snowmman

good point Orange1. I've realized, that for all our discussion, and supposed "new info" from Ckret, that there's really nothing new, other than minor fact correcting, that hasn't been published in some form before. I did notice that the parachute was initially stated to be 28', but then in later years, H. was quoted as saying Cooper would have hit the ground at 50 mph because of winds and the small 26' parachute. So I think even the FBI got info messed up at various times.

It sure sounds wrong based on what Ckret has told us right? Like I mentioned, I wondered if Michael Taylor had made up the quotes. I sent him email a while back, but got no answer. I believe I had him quoting R. on the 30 degree issue some other place, which I disbelieved until we got the 2nd ckret transcript. Taylor could just be cobbling together random info of unknown source. I only bring it up again, because I ran into the article, and I remembered Rataczak on the Discovery show.

They seem to think this went beyond test flights (a la 377's version - why spend all that money and not use it?) yeah Orange1, I thought maybe the author was speculating. Obviously since we know more now, it's easy to think the author knew even more. Maybe he just had the info we have and speculated beyond that. Did you also note what the author said R. said about the flight path negotiation with Cooper? Ckret has said there was no negotiation. So maybe there wasn't and the article is wrong, and we should assume the article is wrong all over. Like I say, I usually end with thinking "there are no facts in the Cooper case"... :)

random guess: the scene in 1971 was dominated by guys in their late 20's and early 30's who had started jumping within the last 4 years? when you say "all jumpers were talking" did this include jumpers with WA experience back to '62? 377: How many guys did you know when you started, that had been jumping in '62? Remember Issaquah has just opened in '62. (I like '62 because of the 727 rollout connection and also because Cooper would have been in his mid 30's then)

well the odd thing is that R. basically says the same thing he says above, in the German Discovery show that's on Youtube. I posted the place before, but not bothering to look it up. The english version of the show isn't on Youtube cause of copyright I guess, but you can hear R. in English, thru the German. In any case, it raises the question of having to decide why to ignore R. R. could have a false/mistaken memory. It also raises the question of "Why believe Ckret". It's always unclear if Ckret has additional interviews he can't release, or if he's just interpreting stuff a certain way. (edit) I guess I say that because Ckret tends to deliver just the summary judgment, not the connection to source data..so we can't evaluate the summary. That's the nature of the game. Not complaining. Just outlining the problems I have in digesting everything.

It's funny that Jo is accusing georger of being ex-FBI. I know I miss the days when I was NSA, on Project Mannequin. So let's look at it: What do we know about georger. Reviewing his posts: 1) He says he's in Iowa City, Iowa 2) He says he's a physicist at the Eastern Iowa Observatory and Learning Center and this is a pet project: http://www.cedar-astronomers.org/paldows.ht 3) He says he was painting barns for cows apparently. What's weird, is if he was involved in putting together the "Dream Team" like he says, is how did he know Tom K? I can see the Seattle connection to Ckret for Tom K, thru the Burke Museum/univ. of wash.. But Tom is currently in AZ. So how does georger in Iowa, get to reach out to Tom? georger is always dropping hints like he has/had access to fbi info on the case in the past. But I don't think he really has. What's weird, is georger introduced the "dream team" on August 27 with this post, saying the panel was assembled "some time ago". Yet by 11/24 there was zero information. In fact the sand in Tom K's lab had only been gathered 11/13/08, if the labels were true. said georger on 8/27: "Some time ago, a panel was assembled and recommended to Larry Carr with the idea of examining the money. The panel consists of recognised experts in different areas of forensics and analysis, who will examine the money or specimens from the money cache. The analyses will be conducted in laboratory environments equiped with the latest in technology, including chemical, spectroscopic, and even electron microscopy (if necessary). Our panel will also have access to other researchers and resources if necessary. Every person on our panel is highly skilled, experienced, credentialed, and a published research scientist: some with ties to Quantico." I can't help but think "B.S." based on the lack of results we've seen.

Don't worry 377, sure the FBI doesn't suspect you, but I make sure I tell every good looking woman that I see in a bar, that I KNOW FOR CERTAIN that this guy named 377 is D.B. Cooper. So you got that going for you.

