snowmman

georger said: I'm pretty sure we know Cooper didn't write on the ticket? (that was the ticket agent) There are no samples of Cooper's writing. We also don't know if the note was handwritten or typed. There are some claims in some articles, but Ckret has never confirmed?

I think French was used even in the late '60s, a lot? Just read a quote from Daniel Ellsberg, talking about Vietnam officials: "the top people spoke English, but the middle people spoke French" GIs rarely spoke Vietnamese. I read a web page of a US civilian who went into a village then, and the children were astounded that a blond-haired American could speak Vietnamese. It was beyond their comprehension and the guy had fun with it. Here's another quote: "left Vietnam on 20 July 1969, having completed my tour. .... the Cambodian Army radio operators spoke only their native tongue and French, .." Or this one: "Vietnam Vets, Vietnam War, History of Vietnam - Guestbook Apr 7, 2006 ... was with 92nd eng. batl. long-bien viet-nam 1968to 1969 co.c would like to .... I worked with Viet police and since I spoke French I could ..."

tom said Your thoughts are all good Tom. I thought they should have been obvious, and was surprised the FBI didn't highlight probable eyesight issues in their profile. If Cooper was 45 and still able to see well without glasses, does that tell us something about him as he ages? At the very least, I would think the FBI would say "we're probably looking for someone who didn't need glasses at 45" That would help narrow the suspect pool also? For instance Hahneman did wear glasses? I wonder if he had them on during the hijack. Probably yes. That probably helped in id'ing him? All the composites with the wraparound sunglasses probably steered people into thinking of Cooper as a glasses guy. They should have just put the composite out with no glasses. Did they think he was wearing sunglasses all the time? If sunglasses were a disguise (who knows) why show the disguise? They should have shown a drawing of the sunglasses (or picture of similar) just by itself. Like the tie and tie bar.

Well, georger's strategy is probably effective also: "I am not FBI. I am not CIA. And I am not interested in you." I wouldn't bet against that.

Hi Jo: what witness accounts did you have access to? Anything that's not been presented already? I am just talking about the magazine articles and news reports over the yrs and Himmelsbachs book and my conversations with him and others. I do not have the computer capabilities you guys have. You know darn well what I meant . No I didn't Jo, that's why I asked. There are very few accounts that have detail that's confirmable as from witnesses. By example, we're denying reports that are apparently accounts by Rataczak? (like the 15 degree stuff?) I think we're saying the only reliable witness accounts are those the FBI has? and all we know about them is what Ckret tells us. We really don't have any good witness accounts. That's why I asked.

And Apocalypse Now is based on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (hello Snow

Hi Jo: what witness accounts did you have access to? Anything that's not been presented already?

And Apocalypse Now is based on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (hello Snow

georger said: "I am NOT an FBI agent. I am NOT a CIA agent. Never have been and never will be." Yeah, and you never oogle the stewardesses either. :) I assumed you were clean till you made the denials. Now if you retract the denials, and say you were just kidding when you denied it, then I'll know you're telling the truth and you're not FBI. You know how you talked about vindication coming from others? Well, I think the reality is you're only not FBI when Jo says you're not FBI. "If I say it's safe to surf this beach, Captain, then it's safe to surf this beach!" -skyjack71, 2008 (edit) Joke! Funny! Ha-Ha! remember laughter?

Yup, and that is one of Ckret's convictions that never made sense to me. Who better to survive that kind of jump than the kind of person who may have plenty experience with it - i.e. a paratrooper. yup. As a historical footnote, here's another pic from that macv-sog page. Gives you a reference point for what nucking futs is. Bad enough with one or two guys on the ladder. Check this pic. Extraction I guess?

Orange1: re the Montagnards. I think we're getting off track, but you're right there's some amazing first hand stuff on the web nowadays, text and photos, from the times back then...i.e. I think there's more info out now than ever, regardless of books written? My reading of the insertion teams in Laos, was that the Nungs were the guys you wanted on your team. (Chinese hill tribes). Insertion teams had one to three US, rest were locals? MACV SOG 1-0, 1-1, 1-2 were the way team leaders were referenced? There are a lot of good historical photos on the web, showing the mixed teams. There are some good stuff in Google Books now too. http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=52378 Here's a good history of Project Delta by way of example. http://www.projectdelta.net/delta_history.htm There was a picture of a jumper during insertion training, wearing a smokejumper's suit/helmet/facescreen like I said before, on that page. They also mention night jumps. I've attached the picture also. (small guy! not US) from the page: "The Drop Zone for Day Training Jump. All those trees look cushiony, but appearances can be deceiving. They were 90-100 feet tall. One VN was killed rappeling down from the trees."

