snowmman

Possibly. I look at vietnam initially as a possible grudge angle. So all sorts of people could have come back with a grudge of some kind. But yeah, an aviation link might be important, since Cooper seemed to display some aviation knowledge or jump knowledge. (edit) Although I didn't emphasize it, the CORDS program was considered infilitrated with CIA in different areas, and was also responsible for financing the interrogation centers etc. So don't just think of CORDS as a wimpy engineering program.

This is a interesting (to me) historical document where the US Comittee on Foreign Relations was reviewing the CORDS program in Vietnam (which also covered Phoenix) in 1970. What's amazing is the cluelessness shown by the Chairman of the commitee, against the apparent sincere good effort being attempted by John Paul Vann. (in my quick scan). The dichotomy between the people actually "over there" and US congressmen is striking. There's an ridiculous exchange where the chairman asks about GIs building sunday schools in their off time. But I include some snippets because some hard numbers are provided for non-military US in the area. Very early on, Vietnam experience for Cooper was dismissed, because of a thinking that he would have been too old. I raised the issue of non-military US personnel in Vietnam. I just started looking for some numbers. found some here. This doesn't include private contractors. Just the CORDS program, I suppose. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jksonc/docs/phoenix-scfr-19700218.html John Paul Vann heads the 3,400-man pacification advisory team in the Mekong delta, Ex-military. Vann’s title is deputy director of the fourth corps Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support [C. O. R. D. S.] team, which is headed by an army major general. BREAKDOWN OF ACTIVITIES OF U.S. PERSONNEL IN THE DELTA The Chairman. I have one or two catch-up questions. It has been stated that there are 23,000 Americans in the Delta. There are no U.S. combat forces in the IV Corps and there are 2,357 people in the CORDS organization. What are the others doing in the Delta? Mr. Vann. First of all, sir, there are approximately 6,000 who fly helicopters and maintain them. There are approximately 400 helicopters and, as you know, helicopters require an awful lot of maintenance, so the helicopter group there numbers 6,000 men. We do provide about 90 percent of the helicopter support to the Government of Vietnam in the Delta. The Chairman. That is 6,000 out of 20,000. What are the other 14,000? Mr. Vann. We have 5,400 engineers there. The Chairman. What are they doing? Mr. Vann. They are building roads, sir. They are working on National Highway 4. They are doing it because all of the Vietnamese engineering and public works capacity is utilized as much as it can and still is not enough. ... U.S. PERSONNEL IN THE DELTA The Chairman. Didn’t you account for all those 23,000 people? I thought you did. The staff says you did not. Was there any other item? Mr. Vann. Yes, there were, sir. The chairman changed the subject. The Chairman. I didn’t particularly want to have you reveal how you changed the staff of each boat. All I wanted to know was the number of people. Mr. Vann. Right, sir. I gave you 6,000 who were helicopters, the 5,400 engineers, and approximately 5,000 who are Navy. Now in addition to that we have a large number of support forces who provide signal communication, ordnance and transportation maintenance capability to back up some of the equipment that the Vietnamese have, and then the total advisory organization in the Delta, military and civilian, numbers approximately 3,800 Now in addition to these Americans, sir, there is also an Air Force Advisory organization that exists down in the Delta. ... Mr. Vann. The 6,000 helicopter people are combat support. The engineers are support personnel. They are not combat personnel. The Chairman. Do you know how many advisers then who are not running either a machine or firing a gun? Mr. Vann. Sir, in all of Vietnam we have less than 10,000 advisers. The Chairman. All of Vietnam? ... Senator Cooper. Excuse me a minute. I don’t want to interrupt you, but I know at a later date this subject will be examined. The question I direct to you, because it is fair and should be answered, is the following: Is the United States involved in any way in carrying out what can be called a “terrorist” activity? Is this a normal intelligence operation of the kind which has been carried on in the past in wartime? Mr. Vann. Well, the answer very shortly, sir, is no, we do not. We specifically prohibit it. Ever since I have been aware of it it has been prohibited. Ambassador Colby said so yesterday under oath and I say so today under oath.