Michael Taylor wrote for the SF Chronicle, where the article first appeared on 11/17/96. The link below is when the LA news reprinted it a week later. There are some factual errors in the article. I was wondering if Rataczak was actually talked to and quoted, as it appears. I used to think in another article that someone had made up R. quotes, when I read about 30 degree flaps. But that turned out to be accurate when we got the 2nd transcript. What's interesting is that Rataczak, like he did in the Discovery show, (I posted what R. said in that German Discovery show a while back)...Rataczak is quoted below saying that Cooper asked for 15 degree flaps. Ckret says Cooper didn't ask for 15 degree flaps. This is 1996. I'm wondering if Rataczak is having a bad memory..i.e. remembering the transcripts or maybe what Scott told him. I'm also wondering about the comment about Cooper supposedly saying "airstairs". If all Cooper comments were relayed to the cabin, then Rataczak is really just hearing what the stews say? So maybe Rataczak got a false understanding of how aviation-savvy Cooper was, (he implies there was other terminology Cooper used)...since he was listening to the stew, not Cooper. I've also attached the SF Chronicle article. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/D.B+COOPER%27S+LEAP+INTO+INFAMY+:+DARING+HIJACKER+ESCAPED+BY+JUMPING...-a084004103 ``I was thinking, this guy knows a lot about the airplane,'' Rataczak, now a 57-year-old captain and still flying for Northwest, said the other day. ``With the gear down and the flaps at 15 degrees, it limits us to about 175 miles an hour. So I wondered, could he really equate flaps-at-15 with 175? The guy's no dummy.'' As for parachutes, Cooper got four, which made everybody wonder. Rataczak thought that maybe the hijacker was going to take a few of the flight crew with him and then, in horror, he thought, what if the FBI decided to summarily end the hijack by sabotaging all four parachutes. ``We really got concerned with the possibility that we were going to get bogus parachutes,'' Rataczak said. The plane at last stopped circling Seattle - it was clear Cooper knew where he was because after glancing out a window, he asked why the plane was over nearby Tacoma - and landed on a remote section of the runway. Cooper ordered the flight crew to get the ``airstairs'' over to the plane. Given his constant use of aviation jargon, the crew thought he may have worked for Boeing or was a pilot. Finally, the hijacker released the passengers.

Makes sense Snow, but I keep wondering if there is some weird scenario that we haven't considered? The money find is suspicious to me, but like you, I cannot figure why it would be a setup deal rather than an incredibly unlikely and lucky event. 377 hey did you see where they just dug up $1.6 million on a farm? (someone tipped them). They had already confiscated $4 million. news article here: http://www.ohio.com/news/ap?articleID=1337197&c=y buried in seven ammo boxes. Got me thinking of remote possiblities, like ingrams finding the money early on, like in '71 and stashing it, but then discovering it rotted, and hatching a plan to get something out of it by stuffing it on the river. But I've looked at a bunch of buried money photos, and it's hard to believe that no matter how the Ingrams stashed it, that it would have decayed to the state it was found in..They would have done a reasonable stash job. I'm really confused how Tom can be confident of anything on that money, regardless of what kind of observation or testing he's doing. The lack of something isn't going to mean much. So maybe he's detected something? like heavy metals being absorbed into the paper? And he knows something about the rate of heavy metal absorption into money? Doesn't sound plausible. For right now, I'm thinking the most likely scenario is that Tom is blowing a little smoke. By example, he seemed to confident that he "knew" the story about the stairs and door, even though he confessed to not being fully read up on the transcripts?

377 said: Yeah the list was short, and it's not even the right area. I mostly thought it was interesting that old bits of paper are still around. There's another bit of paper there were they were bitching about the USPA and saying they weren't going to require their members to be USPA anymore, although most still would join. I thought that was funny. Goes to the idea that if Cooper had some skydiving in '62-'71 in the WA area, he might not have had a PCA/USPA membership... Here is the USPA bitch letter. You guys probably will get a kick out it. (they made the jpgs big so it's a slow download) http://www.crocuta.com/CPC/Correspondence/1971/19710706-MichaelPotts-1.jpg http://www.crocuta.com/CPC/Correspondence/1971/19710706-MichaelPotts-2.jpg

no. The bag would have had to open? Plus how could 3 bundles fly thru the air and land in one spot? not possible. Now the bag could have come loose, landed in the columbia, and then dispatched some bundles. But that's just another version of "money in the columbia somehow, 3 bundles on the shore somehow" So I can't see bundles flying out in the air. All to the ground, and then 3 to the shore at some point in time. Or a human plant for some reason, but that seems unlikely. We don't need to understand the exact behavior of bag and ground, to bundles on shore. That gives us no extra info right? There's only a couple of interesting questions, I think. 1) Did Cooper land in the Columbia and drown and not get found? 2) Did he no-pull on land and die and not get found? (although the money find becomes problematic) 3) Did he deploy, and land, and take off, probably with no money? Why do we care what the exact DZ is? We're not going to find harness and bones. We can't have enough precision. If we can prove he didn't drown, that would be huge. We can't prove he didn't no-pull. (edit) So to make a long story short: I think the physical evidence doesn't matter. I think all that matters is a profile of Cooper that works for a Cooper that lived. Then you run everyone thru that profile and see if anyone interesting pops out. (edit) Obviously if Tom can prove the money was planted, then Cooper lived.

well, if you don't think the money was planted by humans, then it's very likely all the money got in the columbia somehow, and then the most likely thing is that that the rest of the money got buried and decomposed. Looking at the decomposition rate of the found money, it wouldn't take much longer for the money to totally decay away, depending on how it was covered? So unless Tom finds something that can make a human burial more likely, the most likely thing is the rest of the money was in the Columbia somewhere, right? (edit) There's no Ingram story that would make sense in terms of "faking" a find. If they found 3 bundles, saying they found it by the river didn't change anything. And if they had found more, it doesn't make sense to report just the 3...the rest would be similarly decomposed..i.e. unusable.

