novalis

dear mr. orange to talk about what "crime is" on a board discussing a crime may in your estimation be "completely irrelevant". please be assured that i am not trying to pressure you into discussing it. you might just pass it up, as all of us pass up some things on this thread which don't interest us and comment on others. as to deciding whether some message, or its form, is on or off topic, the forum has already provided us with a moderator. novalis ps it is "mr", not "ms". (don't let the beard fool you.)

mr orange, thanks for your reply. my concern was not specific legislation ("anti-trust" or other), but with the term "criminal" which i thought worth reflecting on since this thread is about a crime. in this regard darrow's principle point remains valid :the every day crime in which millions -- today billions-- are "stolen" by those who run the communities that imprison the less successful thieves. so as not to take up too much of the board's space on issues that go too far afield from the thread, regarding your specific concern, anti-trust legislation, let me refer you to the "wikipedia" article on "sherman anti trust". one quotation from the article: "What has changed since the Burger court transitioned to the Rehnquist court and with the Roberts court, is that courts are are unwilling to expand per se illegality to encompass new forms of conduct, even if they are allegedly tantamount to price fixing." novalis

naturally in any discussion many terms have to be used in a general way: one can't focus on everything at once. and of course this board is concerned with a particular case and a particular person. but on the general term "criminal", please consider the following excerpt from a speech that clarence darrow delivered to those held in the cook county jail in 1902. novalis the full text can be found at: http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/darrow.htm "Most of you probably have nothing against me, and most of you would treat me the same as any other person would; probably better than some of the people on the outside would treat me, because you think I believe in you and they know I do not believe in them. While you would not have the least thing against me in the world you might pick my pockets. I do not think all of you would, but I think some of you would.[…] And still I know this, that when I get outside pretty nearly everybody picks my pocket. There may be some of you who would hold up a man on the street, if you did not happen to have something else to do, and needed the money; but when I want to light my house or my office the gas company holds me up. They charge me one dollar for something that is worth twenty-five cents, and still all these people are good people; they are pillars of society and support the churches, and they are respectable. When I ride on the street cars, I am held up — I pay five cents for a ride that is worth two and a half cents, simply because a body of men have bribed the city council and the legislature, so that all the rest of us have to pay tribute to them. If I do not wish to fall into the clutches of the gas trust and choose to burn oil instead of gas, then good Mr. Rockefeller holds me up, and he uses a certain portion of his money to build universities and support churches which are engaged in telling us how to be good."

dear ckret, i do take your message in the spirit it was sent. but as to your advice to go back to bed; where i am it is the middle of the afternoon. novalis

dear mr ckret: you write: "Cooper knew what was going to happen because hijackings were on the news every month back then. Anyone who watched the news knew how these things played out. It took very little planning to hijack a plane in the late 60 early 70's, you just did like you saw reported on the news and you could expect the same outcome. " i have given this some thought (and slept over it which sometimes helps). i think you underestimate cooper. none of us on this board would undertake a hijacking and a jump based on tv coverage of these things. think about it: an "average human" being would not risk his freedom and his life without investigating the matter. i wonder if you don't have too low an opinion of "criminals" in general? in any case, it is my experience, that the sounder procedure in any contest or fight is to assume that the opponent is no more stupid than i am. (you remember the colts and joe namath.) no, let's assume dan, criminal though he was, was as intelligent as the gentlemen (and ladies) posting on this board, and produce our hypotheses based on this assumption. thanks novalis

dear mr. ckret, are you telling me that once television was really full of information? how times have changed; now its mostly dis-information. thank you. novalis

i agree with the tendency of your remarks. everything up to the jump, where he was in sight or contact with those trying to apprehend or shoot him, shows a man who is pretty much in command. it is a risky business that he has undertaken, but having gone into it there is evidence that the man is prudent. then comes the jump, and the minutes leading up to it. this is a time when no one saw dan cooper. and in this second part of the story some peple believe that we have a man who didn't know what he was doing? i don't buy that any more than you do. i also agree with your view about the visit to the wc. nothing but dan cooper telling the crew that he would be in the wc "for awhile" can account for the crew having that piece of information. (even if a light goes on somewhere the light can hardly know that it will be burning "for awhile".) due to some of dan cooper's behaviour during the hijacking i wonder if he had a police background, or airlines background, that allowed him to predict with reasonable certainty that the plane would not be stormed at the first stop?

