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I don't know of any means that the money could be tied to Ariel. If we did I would certainly have tried it. The diatoms were a good idea but we didn't find any on the money.  The money we dipped in the Columbia showed diatoms  right away, the lack of them on the Cooper Cash is another mystery but again we did not look over a large portion of the bills. The cash at TB remains an enigma.

TK

Diatoms require oxygen. The lack of diatoms could be confirming your theory that the money spent the bulk of its lifetime in a deeper oxygen-free strata than Palmer realised.

Diatoms are also seasonal. The money was discovered in February. Cook's fishermen  claim a
January sighting. The same fishermen claim no sighting prior to January 1980. The record drought
of  '79 ended with flooding which probably caused erosion plus a new top layer of sands in late
79? The money may have just emerged from a lower strata and was discovered before the 1980
seasonal crop of diatoms could affect it.

The lack of diatoms could be a confirmation of your theory that the money was buried in a deeper
strata (perhaps going back to 1971-74) prior to its discovery.

I wonder how Palmer would have explained the lack of diatoms?

Are diatoms contained in mud, such as the mud flats that used to exist in the small channel between Caterpillar Island and the Columbia River shore?  There is a marina located in that channel now which means that it was apparently dredged at some point.

Not finding diatoms does not rule out the Columbia River.  As Georger said, diatoms need oxygen, and if the bills were deprived of oxygen for a required length of time, as in being buried under sand for several years, then the diatoms wouldn't show up.  The bills showed up on the shore of the Columbia River, tattered and torn -- if it quacks like a duck, it's a duck.  It seems probable the money and the Columbia River are connected. 

I've never named a suspect or committed to any theory thus far these past 4 years -- but the one thing that seems to be coming up time and again is the FBI -- their incompetence, secrecy, inconsistencies, and possible cover-up.  Where are the money shards the FBI agents, and others, say were found at Tina Bar?  (Read Bruce's chapter below, he explains it all).  Nowhere to be found.  Where are the cigarette butts?  Nowhere to be found.  It seems anything and everything that could shed light on the case, or be evidence, seems to mysteriously disappear.  The FBI usually claims ignorance or has no comment.  My conclusion: they got duped and outsmarted by a guy who was just one of us, and they're too arrogant -- and ashamed -- to embrace their shortcomings.  The best investigative group in the world got outsmarted by one guy.  I'll tell you who my guy is in this case -- it's DB Cooper himself.  Almost 43 years now and no one has ever found him or conclusively identified him.  He pulled off the great caper, he's the smart one here, he's made the great FBI look like a bunch of bumbling idiots. I have finally named my suspect, it's DB Cooper himself.  He got by with a little help from his friends and he got lucky too, no doubt, but he still pulled it off, and we're all still here scratching our heads -- 43 years later.  He's my guy.... MeyerLouie

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Ok lets hope that things remain civil and scientific here.

We have not heard the final story on the money find. It presents way more questions than it answers. I suspect that if we ever do get the right story we will say "I never would have guessed that!"

With everything we did, we can not find a plausible NATURAL explanation for the money to get there from 20 miles away. Even taking that out of the equation, a rational explanation is still hard to find.

TK

Hey Tom, and thanks for coming. I know we can go to your website and read what you've written there, but can you give the central reasons/facts why you conclude 'a plausible NATURAL explanation' cannot account for the money being at Tina Bar ?

Maybe we need to define what 'a plausible NATURAL explanation' is?

Thanks.

I don't know of any means that the money could be tied to Ariel. If we did I would certainly have tried it. The diatoms were a good idea but we didn't find any on the money.  The money we dipped in the Columbia showed diatoms  right away, the lack of them on the Cooper Cash is another mystery but again we did not look over a large portion of the bills. The cash at TB remains an enigma.

TK

We spent most of the time on the black bills that turned out to be contaminated. Had we known that, then of course we would have ignored them and looked at the other bills. Had we been there the day they were discovered then the rubber bands could have told us more. Finding bills from the center of the stack would have also been helpful. We could have looked to see if there was sand in between the bills which would have indicated they washed up there. If they were super clean, then it would have been more likely that the money didn't come via the river.

As for the diatoms, I would not claim that there are no diatoms on the bills. It is more correct to say we didn't find any. Looking back at my notes just now we never looked at the green money under the SEM so it could have had diatoms on them.

Tom

I was there, I was on the Columbia 11/24/71, I remember that night so clearly.  Actually, DB landed on my car that night.  I took him to Twisp and he ended up marrying that 3-breasted lady with all the horses.  DB was a bottle baby, you know -- all that frustration bottled up for so many years -- well, as they say, the rest is history....Meyer

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Not finding diatoms does not rule out the Columbia River.  As Georger said, diatoms need oxygen, and if the bills were deprived of oxygen for a required length of time, as in being buried under sand for several years, then the diatoms wouldn't show up.  The bills showed up on the shore of the Columbia River, tattered and torn -- if it quacks like a duck, it's a duck.  It seems probable the money and the Columbia River are connected. 

