2019 Cooper

[Robert99]

Tig uses gas a hardly any smoke....have you ever welded or worked in a shop? you don't seem to have a clue how things work. especially, in a large warehouse...

Nope that’s why I joined different welding Facebook groups to learn and I talked with many welders. TIG might not produce visible smoke but it gives off an ozone of nano particles which are very real and very hazardous to these guys health. They have all kinds of medical issues because of it. Just because there is no smoke doesn’t mean there are no particles (fumes) being expelled into the environment, there nano which are not visible to the naked eye shut. If Kaye/mccrones  didn’t use an electron microscope they wouldn’t of been picked up.

Nickyb233,

Are you suggesting that all, or at least the majority, of the particles found on the tie could come from the SST work area at Boeing?

Precisely or one of the other super sonic/aerospace projects pre 71...I spoke with newcomer David and his suspect worked on the SR-22 blackbird which would of been doing the same cutting edge/exploratory metallurgy work that would require fusion welding, the use of Silicon Spheres and commercially pure ti which would account for a good number of particles found on the mccrones report. It’s a very small pool of people cooper was swimming in when you peel back the onion on these tie particles.

Nicky,

The Blackbird was the SR-71.  The SR-22 was a civilian general aviation aircraft with a structure that was made of composite materials.

[nickyb233]

Tig uses gas a hardly any smoke....have you ever welded or worked in a shop? you don't seem to have a clue how things work. especially, in a large warehouse...

Nope that’s why I joined different welding Facebook groups to learn and I talked with many welders. TIG might not produce visible smoke but it gives off an ozone of nano particles which are very real and very hazardous to these guys health. They have all kinds of medical issues because of it. Just because there is no smoke doesn’t mean there are no particles (fumes) being expelled into the environment, there nano which are not visible to the naked eye shut. If Kaye/mccrones  didn’t use an electron microscope they wouldn’t of been picked up.

Nickyb233,

Are you suggesting that all, or at least the majority, of the particles found on the tie could come from the SST work area at Boeing?

Precisely or one of the other super sonic/aerospace projects pre 71...I spoke with newcomer David and his suspect worked on the SR-22 blackbird which would of been doing the same cutting edge/exploratory metallurgy work that would require fusion welding, the use of Silicon Spheres and commercially pure ti which would account for a good number of particles found on the mccrones report. It’s a very small pool of people cooper was swimming in when you peel back the onion on these tie particles.

Nicky,

The Blackbird was the SR-71.  The SR-22 was a civilian general aviation aircraft with a structure that was made of composite materials.

Sorry got my sr’s mixed up I meant to say SR-71, thanks Robert.

[EU]

I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank everyone who took part and contributed to this year's CooperCon.

This list includes:

1) Darren Schaefer
2) Mark Metzler (377)
3) Bruce Smith
4) Catherine Scott
5) Capt. Gavin Giddings
6) Vern Jones
7) Bill Rollins
Dan Wyatt
9) Bryan Ward
10) Rob Bertrand
11) Jim Brunberg
12) Everyone who showed up

Those who traveled to CooperCon bore much of their own expenses. This includes travel from across the United States.

Additionally, a special thanks to Mark Metzler (377) for insisting on contributing to the costs of CooperCon this year, as well as last year. It goes without saying, these have not been money-making events. Nonetheless, they have been very successful in that outstanding presentations have been made, solid information has been disseminated, people have had a lot of fun and enjoyed the conversations and camaraderie, and the events have garnered a lot of media attention.

CooperCon 2020 will be another big improvement over this year's event just as this year's event was a big improvement over the 2018 event.

Thank you again to all!

[Bruce A. Smith]

Thanks for organizing it, Eric. It was fantastic.

[Darren]

Thanks for organizing it, Eric. It was fantastic.

Agreed. Thank you Eric!

[David]

Cats out of the bag on some of “my suspects” evidence.  He worked on the SR-71 blackbird as an engineer, which is made of titanium (92% of aircraft).  The blackbird wasn’t pure titanium which was apparently the form found on the tie.  I touched base with Tom Kaye a couple years ago and he discounted that an aircraft facility would have had access to pure titanium.  However, the SR-71 was very much an experimental aircraft.  As an engineer, I would be shocked they didn’t create their own titanium alloys while designing various parts of the aircraft and that they didn’t have the pure metal on-site.  I would imagine they used pure titanium as a “control” in the metals lab to compare performance improvements with different alloys.  There are thousands of parts with each having unique requirements and a need for optimization. 

Regardless of that, you have to assume employees of the SR-71 program worked directly with the metallurgical foundries that had pure titanium.

The silicon spheres found on the tie could be associated with the windshield on the SR71.  The outer windscreen of the cockpit was made of quartz and was fused ultrasonically to the titanium frame.

I have a number of other reasons with my suspect that are a match.

I am surprised that former employees of the SR-71 program haven’t been given more scrutiny given the history of the aircraft.  Whether or not my suspect is a good lead, I think this is a huge gap that this community and possibly the FBI haven’t considered.

