Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 5, 2018)
6A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 2018 Rick Sherwood Rick Sherwood during the Vietnam War. Robert Rackstraw briefly served under him. Sleuth: Colbert preparing documentary that will reveal the code-breaking process Continued from Page 1A the night, roughly 50 miles from Astoria, never to be found but instantly a figure of fandom and folklore. In 2016, the FBI, insisting “there isn’t anything new out there,” officially closed the case, which remains the only unsolved skyjacking in U.S. history. Colbert’s evidence tying Rackstraw to Cooper has been strong but circum- stantial — until his FOIA request compelled the FBI to release a trove of documents that included an unpub- lished Dec. 11, 1971, letter the agency believes Cooper himself typed and sent to the Washington Post. Cooper had also mailed copies of the letter to the Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times and New York Times, but the FBI confiscated them before the newspapers could print them. Though the letters were almost identical — assert- ing that Cooper “knew from the start that I wouldn’t be caught” — each copy came with a unique set of numbers and alphabetical letters at the bottom that looked like neg- ligible gibberish. After the letter’s release, a member of Colbert’s team, Rick Sherwood — an Army Security Agency veteran who joined the investiga- tion because Rackstraw tem- porarily flew under him in Vietnam — realized some- thing: The string of non- sense looked an awful lot like Army “code-speak” used during the Vietnam War to pinpoint the enemy. ‘Rackstraw wrote it’ With the code from the Post letter, and a recovered code from the Los Ange- les Times, Sherwood man- aged to decipher Cooper’s seemingly random char- acters — and they point to the three specialized mili- tary units (two of them top secret at the time) Rackstraw served in during the war: the Army Security Agency, the 371st Radio Research Unit and the 11th General Support Company. “I immediately real- ized the team’s prime Coo- per suspect was connected to all three of these hidden groups,” Sherwood said in an email to The Daily Astorian. Colbert said there’s only one man who served in all three of these units: Rack- straw. “And that’s the smok- ing gun.” “The FBI thought this was Cooper’s letter, and we can prove Rackstraw wrote it,” he said. The steps Sherwood took to decrypt the message were divulged off the record, but Colbert and Sherwood walked The Daily Astorian through them. “I’m not really surprised that the FBI didn’t break it, because you really gotta know the person, in a sense, that made the code because he did his own encryption,” Sherwood said, “so I did things that would relate to him, and it actually broke out that way.” Sherwood never thought he would use his Army code knowledge again after leav- ing the military, “but in this particular case, it worked out pretty good,” he said. One of Rackstraw’s Viet- nam commanders work- ing with Colbert had hast- ily inducted Rackstraw into the world of top-secret mil- itary units after a group of soldiers died in action, but later booted him out for lying about his qualifications for top-secret clearance. The team posits that Rack- straw’s “coded dispatch was directed at a very small audi- ence: the three veterans that, according to FBI documents and witnesses, helped him escape the jump drop zone by small plane,” Colbert said in a release. Norman de Winter A year and a half ago, Colbert’s search for Cooper’s identity — a task that has involved a 40-member “cold case team” with 13 retired FBI agents — became the subject of a two-part History documentary, “D.B. Cooper: Case Closed?” The program featured North Coast residents who recounted a peculiar epi- sode that took place in Asto- ria not long before Cooper’s high-flying stunt. A young charmer who called himself “Norman de Winter” and claimed to be a well-heeled Swiss baron arrived in town. Over a cou- ple of months, he bonded with townsfolk, took their money, exploited their hospi- tality, offered to fly a group to his château in Switzerland for the holidays — and van- ished. Former Astoria Mayor Willis Van Dusen reckoned the con artist had scammed about 200 people. Accord- ing to Colbert’s research, de Winter resurfaced a short time later in Corvallis, before the hijacking. Local de Winter acquain- Thomas Colbert The letter sent to the Washington Post, and cc’d to other prominent publications, with a unique code at the bottom. tances received letters from him after his disappearance, around the same time letters began showing up by another disappearing act: Dan Coo- per (misreported as “D.B.” Cooper). Though de Winter wit- nesses said in the History documentary that a contem- poraneous photo of Rack- straw resembles de Winter, no photo of the “baron” has turned up. If Rackstraw is Cooper, that doesn’t mean either man is de Winter. However, Colbert points to an observation made by Senior Investigator Jon Campbell of the South Caro- lina Law Enforcement Divi- sion: The odds of Rack- straw, de Winter and Cooper — three master criminals with aviation backgrounds — all falling within the same geographic area, all looking alike, and all seem- ing to appear when the oth- ers disappear is “statistically impossible.” If Rackstraw is de Winter, a commenter speculated, the pseudonym may be a sly ref- erence to Dick Winters, the hero of the World War II Nor- mandy invasion who para- chuted into France on D-Day. (Normandy + Winters = Nor- man de Winter). Cooper scholars and the History program — in which the FBI announced the agency would reopen the case only with evidence like the money or the parachute in hand — cast doubt on the Rackstraw hypothesis. For the show’s finale, Tina Mucklow, a flight attendant IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR! 5:00 pm Downtown Astoria Every month, year ‘round! Jan . 