The Letter Flap Continued

For those who are interested, I've posted a full story on Colbert's "I Knew" letter revelations, the FBI's response, and the real cover-ups and mysteries associated with the letters from "DB Cooper," particularly the actions of Al Di.

At the Mountain News-WA, with pix.

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Here is an early draft of my thoughts on the "I Knew" letter episode:

DB Cooper News: Flap over letters sent to FBI makes headlines nationwide

Headlines this week ranging from Fox News to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have proclaimed the FBI has just released a letter from DB Cooper that they received shortly after his iconic skyjacking in 1971.

This news item was introduced to the world's media by Los Angeles film and TV producer Thomas J. Colbert, who is best-known for appearing in the 2016 History Channel documentary on DB Cooper. In the broadcast Colbert vigorously promoted Robert Rackstraw as the skyjacker DB Cooper, but was unable to prove it to the FBI's satisfaction, nor the public's.

The flap over the DB Cooper letter appears to be the latest in a promotional campaign by Colbert to promote Rackstraw, apparently to build momentum for a docu-drama filmed by his colleagues in Hollywood.

Besides the lack of any definitive proof linking Rackstraw to the skyjacking, the primary eye-witness, Flight Attendant Tina Mucklow, stated on-camera for the History Channel (HC) that a photo of Rackstraw from that era was not a picture of the skyjacker.

But Colbert was not dissuaded. In the aftermath of his rebuff by the HC, Colbert sued the FBI in federal court and demanded that they dismiss his 100-plus pieces of circumstantial evidence against Rackstraw. The FBI, so far, has refused.

In turn, Colbert filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding that the FBI turn over copies of all their DB Cooper files. It is my understanding that again Colbert was refused, but he gained access to 3,000 FBI field notes from other researchers who had successfully filed FOIA requests with the FBI.

It is believed that there are over 70,000 pages of DB Cooper files that may be eventually delivered to Cooper historians, so this initial grouping of 3,000 is just the start of a major investigatory project. In turn, Colbert has made them available to many Cooper sleuths, including leading researchers at the DB Cooper Forum.

In that initial pile of documents, however, Colbert apparently found the letter that is now being called the “I Knew” letter because its opening sentence begins: “I knew from the start that I wouldn't be caught.” The letter is several paragraphs long and filled with numerous spelling and grammatical errors. It is signed, “DB Cooper,” and Colbert believes it is legit.

However, the skyjacker never called himself “DB Cooper.”

In fact, the individual who hijacked the airplane identified himself as “Dan Cooper” at the Portland, Oregon airport when he bought his one-way ticket to Seattle. Minutes later he hijacked the plane, then released the passengers at Sea-Tac when his ransom demands for four parachutes and $200,000 in cash were met by Northwest Orient Airlines officials and the FBI. Soon afterwards he parachuted out the rear of this 727 aircraft, disappearing with all of his gear and money except for about $6,000 that was found in 1980 buried on a Columbia River beach.

But within hours of the skyjacking Dan Cooper received a name change. When the passengers deplaned in Seattle, FBI agents realized their hijacker was “Cooper, D,” which was what NWO recorded in its flight manifest. Authorities in Seattle then contacted Portland police and asked if they had any robbery suspects named “D. Cooper,” and one detective said they had a serial burglar named D.B. Cooper. Hearing that the FBI said, “Pick him up.”

An Associated Press journalist standing nearby heard the conversation and informed his editors that the cops were looking for a DB Cooper, which was true but misleading. Nevertheless, the AP published the moniker and the world then accepted the smooth alliteration of DB Cooper as the name of the skyjacker. Even the FBI began called the skyjacker “DB Cooper” in the days that followed.

But is it likely a skyjacker who called himself Dan Cooper would adopt his new name when he wrote a taunting letter to the FBI? Why not use his “real” hijacking name to solidly prove his authenticity?

Regardless, Colbert accepts the notion that a letter signed “DB Cooper” must be from the skyjacker. Colbert makes that claim because the letter states that he did not leave any fingerprints, and Colbert accepts the FBI's claims that no usable fingerprints were retrieved from the aircraft after the hijacking despite many conflicting statements from FBI officials concerning this piece of evidence.