you make some interesting points. to the word "knapsack". it is sometimes the case that words reveal a regional origin. that is, what was no longer used, perhaps never used, in one region is the word used in others. i grew up in the northeast and was often surprised when travelling to other parts of the country that rather simple items were termed in a completely different way. (what some places call "soft drinks", "soda" etc--i have forgotten other terms i encountered-- were (god knows why) called "pop" where i grew up. you order a "pop" 1971 in some places and they think you ve been orphaned. perhaps investigating some of dan's "terminology" could shed light on "where he was coming from". (is knapsack, for example, canadian?)

i realize this general profile of suicides has some diagnostic value. i also recall that not too many years ago the profession that was most susceptible to suicides was psychiatry. (probably a lot of left handed guys in the business.) to those who do tend to the suicide notion i would reply: personally i don't see how anyone comes up with the notion of committing suiced in this case. i mean dan went to a hell of a lot of trouble to commit suicide didn't he? couldn't he just have jumped off a high bridge? no. the premise from which people who follow this hypothesis seem to be working, is that dan didn't know what he was doing. i personally see no evidence of that. he knows what the plane is like etc. when it comes to the jump i think it well to recall, what has been said here before: he was alone in the cabin. no one saw what he was wearing or how he had tied the money to his body etc. when he jumped. and of course no one has any information on what he was wearing when he landed. i see no shred of evidence for a person taking all the trouble he did to hijack a plane just to leave the whole success of the venture up to a dangerous jump for which he was in no way -- training, clothing etc. prepared. the man that is revealed to me by the earlier part of the story is prudent; the man who purportedly is found in the second half is not. but remember: the second half is the one in which no one was present to observe him.

thanks. so whuffo means: "why do they do that?" i must confess the question never occured to me. people do what they do. or as g. m. hopkins says: "As king fishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; ... Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: ... Selves - goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying What I do is me: for that I came. " i assumed whuffo meant something like: a person who hasn't got a clue. (which is probably also contained in the definition.) thanks again.

to our moderator and to those engaged in the discussion: i wonder if technically our moderator could put all the discussion that has taken place on dan cooper into one thread? it would also be very useful if when some one says, "i discussed this already" he (or she) could refer to the number of the posting. without a number such references are a bit general when one considers, that on this thread alone, there are already almost 50 pages of messages. so my questions: could one thread be made of the several? would those referring to earlier contributions please give the number of the message? one last question. from the context i have an idea of what a "whuffo" is. still i would appreciate a definition. thanks. novalis ps happy birthday sluggo.

re: post 1086 a really interesting find! may not lead anywhere-- time will tell-- but good!

you ask, did he commit a robbery before this. certainly a legitimate question. i tend to think that he had knowledge of airplanes, flight procedures, i.e. was an engineer, had military experience, or law enforcement experience related to flight. i say this because, yes, i think there was a lot of preperation involved in what the man did; the "enviornment" he chose that day was not completely new to him. i tend to think that it was this type of preperation, i.e. experience with the "enviornment", rather than a career in robbery because 1) the amt. of money he asked for seemed to be below what others in the same "industry" were asking for and getting, 2) if it were just for the money, couldn't he have gotten it with less risk by robbing a bank, or something like that? the penalty for plane hijacking was death--if your just in the robbery biz. there are less dangerous ways of getting cash to meet the monthly bills. these are of course conjectures. none of us know. i merely wanted to agree, yes, as i read the man there was "preperation" at several levels: on the jump, and on the hijacking. i wanted to suggest a type of hijacking preperation that might account for his choice, without his having necessarily done a "heist" before.