13 th ½ PRICE WEDNESDAYS 60 & OVER EAT FOR HALF PRICE ALL DAY CHECK OUT OUR $ 6 DAILY SOUP & LUNCH SPECIALS MON: TUE: WED: THU: FRI: TRIPLE GRILLED CHEESE WITH TOMATO BASIL SOUP CHICKEN SALAD WRAP WITH MINESTRONE SOUP BOWL OF BLACK & WHITE BEAN CHILI AND CORNBREAD FRENCH DIP WITH POTATO LEEK SOUP COD FISH TACOS WITH A CILANTRO LIME SAUCE AND RICE OUR SOUPS ARE, OF COURSE, HOMEMADE OPEN DAILY AT 11AM Done with D.B. The Daily Astorian called Rackstraw, 74, for a response. Asked about Col- bert’s claim that he can prove Rackstraw typed the Dec. 11 letter, Rackstraw said: “Get him to swear that everything he said is true under the pen- alty of perjury.” Then he hung up. Rackstraw has repeatedly denied that he is D.B. Coo- per, though he has insinuated in interviews over the years that he very well could be. He has dismissed and criti- cized Colbert’s work but has yet to file a lawsuit. Having pursued Cooper since 2011, Colbert is satis- fied with the outcome of his search and is preparing to move on to other projects. The co-author of 2016’s “The Last Master Outlaw,” Colbert feels he has reason- ably established his case and plans to write a new chap- ter covering this potentially game-changing develop- ment. He is also preparing a documentary that will reveal the code-breaking process. Unless Rackstraw or someone else confesses to the crime — an event of endur- ing mystery and fascination — Colbert said he will no longer be giving Cooper-re- lated breaking news updates. “I don’t see anything else to do (with D.B. Cooper),” he said. “We’re, in essence, done.” Phone and Internet Discounts Available to CenturyLink Customers The Oregon Public Utility Commission designated CenturyLink as an Eligible Telecommunications Carrier within its service area for universal service purposes. CenturyLink’s basic local service rates for residential voice lines are $15.80-$17.80 per month and business services are $28.00-$32.00 per month. Specific rates will be provided upon request. CenturyLink participates in a government benefit program (Lifeline) to make residential telephone or broadband service more affordable to eligible low-income individuals and families. Eligible customers are those that meet eligibility standards as defined by the FCC and state commissions. Residents who live on federally recognized Tribal Lands may qualify for additional Tribal benefits if they participate in certain additional federal eligibility programs. The Lifeline discount is available for only one telephone or qualifying broadband service per household, which can be either a wireline or wireless service. Broadband speeds must be 15 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload or faster to qualify. Lifeline discounts include a transfer restriction (port freeze). This means that you are unable to obtain the Lifeline discount on service with another provider for a period of time. The length of time depends on the services you purchase – 60 days for voice telephone service, 12 months for qualifying broadband service. Certain exceptions to the transfer restrictions may apply. See http://www.lifelinesupport.org/ls/change-my-company. aspx for more information. A household is defined for the purposes of the Lifeline program as any individual or group of individuals who live together at the same address and share income and expenses. Lifeline service is not transferable, and only eligible consumers may enroll in the program. Consumers who willfully make false statements in order to obtain Lifeline telephone or broadband service can be punished by fine or imprisonment and can be barred from the program. If you live in a CenturyLink service area, please call 1-888- 833-9522 or visit centurylink.com/lifeline with questions or to request an application for the Lifeline program. Visit Downtown Astoria on the 2nd Saturday of every month for art, music, and general merriment! Presented by the Astoria Downtown Historic District Association astoriadowntown.com facebook/astoriadowntown.com Cooper held hostage, said, after looking at young Rack- straw’s mugshot, that he isn’t the man she met that fateful night. Colbert and others have said that Mucklow’s trauma may have affected her mem- ory. The new Cooper let- ter also mentions that the hijacker wore a toupee and putty makeup — a descrip- tion consistent with that given by a fellow passenger. 1 BLOCK OFF BROADWAY • 1 BLOCK FROM BEACH 20 N. COLUMBIA, SEASIDE • 503-738-4331 NormasSeaside.com