D.B. Cooper cold case team accuses FBI of stonewalling

At the conclusion of a seven-year investigation, a team of amateur sleuths believes it has uncovered infamous skyjacker D.B. Cooper’s true identity.

Documentary filmmaker Tom Colbert, the leader of the cold-case team, held a press conference Thursday outside the FBI’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, to announce his team’s findings and accuse the Bureau of stonewalling and covering up evidence in the case.

“It’s more than a bunch of old guys chasing another old guy over forgotten history. This is about current FBI agents stonewalling, covering up, and flat-out lying for mentors and G-men long gone, over decades — all because of an unholy deal to hide and protect a valuable CIA Black Ops pilot known as D.B. Cooper,” Colbert said in an email to the Daily News.

His accusations refer to the case of a man known as Dan Cooper, who in 1971 hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 and jumped off the plane with $200,000 in ransom somewhere over the Pacific Northwest. He disappeared, and the FBI concluded that he had most likely died from the leap.

But Colbert insists that the man who took over the flight is former U.S. Army paratrooper Robert W. Rackstraw, who is now 74-years-old and lives in the San Diego area.

In November 2017, Rick Sherwood, a veteran of the Army’s signal-intelligence corps and member of Colbert’s team broke an encrypted code on a letter that was sent to newspapers days after the hijacking.

The code on the letter, signed “D.B. Cooper,” revealed Rackstraw’s military units, according to Colbert.

Colbert and his team have since obtained four more Cooper letters that they say link him to Rackstraw.

“The new decryptions include a dare to agents, directives to apparent partners, and a startling claim that is followed by Rackstraw’s own initials: If captured, he expects a get-out-of-jail card from a federal spy agency,” Cooper said in a press release.

A letter mailed on Nov. 27, 1971 contains newly deciphered coding including the phrase “CAN FBI CATCH ME... SWS.”

The letters in the code supposedly refer to the Special Warfare School, where Rackstraw studied.

Another code, “IF CATCH I AM CIA...RWR,” contains Robert W. Rackstraw’s initials, Colbert said.

A third code appears to signal to his partners that he’s flying south in the evening, and a fourth makes reference to another one of his training units.

“Seattle agents were informed of Rackstraw’s letter trail years ago, but they ignored it, along with more than 100 pieces of other evidence (including DNA) from Colbert’s 40-member team — ironically, led by retired FBI,” Colbert said.