You forget - Boeing emploees who designed and made the planes along with the schematics - don't forget that Duane Weber had this information available to him when that plane and others were nothing more than a design on paper. I posted some schematics of 727 a while back. Obviously you're not familiar with what kind of info is in what kind of schematic. For the info you'd want for this jump, it'd more likely be in English in a tech report, then in a drawing. What exactly would Duane have seen in a picture (schematic)?

I'm just making note of this. File it under the 15 degree flap question. Skipp Porteous is the president of Sherlock Investigations. He's the guy that got the call from the brother of Christiansen and did the work the brother wanted. He has a blog, which seems reasonable. Porteous stopped talking about Christiansen after it seemed to go nowhere. Doesn't seem like a liar? In his blog, it seems like he talked to Rataczak in 2008. This could be bogus, because Rataczak apparently had a severe accident last summer and a long recovery, although he may have been healthy by April this year. Also, Bill may just have a bad memory by now, since the 15 degree flap thing was in all the papers for a long time in the 70s. On March 26, 2008 Porteous posted the following, at: http://www.sherlockinvestigations.com/blog/2008/03/db-coopers-money.html "I recently talked with Bill Rataczak, the co-pilot of Flight 305, the Boeing 727 that Cooper hijacked. He told me that Cooper insisted that the wing flaps be tilted 15 degrees, to slow the plane down. "He knew that airplane," he said. "A flight attendant wouldn't know to do that." I reminded him that Christiansen was a Northwest mechanic before he became a flight attendant. He said that he didn't know that. He also didn't know that Christiansen was a former paratrooper." (edit) from http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonianextra/2007/12/ Carr dismissed because of physical description "Like McCoy, Christiansen didn't match the physical description. Schaffner and Mucklow said the hijacker was from his mid-40s to 50s, 5 feet 10 to 6 feet 1, 175 to 185 pounds, with brown hair, brown eyes and olive skin. Christiansen was 5-8, 150 pounds and had hazel eyes and a pale complexion." What's weird is that Carr also dismissed (11/25/07) because of the paratrooper experience? "Carr has one other reason for discounting Christiansen: his training as a paratrooper. An experienced skydiver wouldn't attempt a jump in the weather conditions that night, which included freezing rain, poor visibility and winds about 15 mph."