[georger]

Cats out of the bag on some of “my suspects” evidence.  He worked on the SR-71 blackbird as an engineer, which is made of titanium (92% of aircraft).  The blackbird wasn’t pure titanium which was apparently the form found on the tie.  I touched base with Tom Kaye a couple years ago and he discounted that an aircraft facility would have had access to pure titanium.  However, the SR-71 was very much an experimental aircraft.  As an engineer, I would be shocked they didn’t create their own titanium alloys while designing various parts of the aircraft and that they didn’t have the pure metal on-site.  I would imagine they used pure titanium as a “control” in the metals lab to compare performance improvements with different alloys.  There are thousands of parts with each having unique requirements and a need for optimization. 

Regardless of that, you have to assume employees of the SR-71 program worked directly with the metallurgical foundries that had pure titanium.

The silicon spheres found on the tie could be associated with the windshield on the SR71.  The outer windscreen of the cockpit was made of quartz and was fused ultrasonically to the titanium frame.

I have a number of other reasons with my suspect that are a match.

I am surprised that former employees of the SR-71 program haven’t been given more scrutiny given the history of the aircraft.  Whether or not my suspect is a good lead, I think this is a huge gap that this community and possibly the FBI haven’t considered.

Kaye may have meant 'pure' Ti.

[Robert99]

Cats out of the bag on some of “my suspects” evidence.  He worked on the SR-71 blackbird as an engineer, which is made of titanium (92% of aircraft).  The blackbird wasn’t pure titanium which was apparently the form found on the tie.  I touched base with Tom Kaye a couple years ago and he discounted that an aircraft facility would have had access to pure titanium.  However, the SR-71 was very much an experimental aircraft.  As an engineer, I would be shocked they didn’t create their own titanium alloys while designing various parts of the aircraft and that they didn’t have the pure metal on-site.  I would imagine they used pure titanium as a “control” in the metals lab to compare performance improvements with different alloys.  There are thousands of parts with each having unique requirements and a need for optimization. 

Regardless of that, you have to assume employees of the SR-71 program worked directly with the metallurgical foundries that had pure titanium.

The silicon spheres found on the tie could be associated with the windshield on the SR71.  The outer windscreen of the cockpit was made of quartz and was fused ultrasonically to the titanium frame.

I have a number of other reasons with my suspect that are a match.

I am surprised that former employees of the SR-71 program haven’t been given more scrutiny given the history of the aircraft.  Whether or not my suspect is a good lead, I think this is a huge gap that this community and possibly the FBI haven’t considered.

David,

I gather that you may have had some general connection with the SR-71 program.  You probably know that the titanium used for that program came from the old Soviet Union through a number of CIA shell companies.  I doubt if Lockheed had much titanium to experiment with.  But as Kelly Johnson said, they had to invent "everything" for that program.  So I imagine that once they found something that worked, they didn't bother with additional experiments.

The basic physical design of the SR-71 was probably completed in the very early 1960s.  I understand that North American hired some Lockheed people who had titanium experience from the SR-71 program to work on the B-70 program.  The B-70 was flying by the mid-1960s but I don't know how much titanium it used.  So by the start up of the SST program in the 1960s, there were probably a respectable number of people who had experience with titanium aircraft programs and Boeing would probably want them on their program.

So you could be right.

[David]

You don’t need much of the metal to test it’s properties.  You also don’t lose the metal you test because you can melt it down again.  I think a lot of the design was iterative in that you’re constantly fine tuning everything.  Something might work on the first go, but there can still be room for improvement.

With my suspect, all I know is he worked on the SR-71.  He may very well have worked elsewhere with titanium before or after, including the Boeing SST program.

[nickyb233]

Not just any CP titanium because all the unusual salt found on the tie points to pure titanium made by using the hunter process and the only manufacturer in the world that Kaye could find at that time still using the hunter process was Reactive Metals Inc. (RMI) out of Ohio, all other manufacturers were using the kroll process. The SR-71 finished production before the tie was made so we can rule that out. To me the only project that fits the timeline is the BOEING SST. They were developing hydraulic tubing made of titanium for the SST and welding different types of titanium for this including CP TI from RMI. Can’t find another project in this time frame that was welding RMI titanium. When you consider 13 particles (many of them toxic) found on the tie are found in welding fumes it also supports this being the most likely source for the particles found on the tie. Couple that with Najeeb Halaby who was the lead proponent for the SST (spearheaded the program and got all the funding) was meeting with president Nixon just hours before the hijacking and that government pulled the plug on it just 6 months prior...there is just too much smoke here not to be any fire. Given this evidence cooper was an engineer or manager involved with the hydraulic tubing development of the SST. I have identified the best candidate from this subset, James Edward Klansnic.

[nickyb233]

I have screenshots of a government document to support my statements above regarding the hydraulic tubing development for the SST. If anybody is interested In seeing them PM me as the files are to big to post on the forum. The document was available online for some time but not to my surprise has been recently removed from the web.

[David]

The SR-71 factory was in LA, but the aircraft operated out of Beale in Northern California.  I was told my suspect worked on the SR-71 program in North Cal (meaning Beale).  I am sure they still had a lab and did a lot of work with titanium on-site for repairs and replacement parts.

I agree the Boeing SST motive aligns well with Cooper.  And as before, it's possible my suspect worked on both programs.