Orange1

For those of us not in the US, could someone please follow up here if there is anything new in the show? Thanks Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Let's not forget that the only reason people "remember" Cooper is that he was never caught/found, and that is something he could not have known with 100% certainty when he committed the crime. No-one (other than family and a few buffs) remembers the other hijackers of the era (except people like us in a particular context). Going into the crime, why should Cooper have expected to be remembered for it any more than McCoy or any of the others we have discussed? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

I think that line has nothing to do with Cooper, and everything to do with people fighting in a war, in a unit with a terrifyingly high casualty rate. If you die for your country it would be good to know that someone remembered you. I would go so far as to say that I think that linking it back to Cooper demeans it entirely. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

In the relevant time frame I presume? The question is if this is "meaningful" or if it was so widespread as to not be be meaningful. (Reference "ma'am" discussion.) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

I dunno, that theory never made sense to me. Sluggo's list of Billy's homes is more interesting to me; assuming Billy wasn't going mad with the whole subprime no-deposit no-income no-nothing needed craze (and the timeframe looks too early for that) ... i wonder where the source of funds was. If I have some time I could work out what $200K in bearer bonds would have earned between 1971 and 1999 A 30Y T bill would have been the obvious but Fed website only gives history from 1977. OK, this isn't exact cos the formula assumes interest is reinvested at the initial yield but anyway it's a ballpark to work with, 200K invested in 10Y Treasuries and reinvested at maturity in a new 10Y each time would give you a shade over $2m by 1999. (This is the magic of compound interest, folks, as even the crummiest investment advisor will tell you ). If it was invested in the S&P over that time, it would have been about $3.1m. Enough to buy a few houses? Got me thinking - one of the things we were looking for earlier was someone who clearly came into money around the time of the hijacking... but what if Cooper was a squirrel? What if he invested it somewhere and only started spending long, long after the heat died down? (I don't know how he would have washed the money into bonds or stock without the notes turning up at a bank somewhere though) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

I dunno, that theory never made sense to me. Sluggo's list of Billy's homes is more interesting to me; assuming Billy wasn't going mad with the whole subprime no-deposit no-income no-nothing needed craze (and the timeframe looks too early for that) ... i wonder where the source of funds was. If I have some time I could work out what $200K in bearer bonds would have earned between 1971 and 1999 Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Yes, they did. They were among America's most loyal allies in Vietnam and paid a heavy price -- US officials estimate that at least 200,000 Montagnards died in the war. Thousands more were executed or imprisoned after the communist takeover of South Vietnam in 1975. http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/type,CHRON,,VNM,469f38f4c,0.html Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22131 We'd like to call it the 'Million Montagnard March,'" said Rong Nay, of Greensboro, N.C., "but now there aren't a million Montagnards left in the world." Nay is referring to his people, the mountain tribes of the central highlands of Vietnam. He is one of only about 3,800 Montagnards now living in the U.S. During the Vietnam War, the Montagnards were estimated to number between one and a half and two million. The Vietnamese government now numbers them at 750,000. During the same period, the Vietnamese population has gone from 31,000,000 to 80,000,000. The Montagnards, some of whom live in Cambodia, fought alongside U.S. troops in the Vietnam War. .... The plight of the Montagnards is even less known than that of the Hmong of Laos, the ex-CIA Special Forces who fought in America's secret war in Laos during the Vietnam era. Montagnards is the French word for "mountain people." The 250,000 Hmong who survived the subsequent death camps, patrols, landmines and jungles of Laos on their exodus from the nation when the war was lost, found refuge in camps in Thailand. Others made it safely to the U.S., Australia, France and England, where they were repatriated by America and her allies. In all, some 35 countries took in Hmong refugees. Over 35,000 Hmong will be granted visas to come to the U.S. via legislation that will waive the English language requirement for potential Hmong refugees. Many Hmong have found learning English to be extremely challenging, as Hmong has had no written form until the last few years. .... The Montagnards hold a special place in the hearts of all of us who served with them in Vietnam," said author and former Green Beret Jim Morris of Los Angeles, Calif. "They were our most loyal allies. Many have put their lives on the line for us, and they have been repaid very badly." Thomas Eban, of Charlotte, N.C., known in Vietnam as Y Tlur Eban, was one of the first to fight with the Americans, joining with the first contingent of Green Berets in 1962. He fought with the Americans until they left in 1975 and fought on with the Montagnard resistance group FULRO for 10 years after the Americans left. "FULRO representatives volunteered to form a resistance movement and requested help from the American government," says Eban. "The Embassy people didn't say yes and they didn't say no. They nodded and smiled and made soothing noises. The Montagnards weren't used to diplomatic language. They asked a yes or no question and got nods and smiles. They took that as a yes and fought on for 10 years on the strength of that." Most of the Montagnards in the U.S. are veterans of that movement. They form one of the most prosperous refugee communities in the United States, mostly in North Carolina. .... and here is an article on Hmong http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17252 Editor's note: This is the first of an exclusive three-part investigative series by WorldNetDaily's roving international correspondent Anthony C. LoBaido. During the past year, LoBaido has traveled throughout Thailand and Laos, at considerable personal risk, documenting the plight of Laos' Hmong tribesmen -- including former CIA Special Forces soldiers who fought side-by-side with American soldiers during the Vietnam war. Among the most Christianized of the hill tribes in Southeast Asia, the Hmong have been the object of great persecution by both the Stalinist government of Laos and the Communist government of Vietnam. But their biggest betrayal of all is still coming -- from the United States government and the United Nations. Until now, no reporter from any other news organization worldwide has been willing or able to document this important story. ... Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