also, In 2003 Tosaw launched another search: Evidently Dick Tosaw played football with Kinnick, and that's how Tosaw (Dick's brother) found out about the story, growing up. Don't know what happened with this story. Looks like they may have "let it be?" Kinnick plane rescue plans abandoned The Gazette - Feb 9, 2004 Q: What has become of the effort to raise the plane of Nile Kinnick, ... Tosaw said Kinnick was a strong swimmer, so it's a bit strange that he didn't ... Kinnick's roommate: Let the wreckage be The Gazette - Feb 9, 2003 Nile Kinnick would not have wanted his crashed Naval fighter plane ... Tosaw will seek Venezuela's permission to lift the wreckage from 100 feet of water ... Related web pages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile_Kinnick http://media.www.dailyiowan.com/media/storage/paper599/news/2003/01/28/Metro/Ui.Alumnus.Says.Hes.Found.Kinnicks.Plane-353380.shtml After searching the Caribbean for a week, Richard Tosaw says he's found the wreckage of Nile Kinnick's fighter plane. The UI alumnus returned to his home in California on Monday from Port of Spain, Trinidad, confident that one day, he'll truck the 60-year-old Grumman Hellcat to the UI. The first step in realizing that longtime dream is gaining permission from the Venezuelan government to salvage the plane, which lies within five miles of the South American country's territorial waters. "I've never done something like this before, and I know that bureaucrats can delay work," said the 77-year-old former attorney. "I need someone who can get a decision made. But other than that, I don't foresee too many problems because the government won't care about the plane too much." Kinnick, a Hawkeye who was awarded Iowa's first and -- so far -- only Heisman Trophy in 1939, died when his plane crashed in the Gulf of Paria during a practice flight in 1943. The UI law student was 24. Tosaw predicted that his hired salvage expert, Martin Woodward, would use an underwater flotation device similar to a balloon that will drag the plane up 101 feet from the sea floor. Tosaw said he will personally foot the bill for transporting the remains of the craft, which remains buried under 10 feet of sand, back to the UI because it is a sentimental expedition for him. "It'll just be like transporting a car," he said. Tosaw's immediate plan is to contact the Venezuelan Embassy to obtain permission to recover the plane. He has yet to determine how much time it would take to complete the excavation. The expedition has so far cost him $10,000. Steve Parrott, the university's director of University Relations, said he was unclear about the procedure for accepting donations and gifts of such a nature. The wreckage was located using a global-positioning system by cross-checking coordinates Tosaw procured from the Navy ship USS Lexington. He initially pursued the search more than 10 years ago but abandoned the project because he thought that salt water had corroded the aluminum plane, rendering it worthless. Tosaw is aware that some critics find his effort disrespectful to Kinnick, likening it to digging up his grave. According to information Tosaw received from the Navy, Kinnick might have been killed instantly by the crash's impact. It is unknown if any of his remains will be recoverable. "It's been almost 60 years since his death. He has no surviving relatives except a distant cousin who didn't mind what I was doing when I told him about it," Tosaw said. "Of course, it would be a different story if he had died recently."

And if they weren't even going as far as CA chances are they didn't even consider Asia... yeah. Hey 377: from that book/references/google map, it seemed to me that the density of jumpers in '60s was more towards the east coast. If they didn't check CA much, then east coast would have been checked even less? An "out-of-towner" might have lived with the weather, because he might have thought "it's always like this" when he got there...it is kind of always drizzly in NW in the nov/dec timeframe, right. thinking about the PCA/USPA numbers, if we're starting with 10,000 "interesting"...then I would think easily 5% of those would be people that just "disappeared" that people lost contact with. That's 500 right there. Most probably of not the right age though.

the more interesting experiments are probably those done with linen and decomposition in soil, rather than cotton. This paper is interesting, because they did a 7 month test to try to get some data. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WH8-45FC3CD-2N&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=3daa304ad328505f328587b140992587 I've always wondered whether the ink provided some protection against microbes, on the bills. (given the pattern of purple seen). I think they mention metals providing protection in this article. I'll include some text from the summary here, not because I understand it, but because I think it shows the difficulty around decomposition experiments. It does mention some other kind of high tech gear. It also mentions that available N seems important for decomposition. "Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy was used to investigate changes in the distribution of carbon between different functional groups indicative of some of the main types of biochemicals in the materials during the short term decomposition experiment" "However, the results from adenosine triphosphate (ATP) analysis, which provides a measure of physiologically active micro-organisms, and from substrate utilization profiles (which provide an indication of the metabolic capability of the microbial community) did not support this. A short-term (7 months) laboratory experiment using samples of the original materials from the experimental archive and soil samples from the earthwork was conducted to attempt to simulate the conditions at the outset of the experiment. The rate of decomposition of the materials during this experiment was initially rapid and after 7 months between about 10 and 20% of the carbon in the buried materials had been lost. The substrate utilization profiles of the microbial communities associated with the decomposing materials could be related to their chemical composition, with the communities associated with plant-derived (carbohydrate-rich) materials giving large responses to carbohydrates"

news article attached. you might have to save and zoom it to read. (sorry about jpg, but size limits here) only 29. Funny how the mom said he put on his "best brown suit". Story's more tragic than anything else. There were a handful of hijacks that were done because the person wanted someone else released from jail.