Further, Colbert is intimating that the FBI has covered-up this letter until now.

But those charges are bogus. The “I Knew” letter has been known publicly for years, and was discovered in 2011 by an Internet Cooper sleuth known as Snowmman, and posted at the DropZone chat room and elsewhere.

Further, I wrote extensively about the “I Knew” letter and many others collected by the FBI in the weeks after the skyjacking and all signed “DB Cooper.” In my book: DB Cooper and the FBI – A Case Study of America's Only Unsolved Skyjacking, I devote an entire chapter to an examination of these letters, most of which were sent to newspapers in the Pacific Northwest and eventfully delivered to the FBI.

The only element that is really new is that Tom Colbert has finally read the “I Knew” letter.

But cover-ups and mysteries do surround the letters received by the FBI. In the amalgam of these letters four stand out and they are often called the “Core-Four.” The “I Knew” is not one of them, and most Cooper researchers and journalists dismiss it as a crank, pedestrian missive.

But the Core Four are very interesting, They are mostly cut and paste jobs, and cryptic. Letter #3 is the most unusual and has gained the most attention from investigators.

Additionally, the actions of an individual named Al Di has drawn exceptional attention to Letter #3. In August 2011, Al Di released a statement to the Oregonian and Cooper chat rooms claiming that he had “decoded” the so-called Letter #3.

In Letter #3, all the letters, words, or sentence fragments are cut from either the June or July 1970 Playboy magazine. This decoding was revealed by Al Di, but whether he did it, or discovered who in the FBI had originally performed that analysis, is unknown. Regardless, Al Di told the world about it, and prior it had been a big secret at the FBI. In fact, FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach lied to Galen Cook, a leading DB Cooper sleuth, about its presence in the FBI files.

So, we do not know if Letter #3 is legitimately from DB Cooper, or why the FBI has wanted to keep it under wraps until now.

Plus, we don't know who Al Di is, nor do we know how he gained access to Letter #3 when the rest of the world didn't know about it.

As a result, Al Di is widely believed to be an FBI agent or a group of agents. Ever since Al Di surfaced DB Cooper researchers suspected Al Di was Cooper Case Agent Curtis Eng. One of the reasons for that belief is that Eng had just taken over the case from the innovative Larry Carr, and Eng seemed eager to capitalize on Carr's tremendous relationships with online sleuths and journalists. In late 2011 and early 2012, Eng contacted several Cooper researchers, especially one attorney long-active in the case, the aforementioned Galen Cook.

In fact, Cook reported that Al Di also began emailing him, stating that during this period of time he received sixty emails from Eng and Al Di in total, maintaining parallel lines of communication until both ceased abruptly in June 2012. Cook also reported that the emails from Al Di were well-informed, insightful, and clearly from someone who had an advanced knowledge of the case.

Al Di also participated in a DB Cooper chat room known as “websleuths,” posing as “IDLA,” which is Al Di spelled backwards. At the websleuths, IDLA seemed to be probing Cooper sleuths for a deeper level of information. Perhaps he was also trolling for the real DB Cooper.

Reportedly, Al Di was also a voracious reader of Cooper news at the Mountain News-WA and the DB Cooper Forum, the leading source of in-depth information on the DB Cooper case.

Currently some sleuths, including Cook, have come to believe that Al Di is a collective of at least two FBI agents lead my Eng who are trying to smoke-out the hijacker. However, this scenario accepts the notion that DB Cooper survived the skyjacking, is still living, and the FBI knows it – but can't find him.

Or is accepting of those possibilities and is seeking to rule them out.

Cook also states that the FBI believes that Letter #3 is from the skyjacker and that it is a “major cipher.” In addition, he says that it has received the full attention of a team of cryptographers from the FBI, who apparently haven't cracked the code, yet.

Another hypothesis is that Curtis Eng didn't trust the FBI and conducted an end-run investigation around the FBI, posing as Al Di to procure Cooper information free of federal interference.