We've gone back and forth on who got what bills back in 1986 after the court decision. Actually it was me wondering about the count, based on video snaps. I just ran into a news article which says the court agreement in 1986 would have the FBI get $280 ...i.e. 14 bills. Google news has a different free article confirming FBI with 14 bills here: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=rtoMAAAAIBAJ&sjid=TmYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6890,2755986&dq=ingram+cooper+money That article also confirms that the lawyer for Royal Globe Insurance Co was Steve Rickles. I think he's still an attorney for insurance companies in WA. I posted a web page for him a while back. I've been trying to figure out if the FBI got all the original 3 bundle tops and bottoms, or not. For the best sampling of the 12 separate bundles they got from the Ingrams, it would have been nice to have 36. bottom and top of each of the 12, and a middle. Would be nice if the FBI had recorded the exact bundle of 12, re the photo, and position within the bundle for each bill they retain. But that would have been forensics. :) (Joke!) If Tom is God, maybe he can reverse engineer that, or guess!

again I'm just a whuffo speaking, but maybe it might be interesting to have some feedback. As usual, I may be way wrong...just spewing based on my limited exposure to DZ.com. In reading some of the event threads here, sometimes it seems the "community" is torn between documenting the event in extreme detail and ascribing a consensus root cause, versus worrying about perceptions or side effects of that. (liabilities? hurt feelings? friends? dunno) Would seem more sane to just say "hey yeah, sure, people die, get hurt doing this all the time...here's a magazine we publish every year that shows how it happens for people". I read one post on a thread which basically tried to promote the view "Yeah people die, you should just be ready for that"...which seemed pretty weird. Seems like teenager-level thinking..just accept it? I would think they're be a lot of pressure to NOT accept that. I would think people would want to pour over accident reports all the time, to understand how they might be exposed, while they're doing the thing they love. instead I read things like the USPA web site that seem to constantly tout how safe it is. Heck you would think a national organization would have a whole archive I could explore on accident stuff. It seems to me, that a large part of the learning/study/practice is about stuff you need to know/do to be safe. ...i.e. risk management. So that means the sport is inherently unsafe. Which is fine. People seem uncomfortable talking about the injuries/deaths/possible causes. Even if the consensus is wrong (sometimes you can never know), there should be some consensus otherwise no learning happens? It's also surprising to see people worry about media perception. There's even a link on DZ.com addressing the issue of the media after accidents. Why would you care about the media? weird. Who cares what the press thinks. There is an odd merging of mainstreamness and fringeness in skydiving it seems. Maybe because it's dependent on a lot of mainstream society things like planes? airspace, FAA ??? can't just say f** off to all of society?

I think it's not just there's danger, but there has to be the perception (reality) that the danger can be overcome by one's actions...it's that overcoming of what appears (to others) to be danger, that's what's cool? Just doing something risky and living by luck is what teenagers do. Doing something that's aesthetically pleasing at some level, possibly socially also, while being able to rise above the risk thru your own actions, that's what adults do. The sad thing, I think, is that for the risk to be there (real risk), is that others have to fail. If no one ever fails, then by definition there is no risk. I think the very hard thing to introspect about for all risk sports, is what part do the failures play in people's thinking about the activity? At a certain level, you can think of NASCAR racing here? airtwardo: I still mulling over your post. I don't have a quick comeback!

