Retrospectives are common on anniversaries ending in zeroes.
So, naturally enough, the upcoming 50th anniversary of the JFK
assassination is receiving a lot of attention. I don’t think there is anything
much I can add to this endlessly dissected event. The official line and the
various conspiracy theories are all well known. (My favorite – not the one I
believe, but just my favorite – is still the one presented in Barbara Garson’s
1967 satirical play Macbird, with a
JFK-type character as Ken O’Dunc, LBJ as MacBird, and Ladybird as Lady
MacBird.) “Where were you when…?” no longer is a question asked very often, for
the simple reason that for more than 70% of the US population the answer is “I
wasn’t born yet.” I’m among the minority that does remember 1963, however, so
my answer is “elementary school.” They closed the school early and sent us
home.
So, having nothing beyond this minor personal datum to add
to this upcoming anniversary, I’ll pick another upcoming anniversary on which to
reminisce: one without zeroes. On November 24, 1971, the only unsolved
skyjacking in U.S.
history took place. The perpetrator called himself Dan Cooper. The middle
initial “B” was bestowed on him by the press. He never used it, but the error
has stuck anyway. The well-mannered and politely spoken Cooper informed a
flight attendant on Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle that he had a bomb
in his brief case. He flashed open his case long enough to reveal something
that looked like a bomb. He demanded $200,000 and four parachutes. When the
Boeing 727 landed in Seattle ,
the money (all of which was first photographed by the FBI) was delivered, the
plane was refueled, and Cooper allowed the passengers off the plane. Cooper told
the pilot to fly south at 10,000 feet and specifically ordered him to deploy
flaps at 15 degrees. Cabin pressurization isn’t required at 10,000 feet and the
flap setting prevented the 727 from exceeding 200 mph (322kph) – that he would
know this indicates at least some familiarity with the aircraft. Cooper donned
a parachute, strapped the money to his waist, lowered the aircraft’s rear
staircase, and jumped out somewhere over Oregon .
He was never captured and no body ever was found. Though many possible suspects
have been proposed by amateur investigators in the years since, the true
identity of the skyjacker remains unknown to this day.
The FBI claimed from the start that the odds were heavily against
Cooper’s survival given the airspeed, the altitude, the -70F exterior air
temperature, and the remote wilderness below the aircraft. The problem with
this assertion is that it is demonstrably untrue. How? Because there are still
727s flown by private owners for the purpose of commercial skydiving. Jumpers
not only successfully and repeatedly duplicate the Cooper jump, they pay extra
to do it. Perhaps an inexperienced jumper would have a rougher time of it, but
we don’t know anything about Cooper’s level of experience. Furthermore, while that
part of Oregon
certainly has deep woods, it is not really a wilderness. In 1980, a few miles
from a roadway, a 9-year-old boy found $5800 in the woods that matched serial
numbers from the ransom money. The cash was decayed but still together in three
neat packets, with $200 removed from one, so it didn’t just scatter out of the
sky. This is certainly curious, but there is no way to know what it means. Is this
evidence Cooper died? Did Cooper drop some money while walking out of the
woods, or even deliberately plant it as misdirection? We just don’t know.
Cooper didn’t injure anyone and he was polite, so his
exploit earned him a certain cachet with the public. The “gentleman bandit” always
has had a popular appeal, whether real (Black Bart, John Dillinger) or fictional (Cary Grant in It Takes
a Thief, David Niven in The Pink
Panther). There have been books, songs, movies, and TV shows about Cooper. There is
a Cooper Day event in Ariel Washington .
So, what is my beef with DB Cooper? Those who don’t remember
the world of 1971 scarcely can imagine what a lax and trusting place the US was when it
came to security. There were no metal detectors, pat downs, or baggage searches
at airports. No one asked for your ID before you boarded a plane. Your ticket
was all you needed, and on some flights not even that; on the shuttle between
NYC and DC, for example, you could buy your ticket from the flight attendant
after boarding, totally anonymously. Hardly any businesses other than banks and
casinos bothered with security cameras. Despite the fact that the US was at war
and had several small but violent insurrectionary groups, public buildings were
barely guarded. I could and did enter the Capitol Building
in DC and wander around on my own without once being challenged. Hardly ever
did we feel watched. Whatever the other ills of the era may have been, in this
regard it was a very comfortable time.
Nowadays we always feel watched. Getting on a plane is an
obstacle course. Never mind the Capitol, even my local county courthouse, a
building that once left a half dozen entrances unlocked, can be entered only by
filing through a guarded checkpoint with metal detectors and a sign-in sheet.
Anonymity has all but vanished in public or private life. Try renting a hotel
room without a credit card; oh, they’ll accept cash, but they still want a
record of your card. Cooper is not solely responsible for these changes, which
began long before 9/11, but he certainly is one reason for them – he is
directly responsible for stiffer screening of airline passengers and for the
expansion of the sky marshal program. Intrusive security may be a fact of
modern life, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it. To the extent that
Cooper and people like him have caused the rest of us to be saddled with these
measures, it is perfectly fair to hate them all.
Have just returned from London, I feel your pain about getting through airport security. It was a real pain, on both ends of the pond.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that the "B" was added to his name. I've always heard him referred to as DB. It was one of those mysteries of the 70s that will never be solved, kind of like bigfoot. :)
Maybe Cooper is Bigfoot. A two'fer solution
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