thanks for your reply. yes we are all working with probabilites; i don't see how it could be otherwise in a matter like this. the fact the man chose a night jump, as you point out, is the type of fact that makes me think he had a pretty good background in what he was doing: perhaps a flight crew member during his military service etc. certainly a man who had done at least one jump. i think there are also indications that he was in a position to, and did do, research on the type of plane he was in. as to riding in the back of the plane. that served his purpose in being able to keep an eye on the others. (irrelevant to cooper but some one asked the question why one might take the back: it has always struck me -- the complete layman -- when i see photos of plane crashes that if any part of the plane is still in one piece, it's almost always the tail section.)

certainly i think the man chose the flight on a day before the holiday because generally they are less full. [is this a fact or does it depend on the holiday? certainly the day before labor day, which i have flown all over the usa east of the miss. has been pretty slow in recent years. (was it in 1971, i don't know.) did cooper investigate the type of plane most likely to be used on that flight? (just what kind of a nut do people think he was? his plan depends on the back stairs. there is no reason to assume that he was less intelligent than any of us: we would look into the matter. why wouldn't he?) if it had turned out that for some reason a different type of plane had been chosen at the last minute, he could have gotten off the plane with the bomb just as easily as he got on with the bomb. he didn't have to show his hand until he felt the conditions he needed were right. (this needn't have been the first time dan tried; just the first time he felt "comfortable" with things.)

i am not a skydiver and can therefore hardly say anything about, looking at cooper's actions on that day, whether he knew anything about jumping. however i would like to raise this point. put yourself in his place. the jump is part of his plan-- a big part. would you leave the success of the jump up to the good luck of the novice? i think anyone on this board would prepare, i.e. practice and inform himself. one's life depends on the jump. i do not see any reason to suppose that cooper would be less concerned with his own saftey on a jump than any of us, and therefore no reason why he would go into it completley unprepared. do you?

i think everyone has to try to put together a hypothesis that explains as much of the phenomena as possible. naturally it is also a fact that some (all?) the phenomena is subject to more than one interpretation. each of us begins, based on his experience, insight, education, "personality" etc. taking, for hypothetical purposes, the one or the other phenomenon for the base phenomenon and tries to fit the other "facts"into an explanation. (some people start with what they believe is an insight into the personality of dan, others with their knowledge of flight or parachtuting, etc. ) this is all legit. you can call what one guy does thinking "in the box" and what another guy does, thinking "out of the box". personally, i don't think this is a real distinction and doesn't add anything. mark twain says in conn. yankee that the best swordsman in england doesn't have to worry about the second best, but the opponent who never held a sword in his hand and doesn't do what is expected of him. Well, maybe. if my life depended on it i think i would rather be the second best swordsman and hope that my opponent, number one, was having a bad day. (am i thinking "in" or "out" of the box here? ) in this regard. the germans got a bunch of so-called "out of the box people" together during WW II to try to find out where the italian govt. had taken the duce after deposing him. (the german authorities where not as "mean" as you were, the "loonies" were given all the cigars, whiskey, etc. they wanted.) among the star gazers, pendlers, tarot readers, etc. -- one "guy" actually came up whith the gran sasso. but let's face it, after all the so-called thinking out of the box is done somebody has to say: "ok guys, thanks, you can take the rest of the cigars with you, now I will decide which out of the box solution to follow". and naturally this fellow, -- in your terms the govt. employ who is still in the box? -- has to decide according to criteria he understands. whoops! jack is back in the box. i think the problem is with the phrase "in" and "out" of the box. it doesn't really tell us much about thinking. which is not to say that i don't think you're thinking! i do think you're thinking. and now i am going to get down off the soap "box".