I had mentioned that apparently they started thinking the NB6 was a 26' canopy in later quotes, although initial quotes around '71-'72 seemed to peg it correctly at 28' I've attached a snippet from a 11/23/75 article "The agent said there was doubt Cooper was an experienced parachutist since when he jumped he took the two worst possible choices of the four parachutes... He said the chest chute he took was one that was sewn together ...and the back chute was much smaller than the large chute he cut up to wrap the money in and tie it to him" Now we know the NB6 had a 28' canopy. But Here's What's Really Confusing to me. the comment about "sizes". Do we know exactly what size canopy the cut open reserve was...Could it have been just a 24' T-7A style ? people were using those in the '60s, or ??? (see snippet attached) It seems like everyone was wrong about chute sizes. And it wouldn't have been possible to guess right by just looking at any of the containers anyhow? Confusing how the agents rationalized things back in the '70s. Forget all the chute selection. My thinking is that the initial request for money in a knapsack, and the no-panic-just-cut-and-tie reaction to the money bag, showed jump experience. (since other whuffos seemed to have jumped without tie-on) It would be very interesting though if Cooper had no jump experience. By way of example, I've attached a story about Montagnards with no jump training, going out the door (static line probably) from "Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War" By James F. Dunnigan http://books.google.com/books?id=7t-XPOvtWUkC&pg=PA196&lpg=PA196&dq=%22paper+paratroopers%22&source=bl&ots=ytOOWEC6vB&sig=fOkdHhonC33jKYWtuG0CaXm2Hp4&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result (edit) just noticed that Rod Pack's chuteless jump in '65 passed a 24' T-7A belly reserve, by example. That was in a twill, not nylon, container also. (edit) just noticed that book page has details about the general failures of the south vietnamese insertions. Can scroll back and forth from the page link I provided above for good reading.

interesting Orange1. like any new thinking, at first hearing, my reaction is "no way", cause I guess I do accept what Ckret says about Cooper not being too sophisticated. But, it's interesting that there was a '72 hijacking from Seattle to Algeria. All that CIA stuff you mention is interesting. Yeah Africa was on the map I guess, in terms of political grudges etc.

no, you think what you will. I thought I was pretty straightforward in saying what was what. If it's different, just say so. Tom did..seemed fine to me. Why obfuscate? You obviously know it drives Jo crazy. Why bother? I couldn't believe Tom was getting into this attempt at rational discussion with Jo. We already know it doesn't work. What's the point? Jo's just an old lady. It's shooting fish in a barrel. I only deserve a one-liner? Surely you can do better than that!

yup, you beat me to it. I just checked the Church report year. It was 1975. So...in short, the question of when the 727/CIA info was first out there, I guess was answered by you with your first post. (although the Church report doesn't mention testing etc). So 1975 I guess was the first public knowledge. Just had another thought: If it was CIA, maybe the FBI didn't have full knowledge of the CIA tests until 1975?? Or maybe it never got folded into their reports if most of their work was in 1971? Maybe Boeing didn't know everything (the people they talked to) or Boeing didn't tell them everything? Hard to say. We'll have to probe Ckret on when the FBI found out about the CIA stuff.

yup, you beat me to it. I just checked the Church report year. It was 1975. So...in short, the question of when the 727/CIA info was first out there, I guess was answered by you with your first post. (although the Church report doesn't mention testing etc). So 1975 I guess was the first public knowledge.

Thanks Tom. That's all I did, was state my questions. Thanks for the answers.

Aviation Week and Space Technology Published by McGraw-Hill, 1976 Item notes: V.104 1976 Apr-Jun Original from the University of Michigan Digitized Nov 27, 2006 I only have the snippet view, not the full page (yet) Note this was a major industry rag...this is 1976 A new name is presented "Civil Reserve Air Fleet" the comment about enlarging the ventral exit, enhancing airdrop capability is mentioned. see here. Snippet is attached. Will try to find more. http://books.google.com/books?lr=&id=XHEgAAAAMAAJ&dq=air+america+727&q=ventral+exit&pgis=1#search_anchor

trying to find the earliest CIA reference (myth or fact) for the 727: (before the Taylor 1996) 11/24/91, New York Times, in a joking article http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE7DB1E30F937A15752C1A967958260 "In 1971, no civilian knew that a 727 could be flown with the aft stairway extended. But 727's had been used in Vietnam for years to drop agents behind enemy lines. Only the C.I.A. knew this"