Did I read the website right - it basically is up to you when you find one to enter it on the site? I wonder if bank tellers do as well (probably not). 10% hit rate sounds reasonably high to me but then again there is a difference between getting a dollar bill with a stamp on it alerting you to the fact that something is special about it, and an ordinary one, no? No it works for any bill, not just the ones they've marked. (edit) abc news vid about the site here: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2436133 Yeah you just enter any US bill, and it's tracked. If it was already entered you get info. If not, it's set up to email you if someone else enters it later. I've seen guys get email 4 years later. I entered 20 bills and got zero hits (2003/2006 series..1, 5, 10 & 20's) I wonder if people enter a lot of bills that have the red stamp (Where'sGeorge.com) on them..I've seen those in circulation...it's like writing on a bill. I suspect if you enter one of those, the hit rate might be higher. But at the very least, it shows how silly this notion of people noticing Cooper bills is. Here we have a massive computer database, with a lot more people entering bills than tellers would ever check. And look at the low percentage rate, relative to total bills.

http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/state/amcit_numbers.html just highlighting the big ones: (>20,000 or so) Argentina Australia Belgium Brazil Canada China Columbia Dominican Republic France Germany Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Mexico Philippines Saudi Arabia Spain Taiwan United Kingdom

trying to get some numbers from various sources These may be just numbers of "voters" or possible tax payers. All are estimates? For comparision, 1970 US population estimate was 205 million, 1985: 237 million, 1999: 272 million So percentage-wise, it seems significant? 1-2% range? 1932: 404,317 1972 2.5 million 1980 1.6 million registered civilian, non-diplomat 1987 1.8 million 1989 2-3 million (including 750,00 armed services) 1999 3 million 2004 4.5 million 2005: 4 million (largest is Mexico with 1 million) 2008: 6 million eligible to vote

what's odd, is their report says they get a 1 in 8 to 1 in 10 hit rate on bills entered. Surprising? Hmm maybe I'll try entering a stack of bills. I should get a hit within 10 or so? (edit) example hit report here: http://www.wheresgeorge.com/report.php?key=96f489a926e55f60683d907df1f7e54072636739ed24b15d nice it overlays onto google maps

1) there's a jpg I found of a 1969 J series bill that would be a good start for a photoshop of a cooper bill. (1969 bills aren't that common in circulation nowadays) 2) 1970 roster for California Parachute Club is at http://www.crocuta.com/CPC/MembershipRosters/1970/Roster.jpg 3) attached is a good article talking about people getting paid in $100 dollar bills in other countries, and the "newer" US bills being worth more than "older" US bills! really. 4) you can check for Cooper serial #'s here: http://www.check-six.com/lib/DBCooperLoot.htm 5) "Where's George" is a site where you can enter location and serial numbers for bills. You can see how bills travel around the world. They show the longest travels etc. Very interesting. I tried some of the Ingram serial numbers and some folks had entered them as a joke. http://www.wheresgeorge.com/ You've probably seen bills with the "where's george" stamp advertising their site. They are currently tracking 142,757,009 bills entered by 3,907,679 users. This is only 0.0983% of US bills in circulation. I should probably enter some more cooper bills, just to check. (ideally they would have something that flags all of them!)

got a few secs on Christmas, figured I'd reveal something about the Blackest of Black Ops. First off, we're so black, that even the CIA doesn't know about us, although we work for them. All billing is done to North Korea, which prints counterfeit hundred dollar bills to pay us. After every op, we actually create all the conspiracy web sites. That way we can steer the conspiracy theorists in a direction that protects those actually involved. While not actually involved in that action here, I am providing cover for those who do. Acknowledging that is part of the deception. I get paid twice for this post, because of it's two-fold nature. Initial plans for this op were to use Chinese mercenaries, but we had difficultly securing "english as a second language" teachers. The addition of the Night Clerk to the team, should enhance our capabilities there. "The Hillbillly" provides all the squeeze for the post-op parties. would say more, but no more room here. Needless to say, Jo has been a thorn in our side for a long time. She can't be turned. (edit) Snowing today. no-go on skyhook. no-go.