philtheimpressiveguy said: wow. cool thanks. Amazing that you guys can eyeball old pics and do that. I guess the pic was '63, would the "pioneer sport rig" that Cossey provided probably be similar, or did pioneer introduce a lot of new stuff between '63 and '71

wolfriverjoe said: Yeah, you're right. I guess I'm just focused on the period from '60 to '70. I can believe things are different now, or not, but it doesn't matter for the Cooper thing. Here's another thought. Would it be possible to put together a list of all PCA licenses granted, starting with A-1 or whatever you call it, with names, purely thru discussions with jumpers? There would likely be some missing right? Then extend that to people who didn't get membership, then extend that to other countries. (talking just about '60-'70) I'm guessing we wouldn't be able to even get a list 30% complete? That's really my only point. We can't even put together a list of jumpers. Makes me realize how unlikely it is that we could actually get a good list of suspects, if non-jumpers are included.

airtwardo said: That's a good question. Now remember I have no agenda here, I'm just spewing whatever thoughts happen to be in my head. As a sport, it seems like there's this interesting problem that the main activity is all compressed into a very short span of time...like a minute. So then a lot of the sport has to do with prep etc. An interesting part of the sport is the story telling. I can tell that everyone values the stories..and you guys sometimes talk about not telling someone else's story. That's cool. I can see as the sport developed, the problem, like any sport, of "what do we do next" developed. And you've got all this relative work, which puts high demands on trust and teamwork, and that feeds the whole social culture. So there's the problem of people seemingly enjoying the freedom aspect of skydiving, doing something a little wild, but then there's this conformity problem..Getting people to follow "rules" either for their own good, or the good of the load or the team. So skydiving is clearly not an individual sport. It's a bit like surfing where everyone's crowded in the same spot trying to catch waves. And turf/attitude wars develop there in much the same way...i.e. "you're supposed to act this way". And there's good reasons for that. Skydiving is clearly a sport of "man as tool-user". The tools used are pretty advanced at one end (planes). But simpler at the other end (nylon cloth with cords attached). I muse about whether a failure rate in the technology is part of what keeps people's interest...i.e. if there wasn't the constant risk of high danger, if you didn't do the proper skilled behavior, it might get boring. It seems the whole thing would develop a lot differently if the actual jumping wasn't compressed into such short time periods. But I don't really think of it in terms of thrill seeking. More like "here's a thing people do, and there's an obvious fail rate, yet it's worth it to people, so it must be a pretty interesting thing to do" Although I will say, it seems from DZ.com that skydiving may be stuck in old-school exclusionary thinking more than other activities, for some reason. I can understand that maybe that's part of the culture that contributes to safety or fun, or something. But it's not the best way to achieve those goals, I think.

I'm not sure about the US, but here every reserve deployment requires an incident form to be filled out. So yes, we do. How many reserve deployments are there in the US per year? I would guess there must be 2000 or so every year? is it increasing or decreasing wrt to # of jumps per year? Does it correlate to the # of new jumpers per year or what does it correlate to? Is the rate static annually? I got to thinking about these issues, because there's a lot of skydiving videos on Youtube, and I know there's a selection bias, because people like to show off the screwups both as education and amusement...but it actually got me wondering if the number of "screwups" is higher than the sport as a whole really tracks...and that things like youtube where a broader cross-section of participants post crazy stuff, shows stuff happening that doesn't get discussed in the more rarefied forums like magazines and DZ.com. Just wondering. I see these videos and think WTF?

This sounds interesting. We can churn up information, and I always had thought the process would be that Ckret would do something and give us feedback, but it seems that was naive thinking because of constraints Ckret has to operate under. Do you think you could do a pass first on existing photos, like those at Sluggo's poll, which has some ringers? It'd be good to shake out the system and see what you get. Can you run all of sluggo's 9 thru and provide a report? I guess I'm wondering how much work it is and how many passes your friend would hang in for, and whether the results actually are meaningful. (edit) I'm thinking about my brag of a collection of lots of '60s-era photos. Even if there's no "suspect" it might be interesting finding a picture that correlates to the sketch..as it might help jostle the memories better..i.e. Cooper could be a guy who looks like this photo...as opposed to "looks like this sketch".

