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Comment by paulcole | Hacker News Reader

> The first sentence, “I want out of the system and saw a way through good ole Unk,” was decoded to, “I want out of the system and saw a way by skyjacking a jet plane.” And the second sentence, “And please tell the lackey cops D.B. Cooper is not my real name,” was decoded to “I am 1st Lt. Robert Rackstraw, D.B. Cooper is not my real name.”

I wish they explained this in some level of detail that makes it remotely believable.

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Obviously "Unk" is code for "skyjacking a jet plane", and "please tell the lackey cops" is code for "I am 1st Lt. Robert Rackstraw". What's so hard about that? The guy just has a very idiosyncratic set of code phrases that he was clearly using in Vietnam.

I have to agree that the evidence in the article seems flimsy at best. Maybe the book makes a better case for it, but I'd be concerned that it isn't one of those things where someone who is 100% convinced about something doesn't attribute every tiny little coincidence as concrete proof of their theory.

If you're tuned into the right numbers station and know the Illuminati secret handshake it all makes sense.

I know the handshake and it doesn't make sense

It's a different handshake now. They change it every time someone claims to know it.

It requires three hands and a left foot, now.

It sounded to me like it has less to do with the message content, and more that someone who'd worked with Rackstraw in the past thought the message was written in a way similar to Rackstraw's.

Rackstraw served under Sherwood in two classified units, and Sherwood was familiar with his writing style having deciphered some of his earlier messages. When he saw the fifth and sixth typewritten letters, he immediately thought the “odd letter and number combinations” were indicative of the type of coded message that Rackstraw would send.

or something

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