in trying to make a profile of cooper i think it is interesting that the money did not play a big role. everyone, including mcCoy, who imitated him thought that dan went to a lot of trouble and took quite a few risks for the sum he got. this, and some of his behavior with crew and passengers, makes me think that he was more intent to "show" somebody, or get revenge on somebody (air line, air line industry, law enforcement?) than trying to get an income without an honest day's work.

has anyone given thought to the name? (i know of course that there could be many reasons for it!) is, for example, "DAN" a common acronym related to flight? if so, it might give a clue as to where he "was coming from". as to age: it's a general impression we get, it is not fixed to any one feature. i think women are generally pretty good at judging men's ages. cooper has been described as having a darker skin. could he have been wearing any kind of protective coverage? he knew he would be jumping in raw weather and he may have planned a high altitude hike on thanksgiving day. (copper tan: dan cooper? ) or might we expect that the stewardess would have noticed if he had any "cosmetic" layers? the bathroom incident requires more thought. it is too easy to assume "he had to go"´. if i were hijacking a plane that was now on the ground with people around it, i would rather embarass myself by throwing up in the cabin but keep my eye on entrances and exits. on the other hand: reading the transcript i see the pilot talks about the fact that the "individual" is on the other side of the plane, etc. in other words, that he is not watching all that closely what is going on outside the plane. (he does have a hostage in the stewardess and this might give him confidence that no one is going to attack him, and risk her life.) his not watching the windows may indicate laxness, but it might indicate that he had some reason to believe that he would not be attacked. were procedures worked out on how to deal with hijackings? could the hijacker have known that he was safe from an attack at that stage of the (any) hijacking?

thank you very much. sunday i am underway but as soon as i get back to my own pc i will join the group. thanks also for your follow up message. also the messages of many others have been quite helpful. the main thing i have learned is that i made a mistake in thinking that my initial reading had acquainted me with the facts. but, being interested in facts and not myths, i am very happy to have discovered this board and discussion. thanks to all of you who have responded to my, apparently sometimes repititious, generally naive, questions. novalis

you have gone into some detail. thank you. that was my feeling too: if you don't go spending the money right away down the block, you have a chance of gettin through-- apparently a pretty good chance. that would explain why he wanted 20s. can we assume that he asked for the sum of $200,000 in 20s because he knew something about parachuting from a plane carrying a load with him? that is my assumption.

i have a question concerning the money: maybe this is the wrong board, but you seem to have looked into many aspects of the case. when we read that the bills never turned up, how significant is this, IF they were spent? does every $20 at the end of its usefulness turn up in some central federal facility, and is every $20 bill looked at and checked against, god knows how many, lists of serial numbers that for one reason or the other--kidnappings, bank robberies etc.-- are of interest to some federal or state police force? (this sounds like a very big job to me. my suspicion is that the bills could have been spent without necessarily turning up in such a check--assuming there is such a check at the end of a bank note's road. ) do you know anything about this angle? on the other hand, what do i do as an individual with so many $20 bills which i am pretty sure the feds are looking for? i can't just use them one at a time at the local stores for fear that they turn up that way and pin point me. do i take trips to other cities and buy big items with a wad of 20s? that might raise suspicions too. i suppose i am asking are $20s far enough below the "radar screen" that i can get rid of them without them necessarily being noticed, even if a fed. agency is interested in them?

dear mr sluggo, thank you for your note. i have perhaps naively trusted wikapedia and a crime site. at one of these i read that cooper was irritated at what he took to be slow refueling. could you please give me a reference to the transcripts and i will no longer be dependent on secondary sources? thanks. novalis ps on the relationship to the crew: as a pilot are you aware of any sop during a hijacking; for example the pilot does not leave the cockpit to talk to the hijacker: his place is in the cabin, it would upset the passengers to see it etc.? again if my sources are right, not all the passengers knew there was a hijacking going on. this can be attributed to conduct of the crew and the hijacker? nobody wanted panic. after the passengers have left communication continues through the stewerdess. was this a demand of the hijacker? did he feel more secure with a young woman than with a pilot's presence? a pilot might be able to overwelm him etc.