Nevertheless, the investigation into Letter #3, Al Di, and the behaviors of the FBI continues.

To that end, here are the letters in question:

Letter #3:

“Am alive and well in hometown P.O.
The system that beat the system
DB Cooper”

As for the “I Knew” letter, initially Snowmman found it at the New York Times. Now, we know from the FOIA files that it was also sent to the LA Times, the Seattle Times, and the Washington Post. In addition, the “I Knew “ letter was mailed from Seattle and was received by the FBI from the newspapers three weeks after the hijacking.

Further, the FOIA documents show that the letter had a mysterious list of numbers, “717171684,” typed next to the notation “Wash Post” in the bottom left corner of the page.

Here is the letter in full:

“Sirs,

I knew from the start that I wouldn't be caught. I didn't rob Northwest Orient because I thought it would be romantic, heroic or any of the other euphemisms that seem to attach to situations of high risks.

I'm no modern day Robin Hood. Unfortunately I have only 14 months to live. My life has been one of hate, turmoil, hunger and more hate; this seems to be the fastest and most profitable way to gain a few fast grains of peace of mind. I don't blame people for hating me or what I've done nor do I blame anybody for wanting me to be caught and punished, though this can never happen. Here are some (not all) of the things working against the authorities:

I am not a boasting man
I left no fingerprints
I wore a toupee
I wore putty make-up

They could add or subtract from the composite a hundred times and not come up with an accurate description; and we both know it. I've come and gone on several airline flights already and am not holed up in some obsure [sic] backwoods town. Neither am I a psycopathic [sic] killer. As a matter of fact I've never even received a speeding ticket.

Thanks for you attention.
DB Cooper”

Lastly, tomorrow, Wednesday November 22, 2017 is the 46th Anniversary of the DB Cooper skyjacking. Happy Anniversary Everyone!

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...Maybe if you actually went to journalism school you would know more about the importance of good objective reporting and proper research and the importance of maintaining your good name and credibility.  Those important things just don't seem to matter much to you.  So, you must not have gone to Kollege, because if you did, you wouldn't be saying the unsupported, half-baked, made up things you say.  I'm just surprised that credibility is not a priority for you.  Most good journalists live by it, their success and survival depend on it.  You must have missed class on those days....must've been the migraines.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Same goes for character assassinations. You make strong accusations, but don't back 'em up with specific examples.

Would you like an under-educated-but-street-savvy-journalist to show you how to do that?

Well, the proof I have is that I was actually with you, you rode in my pickup, we talked, we interacted.  I actually saw you try to deceive and lie to me in Ariel the day before the TC/Expedition Unknown shoot, I caught you in the act.  Bryan Ingram gave you away after I asked him what was really going on.  At the Travel Channel, Expedition Unknown shoot, I actually saw you throw two huge temper tantrums.  The production crew kept calling me and asking where you were, what you were doing, were you even going to show up.  You were so amazed you weren't Cooper royalty getting diva treatment and a good paycheck from Josh Gates.  You acted like a spoiled entitled brat, everyone wasn't kneeling down to kiss your ass, and you got pissed.  Your behavior was despicable.  I ran interference for you the whole weekend with the production crew; I made excuses for you while you were acting like a spoiled child.  Never again, you jerk.

And there's more proof: I keep reading responses to your posts here -- you don't report your information correctly, you make things up, you don't check your sources.  I think Georger and R99 call you on it constantly, but you ignore them and just keep doing it, with impunity.    As I see it, your credibility is shot, but like Blevins, you keep on keeping on, no matter what reputation you have created for yourself.

So, you're wrong, I do have actual proof, I've seen it with my own eyes, I read it almost every day here.  I have observed you directly doing all the things I am accusing you of. 

You showing me how to do anything?  Bullshit, you aren't smart enough to show anybody how to do anything.  Worry about your own self -- there's lots to worry about there. 

Meyer 

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Or he spent a lot of time wiping everything down after Tina went to the cockpit.