I've never named a suspect or committed to any theory thus far these past 4 years -- but the one thing that seems to be coming up time and again is the FBI -- their incompetence, secrecy, inconsistencies, and possible cover-up.  Where are the money shards the FBI agents, and others, say were found at Tina Bar?  (Read Bruce's chapter below, he explains it all).  Nowhere to be found.  Where are the cigarette butts?  Nowhere to be found.  It seems anything and everything that could shed light on the case, or be evidence, seems to mysteriously disappear.  The FBI usually claims ignorance or has no comment.  My conclusion: they got duped and outsmarted by a guy who was just one of us, and they're too arrogant -- and ashamed -- to embrace their shortcomings.  The best investigative group in the world got outsmarted by one guy.  I'll tell you who my guy is in this case -- it's DB Cooper himself.  Almost 43 years now and no one has ever found him or conclusively identified him.  He pulled off the great caper, he's the smart one here, he's made the great FBI look like a bunch of bumbling idiots. I have finally named my suspect, it's DB Cooper himself.  He got by with a little help from his friends and he got lucky too, no doubt, but he still pulled it off, and we're all still here scratching our heads -- 43 years later.  He's my guy.... MeyerLouie

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You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Ok lets hope that things remain civil and scientific here.

We have not heard the final story on the money find. It presents way more questions than it answers. I suspect that if we ever do get the right story we will say "I never would have guessed that!"

With everything we did, we can not find a plausible NATURAL explanation for the money to get there from 20 miles away. Even taking that out of the equation, a rational explanation is still hard to find.

TK

Hey Tom, and thanks for coming. I know we can go to your website and read what you've written there, but can you give the central reasons/facts why you conclude 'a plausible NATURAL explanation' cannot account for the money being at Tina Bar ?

Maybe we need to define what 'a plausible NATURAL explanation' is?

Thanks.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

I don't know of any means that the money could be tied to Ariel. If we did I would certainly have tried it. The diatoms were a good idea but we didn't find any on the money.  The money we dipped in the Columbia showed diatoms  right away, the lack of them on the Cooper Cash is another mystery but again we did not look over a large portion of the bills. The cash at TB remains an enigma.

TK

Meyer I can't resist asking: Were you DB Cooper?   

"Meyer I can't resist asking: Were you DB Cooper?"

I thought Guru was the only poster under suspicion for being Cooper 

I want so bad to be DB Cooper.  Has anyone consulted a psychic yet?  The truth is out there somewhere, what really happened is in the cosmos somewhere -- we can use all the help we can get, right?

Bruce:

The money find at Tina's bar just happens to be the same amount (three packs of $20 or $6,000) that DB offered the Flight Crew and they refused it! What would DB do then with the three packs of $20 as he has the bag tied up and around his waist? I think he put the three packs into the paper sack he brought on-board, rolled it up and stuffed it into his shirt. While jumping into the "blast", the paper bag could have been blown out of the shirt and be the carrier that took the three packs to some trees and then over the years to Tina's Bar. The sack would have provided floatation and protection for the three packs and kept them all together until time and weather left only the three pack in the sand. To me this is a logical explanation as to how the money got to Tina's Bar with out any "Monkey Business" on the part of the FBI and explains why the three packs were all stacked together as the bag kept them that way until dissolved.

Bob Sailshaw
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One hypothesis about the money find that has not received any attention as far as I know is the notion that the FBI planted the money at Tina Bar to throw the public and us off the trail.  Consider this:

We know that the ground search in the Ariel area was modest in the extreme.  It was conducted primarily by the locals and the feds called them off after four days.  According to the under-sheriff who coordinated the ground search, his groups only covered about one square mile out of about 20. 

At the same time we now know that the feds spent two weeks searching in the Washougal, according to Special Agent Gary Tallis at the Portland Symposium.

Also, Rataczak told me his was east of Victor 23 and Himms says that Bill told him he was flying over the Washougal when Cooper jumped.

So consider that the feds got a good lead on Cooper on the upper slopes of the Washougal or captured him directly. Then some major spin game commenced and pick your favorite reason for a Cooper cover-up - covert ops in Vietnam, funky SAGE radar, or Cooper had pix of J Edgar in corpus delecti.

This angle suggests the Ariel ground search was superfluous and merely a ploy to keep the locals and lookie-loos out of the feds' hair.

So maybe the FBI got everything eventually up on the Washougal - the money, the body, all the chutes and stuff, and then decided to keep quiet about it all. As icing on the cake, they planted twenties at Tina Bar as a major mind-fuck to anyone looking closely.

Wild?  Yeah, but it connects so many dots.

Consider this- If you had a really big secret to keep secret what would you do?  How far would you go?  How far do you think the feds are willing to go to protect powerful people, Nat Security, etc?

Bruce, the FBI did not plant the money on Tina Bar ... any more than they planted the Moon in its orbit!

The only "Three Bundles" is in people minds ....