orange1 said: "I'm sure there were a number of whuffos who thought it was counterculture without knowing any skydivers to prove them wrong" I've never talked to a jumper. Never saw a jump. My only reading about jumping is from this thread and a couple others here at DZ.com and various web pages I read while researching for Cooper. So yeah, I may be totally way off base. Hey on a positive note, I really liked reading these safety articles Jan had written for Sport Parachutist's Safety Journal in the '90s. http://www.makeithappen.com/spsj/index.html Gave me some more insight into just what all is going on when you're a jumper. I've always wondered about how you guys interact with technology as a key part of the sport, and how you improve that technology or manage it etc. Like for instance what are the root cause issues, that make you still require reserves? I see you guys root cause events that cause injury and death, but it would seem prudent to be root causing all reserve deployments and treating them as failures just as severely. It'd be interesting to see the number of reserve deployments per year, and whether that correlates to injuries in any way. From what you guys have said, it probably doesn't, confirming there are human decisions that are causing injuries. Just as I don't know you guys, you guys can be pretty off base in your understanding of what whuffos think about, when they think about your sport, at least in my case. (edit) with respect to jumpers' attitudes about discussing Cooper. Yeah, I guess I really don't get why anyone would have any passionate opinion that talk is bad. So, yeah, obviously I'm clueless about that issue.

Hi wolfriverjoe: nope. All I think is: Question. No answer. Oh well, no information that way. Move on to the next thought. A better question you might ask yourself: Why do you think my questions make sense or don't make sense, in probing '60s skydive history? How do you make a decision? Or do you not think about it really, and just like pointing out my weaknesses? I really don't get it. How do you jumpers make a decision about whether all possible Coopers in the jump community have been looked at? Is the answer that you just don't think about it? I understand the philosophy that Cooperites are bottom of the barrel waste-cases. But anyone reading this thread is part of the bottom feeding. So you can't point fingers. You're part of it if you're reading this.

you know, it's not me who stood around getting their picture taken for the newspapers in the '60s, so I can snip them today. From my point of view, that was pretty weird. There are plenty of other fringes out there that didn't stand around posing! So...I don't buy any self-righteousness. If I'm off base, set me straight.

You haven't and won't see a lot of the older guys posting on this thread. You seem to think that because none of the older jumpers answer when you ask "Did anybody jump at xxx time and place?" that there isn't an answer. Read the end of the first thread. There is a lot of animostiy towards Cooperites (or are we Coopernicans?). Many skydivers seem to resent the publicity given to this one jump wonder. Others resent the way this thread has attracted and been populated by whuffos. Quade was under a lot of heat to end this thread. I don't know if he still is or not. Whatever. Why should I care about people who don't post to this thread? I'm not a skydiver. People get to do whatever they want. Hell I'd encourage it. Do I care what other people think? No. Does it affect whether I might miss out on some good nuggest of info? Probably. But people contribute for their own reasons. Me being nice or not nice or kissing butt has nothing to do with it. Look at Ckret. He's got info we won't get no matter how much we kiss butt. People always have constraints. Doesn't bother me. There's usually multiple ways to get any nugget of info. If not, oh well! That's Cooperology! Personally, I gotta laugh if there are old guys trying to keep the mythology of 70's counterculture/outlaw us-them thinking alive nowadays, if that's what you're getting at. Hell everyone was counterculture then. Skydivers didn't have some rights of ownership to being "on the fringe". Off-soapbox.

hi ltdiver. Yeah I know. I'm just trying to be a little funny. See I think there's a well-placed deference to the older folks here, which I've wondered if it actually works against the DBC "whodunnit" thinking...cause we think we've got all possible useful info, when we don't. It goes back to me wondering why Cossey's thoughts were considered the center point for discussion back in '71. He was at the prime of competitive jumping, and in his 30's? So not really the matching the profile, or representative of the majority of the participants (if he represented the top end) I've not seen a post from anyone who jumped Issaquah in '62 and '63 on this thread. Till that happens, I think it's right for this whuffo to say: FNG's! it means nothing about me. It's just the data speaking.

