A new report claims that the FBI knew the true identity of notorious hijacker DB Cooper but says senior executives in James Comey’s administration were involved in a scheme to ‘conceal, suppress and fabricate’ evidence in the cold case.
In November 1971, a ‘non-descript man’ identifying himself as Dan ‘DB’ Cooper bought a $20 ticket for a Northwest Orient flight from Portland to Seattle, later demanding $200,000 ransom and a parachute in what later become one of the most infamous cold cases of all time – and the only unsolved skyjacking in US history.
Cooper would later vanish without a trace, skydiving from the rear of the plane with the cash in hand and prompting decades of debate and conspiracy over the brazen thief’s true identity.
An unexpected breakthrough came last year when cold case expert and author Thomas J Colbert identified Robert Rackstraw, a military vet with a murky past who died just last month aged 75, as the man responsible, citing a decades-worth of research as evidence
Now Colbert is naming four of former FBI director James Comey’s senior executives who he claims knew Rackstraw was the Cooper but were embroiled in a yearlong cover up.
Robert Rackstraw (left), a military vet with a murky past riddled by fraud and con-artistry, died last month and is believed to be legendary 1971 skyjacker DB Cooper (composite seen right)
Investigator Tom Colbert claims the FBI. under James Comey’s administration, knew Rackstraw was DB Cooper but were involved in a scheme to ‘conceal, suppress and fabricate’ evidence in the cold case
Colbert claims that retired Assistant FBI Director Tom Fuentes, now a CNN commentator, was a key figure in the alleged cover up.
He claims that between the launches of the Hillary Clinton email investigation and Trump’s Russia probe in 2016, a volunteer cold case team alerted the FBI it had determined Rackstraw was the missing 1971 outlaw D.B. Cooper.
Colbert claims that retired Assistant FBI Director Tom Fuentes, now a CNN commentator, was a key figure in the alleged cover up.
Fuentes was commissioned to study the team’s evidence for three days and says Fuentes was impressed with their research – stating in a recorded transcript that it was ‘a tremendous circumstantial case’ and ‘very probably is [Cooper].’
But, Fuentes’ endorsement reportedly set off Comey’s office, which resulted in his team cancelling their collaboration with the independent investigative team.
The FBI senior executives allegedly canceled a 2016 meeting to accept the independent team’s forensic materials, that included DNA, and ‘discretely shipped off the Cooper file to a locked archive’.
‘Then the senior agents – including Fuentes – proceeded to down-play, hide and lie about the ”tremendous” Rackstraw evidence in the national media,’ the report claims.
Colbert says Jim Reese, one of the investigation team’s 13 retired FBI agents, summarized it best: ‘Rule #1 was you don’t embarrass the Bureau. This door-slam was politics, pure and simple.’
Colbert names three separate instances where national news networks abruptly pulled stories that presented his research before they aired.
The first, he claims, came in September 2016 when a Good Morning America reporter phoned Colbert for an interview on the Cooper case.
The package was edited, but ‘inexplicably shelved’ for broadcast.
NBC News showed interest in the story twice in 2018 and had members from the independent investigation interviewed, but again, the stories were killed before airtime.
The notorious hijacker, who is one of the 20th century’s most compelling masterminds, hijacked a Boeing 727 at Seattle-Tacoma airport in 1971 and held its crew and passengers hostage with a bomb
Rackstraw (right) repeatedly denied any involvement in the crime that gripped the nation,but last year admitted he had ‘no denial’ anymore, after Colbert’s accusation
Rackstraw was a veteran with extensive military training, serving in the National Guard, the Reserve, the Army and served in one of the most decorated combat divisions in the US Army, the 1st Calvary Division, in Vietnam in 1969.
He was first considered as a suspect seven years after the hijacking in 1978, with investigators saying ‘so many things’ about him seemed to match the description of Cooper.
Rackstraw was interviewed about his link to the case in 1979, where he was asked explicitly to state whether he was or wasn’t DB Cooper.
With a wry smile visible across his face, he told the KNBC reporter, ‘Uh, I’m afraid of heights’.
The reported added that his parachute training in the military means he ‘could’ve been DB Cooper’.
‘Could have been, could have been,’ Rackstraw responded.
Little came of the FBI’s suspicions of Rackstraw, but Thomas Colbert officially pointed the finger of blame at him in June last year, wielding a letter sent to the Portland Oregonian newspaper at the time, said to reveal him to be Cooper.
‘This letter is too [sic] let you know I am not dead but really alive and just back from the Bahamas, so your silly troopers up there can stop looking for me. That is just how dumb this government is. I like your articles about me but you can stop them now. D.B. Cooper is not real,’ the letter reads.
‘I want out of the system and saw a way through good ole Unk,’ he writes. ‘Now it is Uncle’s turn to weep and pay one of it’s [sic] own some cash for a change. (And please tell the lackey cops D.B. Cooper is not my real name).’
Rackstraw was a veteran with extensive military training, serving in the National Guard, the Reserve, the Army, and served in one of the most decorated combat divisions in the US Army, the 1st Calvary Division, in Vietnam in 1969
Colbert revealed last February that his code-breaker had uncovered the new hidden messages in four other taunting notes sent by Cooper in the late 1970s, including the one above
Copies of the typewritten letter were sent to The Seattle Times, The New York Times, The LA Times and The Washington Post by the hijacker at the time
Colbert said he obtained the letter after successfully suing the FBI for access to the Cooper files. He gave the letter to Rick Sherwood, a former member of the Army Security Agency, to decode.
Colbert is adamant the FBI was too hasty to wrap up the investigation and now says the revelation of the hidden messages, especially the links to the CIA, proves why the agency has been stonewalling.
He said his team found what they believed to be a parachute strap and foam padding from skydiver’s backpack in the forest near Cooper’s alleged jump location in 2017.
They turned over the two items, along with the dig site itself, to the FBI.
Colbert believes the FBI still hasn’t taken action on any of the team’s efforts despite what they provided them.
He has spent several years conducting his own investigation into the mysterious crime, writing a book and producing a documentary series on it in the process.
Colbert said he has extensively investigated Rackstraw as well. In 1977, six years after the hijacking, Rackstraw was suspected of kiting checks for $75,000, but fled before arrest and went to Iran to teach the Shah’s men how to fly helicopters.