i would like to thank those of you who replied to my message. gave me some interesting insights for me to think over. i realize that since none of us know the man (or if any of you do, you're not admitting it) that any conjectures on him remain just that. i am also aware that even if something seems to me, you, most, or all of us to be "likely" or "probable" we still do not know. the hypothesis which governs my thought is that he was not a novice jumper. i think this because all other aspects of his "day in the air" seem to me to indicate that he thought things through. i see no reason why this personality changes and becomes the man who, on a jump is going to "play it by ear". i assume he was quite experienced. why do some others think he was a novice? i think because he took such a chance on the jump. but i would tend to put that down to over boldness. after all, in attempting the hijacking at all, he seems to have had an overabundance of self-confidence, a strong desire to "show" the airline (or "the world") that he could take on a whole lot of people in a test of cunning and will and emerge vidtorious. now if that hypothesis of his character can be accepted for a moment, i do not think that he jumped out of the plane as a novice. i see no reason why, with the jump, he suddenly becomes a person who does not prepare for the "fight". ( this does not mean he succeeds of course.) as the answers to my note point out a lot can go wrong and to break a foot under the weather and geographical conditons that obtained could have been fatal. and here, perhaps his overconfidence or high opinion of himself made him think that he could succeed where others would fail? i think he put considerable planing into the jump, including where. as i say, these are my hypotheses, i am making no claims. one reason that i think he would have known that he could not get to mexico is the following: if a person prepares for a hijacking, down to knowing things like fuel loading times and, the matter about flap angles, won't he ask the question: can the thing reach the destination i want? that raises the question: did he really want to go to mexico? is there any reason for the altitude he wanted to fly at, other than that he planned to jump "somewhere" before he got to mexico in any case? as far as the radio is concerned: i confess i assume that he did not have a bomb. (i think this because i believe he had a lot of faith in himself and even if the authorities had called his bluff, he would have wanted to live and fight another day. he strikes me as the type who whould take jail as a challenge to "jump out of" too.) if he does not have a bomb, the question is whether he made use of that space for something else? how small were walkie talkies etc? could they, or a radio, have been packed into his fake bomb? unfortunately some of the technical details of the jump, which i thought were facts, have been contested. assuming he did ask for one type of parachute in preference to another, one with a ripcord?, does that say anything about him or his intentions? why would the other parachute not suit him as well? thanks. novalis

thanks for your reply. my interest in assuming (one doesn't know) that cooper was pretty competent is that it leads to other hypotheses. with the two cooper notions everything unravels at the jump. if one assumes that the jump-cooper was as competent as the hijack-cooper, one might begin to ask different questions concerning the jump. ( i don't knw that my questions are the most pertinent that could be asked, but to give an example of what i mean:) if he knows so much about the plane-- he knows for example how long it takes to fuel, he asked that the flaps be put at a certain angle, etc.) does he also know that it can't get to mexico that way? if this is the case he delibertly provokes a conversation with the crew that he knows will give him the option that he is really seeking. (they give him several desitnations and several routes, he seems to choose one at random. but was it at random, or was this to throw off the suspicion that he really wanted to go exactly where he jumped? knowing the altitude and the approx. speed and keeping track of the time, did he jump somewhere where, with a radio, he could call his accomplice to heip?) such questions, and as i say, maybe more pertinent ones, are generated by assuming that the man knew what he was doing. (again, i do not mean to say that nothing went wrong. but i don't think he just jumped out in the blue anymore than his conduct during the hijacking seems to imply a man who was "playing it by ear". he was, i think, playing according to a plan. to reduce him to the novice jumper is to spare oneself the effort of playing through various possibilities of what the plan was. were the conditions under which he jumped difficult/very difficult/impossible for a man with experience? is there a consensus on this?