Georger, I have learned very little about Cooper per se from my interviews. Tina and Flow are incommunicado, and Billy went belly-up just after contact. Alice, I've never found, and Galen is keeping her under wraps.
As for the feds, Himms only spoke with me for 20 minutes. Calame about the same, Rhodes zilch, O'Hara for 15, and these three were mostly about McCoy. Nichols won't talk, and Detlor only spoke in general terms, confirming stuff that I had written about the case. Sid Rubin was out to lunch as we were eating lunch, and Bob Sale deferred any direct input about Cooper, so we talked mostly about how the FBI does its business.
Larry was a different story, but he didn't get into details about what Cooper did, just mostly details of the case as it referred to Barb Dayton, DNA, and the actions of the FBI, such as what happened to Jeremy Blauser.
So, what I know about Cooper is from other people's writings, especially GG and Tosaw, and the transcripts.
The point I was trying to make with Morey is that we often think of Cooper as someone we know. Hence, some posters think Cooper must have been "desperate," or some such, because they would have been desperate to do what Cooper did. I don't think that is necessarily true. It's the "cultural goggles" that Sluggo attributes to sleuthing - we see things in certain way because of how we look, not how people actually act.
Thanks for the more indepth description of Cooper's actions. I didn't realize he was so active. I never thought that Cooper was a Zen-kind-of-guy. If anything, I thought he was more of a guy doing a job that he was well-prepared to do, and was comfortable doing.
I didn't know that Cooper tested the aft stairs after deployment, came back, and then wanted the aircraft slowed.
BTW: There is a considerable time lapse between the time Cooper sent Tina to the cockpit and the pressure bump - twenty minutes or so, or more. But Cooper had already cut the cords when he sent Tina away, so what do you think Cooper did during that time? He was already tying the bank bag, what else did he do, you think?