it's always funny seeing random coincidences in this Cooper thing. Jo likes to imply that since the CIA was involved in their own insurance companies, and Duane was in insurance, that walla! connection. Under the guys selling insurance for the Issaquah area nowadays: http://www.backfence.com/find/issaquah-king-county-wa/insurance/ Duane Weber Insurance 1275 12th Ave Nw, Issaquah WA 98027 www.duaneweberinsurance.com (his site isn't up any more, but his listing is there at that link and elsewhere) The internet wayback archive has a copy of his old web site in 2006 here: http://web.archive.org/web/20060114023108/http://www.duaneweberinsurance.com/ says "serving your insurance needs for over 25 years" I bet. Probably more like 37! on his "about us" page he says: "As a locally owned and operated agency serving south King County since 1976," Yeah, and I know how he got the seed money in '76! He's gotta either be CIA, a hijacker, an ex-MACV-SOG para-rescue guy, a smokejumping kicker, a night clerk, a helicopter pilot or mechanic, a 4x4-driving sumofabitch....... Or: maybe he just sells insurance in Issaquah? nah!

LOL . Sky's -way- too short to be DB Cooper. ltdiver Guys in their 60's are FNG's in the Cooper saga. Cooper would be early '80s? now. Gotta get used to the concept that the people considered "old timers" at DZ.com were probably young sprouts next to Cooper (in terms of age)...if Cooper had any jump experience in the 60's.

Who out there remembers Bill Wade from back in '63? picture with caption attached. Too young looking, but I'm guessing no one out there is going to recognize the name. I didn't google, so I have no idea if he continued jumping. Be really cool if someone out there actually knew him! better, less-frazzled pic of Emrich back in '63 also attached

I have a bunch of pictures from the papers around the time of the 1963 Nationals at Issaquah. They're all nice. here's one, that I think is 1963..maybe a little earlier. Jim Schultz jumping. Overhead shot, so you can see Issaquah down below. Jump is at 5000 ft? Can someone name the rig? my untrained eye says it looks like the nb-6's but those weren't common surplus containers in use? Would it be more likely a b-4? can you tell? I'll attach another that has Emrich, just so you can see what he looked like '63 (since his name is associated with Issaquah, but we've never posted a photo) I'm pretty sure I noted the source correctly in the jpg names, although I remember being lazy the day I grabbed these.

3 Doors Down "Behind Those Eyes" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfv6cZ8a7ks I just hooked up better speakers to my computer. Life is better loud.

good post georger on the sketch issue. the software modelling tool I used basically just automates everything you said. That's why I can use sliders to create smiles, frowns, etc, from the same basic head model. It's also why we're starting to see more and more realistic human face modeling in Disney or other animation movies, and especially in 3D games. Much of the new software for animating humans is driven by the 3D game market. Basically it's all numbers, measurements, shapes and statistics, and the physics of how skin moves when stretched, and what muscles move to convey certain emotions between humans. It's not about the artistry of a sketch artist..they're just intrepreting all that using the tools they have. But now there are better tools. (emerging) Sketches should be boring, and about generalities. Unless there are specific pock marks, asymetries etc. I guess we're told the witnesses didn't report any specifics like that, that we can intuit from the sketch? So we should focus on generalities from the sketch. Anything that seems specific, is likely just a side-effect of the sketch process? The lack of specifics also doesn't mean there weren't any. There could have been something, that the witnesses didn't catch.

