IP: 30th anniversary of Norjak

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 10:38:31 -0800
> Subject: 30th anniversary of Norjak
> From: Paul Saffo <psaffo () iftf org>
> To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
>
> Thirty years ago today, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper parachuted out
> of a northwest 727 and into history. He hijacked NW 305, and forced it back
> to Seattle. There he swapped its 36 passengers for $200,000 ransom and four
> parachutes. He then forced NW305 back into the air and after instructing the
> crew to fly to Mexico, jumped out the tail door somewhere over southern
> Washington. He was never seen again, and the money --10,000 marked $20s--
> never turned up, except for a small cache that eroded out of a riverbank in
> the forests near the Columbia river a decade later.
>
> The FBI concluded that Cooper died in the jump, but the case, labeled
> "Norjak" in FBI files, was never closed. And whatever his fate, Cooper lived
> on as a folk legend.  D.B.Cooper (the name changed through a reporting
> error) became the subject of several books( one titled: "Skyjacker's Guide:
> or Please Hold this Bomb While I go to the Bathroom") , a country western
> song, a movie, and apparently, even a restaurant or two. Unswayed by the
> Robin Hood romantics, lead FBI agent, Ralph Himmelsbach described him more
> bluntly as a "rotten, sleazy crook." (see his authoritative book, "Norjak:
> The investigation of D.B. Cooper")
>
> And Cooper achieved a sort of immortality in the changes his case triggered
> in the aviation industry. The 727's tail door was redesigned so it couldn't
> be opened in flight, by addition of a device known to this day as the
> "Cooper vane." In the months following Cooper's midnight jump, the
> International Airline Pilots Association held a 24 hour work stoppage to
> call attention to the need for heightened aircraft security. Congress was
> urged to ratify an international convention providing for the extradition
> and severe punishment of hijackers. In February 1972, the FAA promulgated
> regulations requiring mandatory passenger screening after a survey indicated
> that less than 40 percent of passengers at the country's 10 largest airports
> were being screened through magnetometers. Just as the events of September
> 11th have led to huge lines at airport security checkpoints, back in the
> early '70s, passengers were forced to stand in interminable lines awaiting
> exasperating hand searches (after my third such search in one day at
> Franfkurt airport recently, I resigned myself to thinking of them as
> police-administered shiatsu).  Magnetometer screening was thus a welcome
> innovation not only for its greater reliability, but also it's speed. And
> the then-infant Sky Marshall program was greatly expanded.
>
> Rumors about Cooper continue to this day.  The cash turned up in 1980, and
> then in August 2000, US News broke the story that the widow of a Florida
> antique dealer named Duane Weber received a death-bed confession form her
> husband that he was Dan Cooper.
> http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/cooper.htm
> The US News story is a compelling bow-knot to this three decade old tale,
> but the cash remains a mystery.  And so does Cooper.
>
> But after the horrific events of September 11th, one thing is certain.  The
> skyjacking that seemed so terrible in 1971 now strikes one as almost quaint,
> a throw-back to a time when skyjackers acted with some measure of restraint
> and were motivated by goals that we could comprehend even as we condemned
> them. Oh, for such simpler and more innocent times....
> -p


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