I've posted some stuff about the Montagnards a while ago. It seemed like a good reason for a "grudge", the way many were let down by the US after the war. I seem to recall that there were some however to whom promises were kept and there is a community in the US of them... i may be getting mixed up but i seem to recall it was smokejumper country that they went to, probably missoula... will go check ... Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

ah ok, sure...maybe we are all guilty of joining dots where we want to see them

Yes. Ideally I'd put it to a forum vote, but as that is impractical I would suggest that people simply ignore posts from others who irritate them... I also want to see Snow hang around. And Sluggo. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Note the salutation: Mam. Ring a bell? I missed it, but one far wiser than I did not. 377 Ooh, well spotted (whoever the wise person was). Question: am I correct (or am i misinformed by movies) that the usual address by a military person to a woman is "ma'am"? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Maybe I'm just being naive, and maybe Waugh doesn't really know who Cooper was (after all he wouldn't be the first who thought he knew!!) but if it is... or if he is close... I must admit to some mix of excitement but also satisfaction that our deductions have turned out to be logical

Add: I think it's a pity Waugh thinks he is being accused. I think he would have been a fascinating and valuable contributor to the forum as a first-hand witness to the stuff we are getting 2nd hand. Billy, if you are still reading this forum, any chance you would reconsider participating here, even for a brief while? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

awww, Snow... The Dan Cooper comic Jo posted is interesting. Of course, there were a lot of French in Vietnam (Indochine) to be exposed to this, as we have discussed before. Is Waugh saying he also thinks the name came from the comic? When he says he knew who Cooper was - is this Ted Bradon? Does anyone know how to stop Google giving you "Brandon" which it thinks you mean? Snow - all those SOG guys you mentioned #s for - do we have any idea how many of those were involved in jumping? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