It's interesting that Cooper took the tie off. It wasn't necessary to take the tie off to put the rig on. Jumpers have commented on how it would be a bad thing to jump with a tie. (flapping) But we don't say "that shows jump experience". We say "just a random event". Now you could say "if he knew enough to take off the tie, why wear it in the first place?" It might betray some thinking about trying not to look like someone with jump experience. i.e. wear his normal work clothes. The wraparound sunglasses seem out of sync with the rest of outfit. Did they reveal something more about Cooper? Motorcycle guy? jumper? They interviewed Whitney because he liked to wear dark sunglasses in the NW. Was it an "attitude" thing with jumpers? OR: Did Cooper perceive that there was something about his eyes that would be the main revealing feature...something more memorable than a tattoo? Could his eyes have had a droop or asymmetry that was more pronounced then the sketches showed? Was the main feature Cooper needed to disguise, his eyes/eyelids/something behind the shades? (in his own view)

hey orange1, I know you could tell georger just misposted...although with georger's attitudes to women, you know how men can get messed up when they keep it bottled up! Hey here's some interesting Marana stuff. It was probably after 1971, but it's interesting for history's sake: from http://www.bollyn.com/index/?id=10684 Our buddy Doole ended up there after Air America shut down. "In 1976, Evergreen hired George Arntzen Doole Jr., the man who had created and run the CIA's global air proprietary system, as a $20,000-a-year consultant. Within a year the new airline had its first military contract." "Interesting planes showed up regularly at Marana. One that came in for maintenance work was a private Boeing 727 jetliner owned by the Occidental Petroleum Co. and used by its chairman, Armand Hammer. The plane has made many trips to the Soviet Union, where Hammer had enjoyed a unique relationship with Kremlin leaders going all the way back to V.I. Lenin. Another plane that rolled through Evergreen's shops was a Lockheed L-100 owned by Idi Amin Dada, the Ugandan president-for-life who later fled into exile accused of murdering more than 150,000 Ugandan citizens and of practicing cannibalism." ... A. E. "Schnozz'' Mayer, Evergreen Air Center's customer representative, said he didn't remember exactly what was done to Amin's plane there, except that it involved interior work. < there were questions about whether Amin's plane could have been bugged> on finances: ""I spent my whole time at Evergreen just scraping up money,'' he said. "I thought I was going to work for a $10 million manufacturing company, but it never had more than $300,000 worth of accounts receivable. "I kept saying to them, 'If you guys know something I don't, now's the time to tell me. Because I've got $7,000 in the bank, and a $14,000 light bill's due tomorrow.' '' Fulton said he was intrigued at such times to get telephone calls from the bank informing him that more money -- $500,000 on one occasion -- had been pumped into the air center's account. He said he assumed it was from one of the other Evergreen companies." ... "Close to Sierra Pacific was a parachute club, Marana Sky Divers Inc., run by Tony Frost. Frost said he had been "around'' the base during the Intermountain era but had worked for another company."

There's always the possibility Cooper was involved in some desk role in this whole CIA/Marana/smokejumper thing..maybe a wannabe or something. It does make one think about what the FBI meant when they said they investigated any possible military/CIA connection and dismissed it. It would be nice if the FBI had done a formal request with the CIA to review anyone connected with the programs in the '60s and '70s and it came up clean..i.e. everyone accounted for. It's not clear whether the CIA would have given FBI any info then...if not, the idea that the FBI checked out CIA/military and discounted it, would be false. Now Ckret etc could dismiss the connection based on some interpretation of "evidence" or "behavior". But we've been over that enough to know how weak it is. The FBI thought it made sense to interview a five foot tall guy. It would seem looking at these other possibly weakly-supported theories would make sense too.

I'm thinking Cooper's appearance didn't sync with any smokejumper+vietnam experience when he was in his 40's. and they weren't doing it so much when he was younger? I'm thinking he would have been described as having a more "physical" kind of appearance if he was actively involved in stuff like that then? It would have been rough work. I'm still thinking civilian, maybe in SE Asia for some other role though, for a bunch of reasons (grudge, difficulty in finding him afterwards, secrecy, jump experience outside of US) Or just a local WA guy like Ckret's original profile. Maybe he really did have no skydiving experience, even going back as far as '62.