Snow, Damn, you are GOOD! Now do something with Duane. Come on, give it a try. Have him explain everything to Georger. 377 You know how Ckret's approach to generate tips is to get all serious on the Today show? I was thinking of doing an animated cartoon using all the various pics from suspects and characters in the case. Kind of a "South Park meets D.B. Cooper". Maybe a drunken Cooper swearing at everyone and everything. The software is pretty fun. You can put a song in and they'll animate the picture, in sync with the words in the song. I was actually thinking about Duane, but in deference to Jo, figured it would be too freaky. Regardless of all this Cooper nonsense, he did live, and he was married to Jo. I think we've shown that you can actually do a comic strip where Dan Cooper is the main character and just interacts with a whole host of characters from his point of view, and deals with current affairs. Maybe I'll get the green light on it from hollywood. It will drive Jo insane. Not a book, not a movie, but Cartoons! The inherent dramatic irony will be an in-joke.

As an example of "everything is on the web", I was perusing a site recently that collects (including photos) poetry from bathroom walls. I immediately thought of our good old DBC thread. Here are some christmas presents I liked: "No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her crap." "If voting could really change things, it would be illegal." "Bad spellers untie!!!" "Help, the paranoids are after me"

found this on the doorstep this morning. Posted on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qqyuHoPcWA&feature=channel_page (Dan must be running low on twenties..watermarked vid)

When I posted the Poynter description of a right hand pull mod, and said that guru312's description of it being for a theorized pilot's "superman move" appeared incorrect, the reasoning given was that most folks here weren't familiar with such a mod to '60s gear. Can someone at least acknowledge whether CapnWilly's 60s gear (the 2002 jump pic) has a right hand outboard pull? I've never seen a ripcord outside of the movie "The Skydivers" which really motivated me to post to a DBC thread 45 years later. Ah memories. The CapnWilly pic seems to be some other kind of rig, since it has Capewells. Would that date the rig to some more specific time in the '60s? I'm wondering about this, cause Ckret said that Cooper dismissed any instruction about the rig. So the question comes up whether he might have been familiar with right hand outboard pulls? If he had a small amount of experience, then the rh pull might have seemed odd. If he had no experience, it would all be the same to him, but why dismiss instruction if he was whuffo? He wasn't stupid? So the whuffo I am, is wondering how common RH outboard pulls were in the '60s, mod or original manufacture.

this is from the CPC site, "CapnWilly" jumping his 60s gear in 2002. (attached) (edit) to fill the blank space in this post, I'll attach the movie poster for the 1963 film "The Skydivers" :) I know you guys will hate me for it. Apparently really bad film. Beth: Do you want some coffee? Joe: Coffee? I like coffee!

The Today show with Lester Holt did a update back on 11/3/07 that I just found online. (edit) I had thought it was 08. just noticed it was 07. Nothing really new. They did do some new video. I snapped stuff that was interesting maybe, and attached. I have 5 videos now at my youtube channel, including this one. Just the various videos that aren't on youtube already. you can see here all 5 http://www.youtube.com/user/dbcooperxfiles this is the new one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAwno65IUQ4&feature=channel_page Tosaw is in this one being Tosaw. you can see the reserve's cloverleaf rip handle the cord cuts a little better the tiebar slightly differently (closer?) and 3 nice shots of the 727 aft door and stairs. The interior panels are missing from the stairs. This must be a 727 that's retired.

(edit) http://books.google.com/books?id=24FWc5grhRMC&pg=PA467&lpg=PA467&dq=blew+up+dollars+DAO+vietnam&source=web&ots=PstYJIKvdb&sig=l6dtF0a_jgOzoDsNWsFNsru5RtI&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result puts the amount at >$3.5 million, in barrels. Elsewhere, $16 million in gold reserves was left in Saigon? This guy was at the DAO compound when they were placing explosives, during the Saigon evac http://www.fallofsaigon.org/dao.htm "Prior to the evacuation, some personnel from the Embassy came out and were tasked with the job of destroying millions of dollars in American currency. " (edit) there is always good trivia in firsthand reports: "It was around 1630 on the evening of 28 April that everything came apart. We were all going about doing our respective tasks when A37 Dragonflys flew over and proceeded to bomb the airport. Their first targets were the command center and the tower, which they took out quite well. There were concrete structures near us that served as shelters and everyone that was in the area ran to get inside these. During a lull in the attack I noticed that we were sharing our shelter with a Vietnamese dog handler and his dog. In the confines of this shelter the dog seemed huge, it provided us with a light moment in a time of stress. I knew that the NVA didn’t have any A37’s, so the question was what was going on. After the bombing of the Presidential Palace a few weeks before, it became apparent that either more VNAF pilots had deserted, or the planes had been captured by the NVA."