Bruce, if he did want to wipe the area down, he had a very available and removable piece of cloth decorating his neck that would do the trick.  A clip-on tie works nicely on those hard-to-reach fingerprint areas during wipe-down. Interestingly, it could have picked up a few excess particles being rubbed all over parts of that cabin and maybe the bathroom.

My favorite part of that Travel Channel show is when Gates lands and his parachute mysteriously disappears between landing and getting to his feet, though he is still ecstatic from this experience, which was absolutely NOT re-enacted for the cameras. And that part where Meyer, hard at work with a metal detector but somehow composed perfectly in a stationary shot, looks just past the camera and asks "Did Josh find something?" Another moment that was completely spontaneous and unrehearsed. Maybe there's a little bit of fibbery strewn about this case, and we're all part of it somehow.

You are very observant.

There wasn't anything rehearsed about the Tina Bar filming, it was all spontaneous.  But some miracles appear to have happened during the post production work back in LA.

Gates found a small circular metal ring, about two inches in diameter, that appeared to have been part of a tie-down on a cover sheet that goes over such things as wheat, and fruits, when they are headed down river on barges.  At least that is what I told Gates.  Nevertheless, after going through the post production massaging in LA, that ring morphed into part of a parachute ripcord.

I couldn't pull off something like that myself in a million years.

There wasn't anything rehearsed about the Tina Bar filming, it was all spontaneous.  But some miracles appear to have happened during the post production work back in LA....

Not exactly true. There were no rehearsals in the sense of how a community theater or high school drama club rehearses a major theatrical production such as "Bye, Bye, Birdie."

But there were plenty of rehearsals of the kind suitable for a TV location shoot at T-Bar. Five-minute discussions where the host Josh Gates would tell us what he wanted, then we practiced our brief responses. The production crew often weighed in on sound and light levels, and most first shoots had to be re-done at least once. Occasionally we would have to adjust where we were standing or facing.

For our segment of the Expedition Unknown show I saw very little Hollywood-esque magic applied after the fact. What you saw on the screen was what we rehearsed and performed at T-Bar, including the ringy thingy.

Guys, keep the personal conflicts off the thread...open a thread in the "Non Cooper Related" category if you want to continue your battles...

Will do.

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There wasn't anything rehearsed about the Tina Bar filming, it was all spontaneous.  But some miracles appear to have happened during the post production work back in LA....

Not exactly true. There were no rehearsals in the sense of how a community theater or high school drama club rehearses a major theatrical production such as "Bye, Bye, Birdie."

But there were plenty of rehearsals of the kind suitable for a TV location shoot at T-Bar. Five-minute discussions where the host Josh Gates would tell us what he wanted, then we practiced our brief responses. The production crew often weighed in on sound and light levels, and most first shoots had to be re-done at least once. Occasionally we would have to adjust where we were standing or facing.

For our segment of the Expedition Unknown show I saw very little Hollywood-esque magic applied after the fact. What you saw on the screen was what we rehearsed and performed at T-Bar, including the ringy thingy.

Bruce,

Again, there were no "rehearsals" in the Tina Bar shoot and basically ever scene was done in a single "shot".

On the "ringy thingy", Gates himself found it with a metal detector, dug it out of the ground, and discussed it on camera in one continuous filming.  The still showing the ring as part of a parachute ripcord handle was Hollywood magic added by the post-production people in Los Angeles.

For the record, in my opinion, Gates and his entire crew did an excellent job with what they had to work with at Tina Bar.  There were two cameramen with digital motion picture cameras, a drone operator flying a small drone that produced amazing pictures from a camera about the size of a cell phone, at least one still camerawoman, soundmen, and others.

They filmed several hours of activities that day.  Only a small part of the filmed material could ever be used in the time for the Tina Bar segment.  But I am sure it is in the EU library in Los Angeles.

If I have a complaint about the show as broadcast, it is that they went with Cooper jumping at Reno.  That does not fit quite a few facts in the case.

And Bruce, I did not see you as I drove out to Tina Bar that day.  I don't believe that Meyer or I came close to the park that you mentioned.  Also, I had never seen you until we were all at Tina Bar.  So I would not have known who you were even if I had seen you, which I am sure I didn't.