There is a group of posters here who think it very likely that Cooper had exposure of some sort to the 727 airdrop tests in SE Asia. This puts him in the milieu of jumpers in Asia during the war (or wars, considering his age would have made him eligible for Korea too) which naturally leads on to the discussion of operations such as SOG, Air America etc. I don't view it as a tangent. Sure, sometimes the discussion on what should be "background" gets a little detailed, but most people (at least those who post) appear to find the stuff incredibly interesting. And a thread this long is bound to get thread drift occasionally I'm sure some people do view the Asian war/SF/etc connection as a tangent, and those will be people with completely different ideas as to who Cooper was ...and I would view their contributions as tangents. But we're all stuck in the same thread so we can either live with it, or ignore it. PS Seeing as Cooper didn't actually knife anyone (at least on the plane), I would consider your last suggestion to be a tangent Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

At least as close as any i've seen, i think. Ears look OK too, to my untutored eye. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

No, no, Sluggo don't go down that road. Next we'll be asked to prove that X, Y and Z were not Cooper... ...no, let's not go down that road. The discussion is much more fruitful in its current form. On the rig subject, though. Quade, et al: why would Cooper have had his own rig in the first place? If we are looking at military jumpers, I'm sure not each and every one of them was a sport jumper too. Remember the transcript mentions McChord; Cooper expected (apparently) to be given a military rig. Maybe he just didn't have his own to begin with. The argument is at least as strong for a smokejumper etc and even stronger for say a loadmaster. Someone who has jumped or at least been trained how to pull a ripcord, but whose experience of this always consisted of being handed a rig by someone else...? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

If he was indeed based in Asia he may not have been missed in the USA for a while. And by the time he was missed reasons/times etc may have been fudged? it all comes back to 2 things: - where is the gear? is 377 right and it is buried somewhere (possibly awaiting discovery by Jerry?) - where is the rest of the money? buried under the above rig along with a corpse, or laundered through the dollarized economies of SE Asia? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Well, what put me on to it in the first place was that Sky program saying the first jump was done a few months before the Cooper hijack - that link i found documented 5, all basically in the year leading up to just before the hijack. So effectively the entire lot started AND ended in the immediately preceding period - or at least the ones we know about. There may well have been more that just haven't been declassified, I have no idea. I'm fascinated by what is on the web. I also find it interesting how there are some things I read and didn't reference as i didn't think they were relevant, but Snow read the same thing and found stuff worth posting. I guess that's why we need differrent points of view! Re snow not thinking any of this has anything to do with Cooper - like I say, it was only that show that put me on this track. Night jump experience with stuff, yeah, but it would be nice to know if any of them knew about or even participated in the 727 tests - because i think one of the things we all seem to agree on, is that Cooper knew you could jump off the steps (but didn't know how to lower them), and that judging from the transcript that was NOT widely known at the time. And I agree with 377 re the missing Jerry Springer element. I am enjoying coming on and being able to just ... read the posts, without having to dodge between lots of extraneous noise

not sure about the altitude but i did read something in one of my finds yesterday about low level, no reserve jumps ... (presumably no reserve because no altitude to deploy it) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Mystery solved, thanks Snow

Well done Snow! I found a link to the skydivewithjohn site but it was to a word doc and the link didn't work, sounds like what you found is the same thing! Thanks. Edit: the link where i got the "blackbird" quote was also about Strohlein. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

And thedoing research you come across guys like this. Wow. (as an aside, another example of someone who served in Vietnam but was a veteran of previous wars, for those who think Vietnam vets would be "too young") I really urge a read, here's an extract but there's lots more: http://www.sflistteamhouse.com/scrapbook/Edge/obit.htm Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

from http://www.macvsog.org/halo_extract.htm (complimentary to the Plaster book mentioned above btw) The date and location ties up with one of the 5 jumps mentioned above although the altitude is a bit lower. This on Blackbirds, also see link for more facts and pics... faster than a 727... http://www.globalaircraft.org/planes/sr-71_blackbird.pl Was there any other aircraft called a blackbird? the one i linked to is right era and place but it doesn't exactly sound like a jump plane??!! (although they do mention ejection procedures, but somewhat different exit to what we would understand a jump to be ) from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR-71_Blackbird Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.