to see articles by Molly Ball in Time Magazine, this would show you. Whether True Magazine would be indexed in this in the 1960s is questionable.

Another scenario is that LeClair went to the library and found the 1962 article. The Readers Guide to Periodical Literature would have had the details of the title. He could have read the article in 1962 and got the details of the title in 1972. The Readers Guide is how I researched in high school and college and is actually how I found a list of Gunther’s old articles. In 1971 every library would have had it.

It could be as simple as LeClair keeping issues of True magazine in his garage. I acknowledge that citing a magazine from 9 years before is unusual, but I’ve seen many a garage with stacks and stacks of old magazines.

If any FOIAs come back on Gunther, we may be able to see what he actually sent to the FBI and cross reference that with his book entries. Putting something in a novel and sending that info to the FBI are two very different things. Getting Gunther's notes from his family seems to be an elusive task. Plenty of families had typewriters, plenty of men knew how to type. Flyjack's comment about someone in the military knowing how to type is accurate. We don't know if a woman typed that letter or if a man did. We also don't know how long it took said person to type the letter, they very well could have written it out and then typed it by pecking at keys. It's a long stretch to get deep analytical info out of it. I'm guessing that the writer definitely used carbon paper so that he had a copy (hence the x out and not the use of whiteout). That might be something to chew on. Is there a copy of this letter sitting somewhere? The other letter "All of you" makes sense to have carbon paper used. Back in 1972 access to copying type machines was low, I'm thinking those mimeograph machines may have been an option. Broken or used up typewriter may not have indicated that it was owned by someone who used it a lot, it could just mean it was old, or cheap, or inexpensive and therefore a blue collar guy might own it. If this happened today, the FBI would probably be able to trace the typewriter, as Georger alluded to.

Math of Insects joined specifically to refute the Gunther book. This could be just a focus on Gunther, or it could be to refute Weber, Smith, Hahneman, or anyone else associated with the book. So anything he says has to be taken with a grain of salt. If he posted about other topics, I might think differently, but from my seat he is out to put down Gunther or suspects associated with the Gunther book, to include the Elsinore Ghost. Bottom line is this. Either Gunther made the whole thing up or he didn't.

These are the letters that Colbert claimed were from Rackstraw?

Some old threads on the Gunther book. Looks like a decent discussion.

1972. 13,000 donors. Over $1M. If you read the NYT you probably knew about the fund. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/03/01/archives/neediest-cases-winds-up-appeal-1020763-in-times-fund-is-below.html

Math of Insects continues to use the "simplest method" approach. I bet "Occam's Razor" is next. Maybe "confirmation bias." All of these are clichés. This case is complex, you can't just pick the simplest answer, and if you could, we would have solved this already. Analysts don't find the simplest answer, they review all possibilities, within reason. Maybe not aliens, maybe not the CIA, but still we need to look at many possibilities. I have the Ladies Home Journal magazine and the True magazine. That's part of researching, which is getting to know the author and what he's written. My theory on the Ladies Home Journal is that Clara, the woman read it. This seems to me that Clara knew all along that her man was involved in this. Clara or no Clara, I suspect if Cooper had a wife then she knew something was amiss. It could have been he was gone over that time, or he was hurt at that time, or he looked like the sketch. I have theorized that Gunther may have talked to Cooper first and coached him on the letter, but I can't seem to get that to work. Gunther would have had to lie to the FBI, make up a quote from Himmelsbach, lie about the other journalists. Regardless, the information points to Clara/LeClair being real, whether they are Cooper remains to be seen. The real Dan Clair had heart disease, died of it.

Smith is definitely an odd character, eccentric may be the word. He had his two daughters later in life, they were born in 1965 and 1967, he was 37 and 39, many years after he got married. Definitely late for the period. I have my theories on that. As for the family. I've heard people try to draw conclusions on suspects based on how their family reacts. Family thinks he's Cooper, therefore he isn't. Family stays quiet, therefore they are hiding something. Etc. Etc. Anyhow, my belief is that if he was Cooper, then his daughters may not have even known. They certainly do know now. I think if a family truly knows their loved one is Cooper, then they will be hesitant to come forward. There is just too much to lose at this point. Maybe in a few years when all the players have passed on, but for now I can see any family involved may want to keep quiet. Not to say that is the only approach, just my opinion. True, Cooper is dead and can't be tried, but in today's society, there could be any number of lawsuits and IRS or other government investigations. A family that was moving along normally for many years could now find themselves in the news, explaining to neighbors that their father or grandfather was DB Cooper, being hassled, asked about the money, being sued by Tina or Flo, etc. Even if the cases are thrown out, a family would still need a lawyer. We have some solid folks who are lawyers and involved with the DB Cooper case, but all it takes is one shyster or ambulance chaser and DB Cooper's family could be in for some serious inconvenience. I suspect we will have more luck with DB Cooper's grandkids, or even great grandkids, than with his children. The offer always stands from me, if anyone ever wants to follow the Smith line further, please do. I'll help all I can. That includes talking to the family. I'm not in contact with them anymore, but someone more persuasive than me might be able to get an in, even if it is someone who wants to prove Smith is not Cooper.