Speaker 1: Guess what, mengo, what's that? Well, all right, so this
Speaker 1: may be a weird question, but did you ever hear
Speaker 1: the story about Norway's first skyjacking? So I don't really
Speaker 1: keep up with the countries first skyjackings. Well this one's
Speaker 1: worth noting because it's it's actually kind of funny. As
Speaker 1: strange as this sounds, but this was long after the
Speaker 1: golden age of skyjackings, and there was this lone wolf
Speaker 1: who hopped onto the plane. He got up to the
Speaker 1: front of the plane that was carrying a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixteen passengers, and he demanded to talk to the Prime
Speaker 1: Minister of Norway and their Minister of Justice. He wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to both of these people. They weren't on
Speaker 1: the plane. He just insisted he needed to talk to them. Now.
Speaker 1: He had a gun, and he claimed to have more
Speaker 1: explosives hidden on him, but he didn't really have a plan.
Speaker 1: He just kind of let the plane go on its course.
Speaker 1: But then it lands and he starts negotiating. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know, the guy had been drinking heavily the whole time,
Speaker 1: so he wasn't the world's best negotiator. So first he
Speaker 1: let off seventy passengers or so, you know, just just because.
Speaker 1: And then he said he let the rest of the
Speaker 1: passengers go, if the pilots would just taxi the plane
Speaker 1: on up to the terminal, that's what they're supposed to
Speaker 1: do anyway, I know, but he demanded that they do
Speaker 1: that as well. So then once he drunk through the
Speaker 1: plane supply of beer, he said he'd turn over his
Speaker 1: weapons if he could just get a little bit more
Speaker 1: to drink. You know, he wasn't quite done with this,
Speaker 1: so he wanted another beer too, And then of course
Speaker 1: when the authorities brought him the beverage delivery, they arrested him.
Speaker 1: That is so sad, I mean, like he's like the
Speaker 1: world's worst skyjacker and he didn't even take the plane
Speaker 1: somewhere fun or get his message to the government, I know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't really think he had a message
Speaker 1: other than that he was maybe dissatisfied with his life.
Speaker 1: But it does kind of get into something that we
Speaker 1: want to talk about today. Why were skyjackers so obsessed
Speaker 1: with commandeering planes? And was there a Bonnie and Clyde
Speaker 1: of skyjackers? And why was there a golden age of skyjacking?
Speaker 1: And that's what we're talking about today, So let's dive ina.
Speaker 1: Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 1: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 1: friend Mangesha Ticketer. And on the other side of the
Speaker 1: soundproof glass slowly creasing. I think those are our show notes,
Speaker 1: say to these paper planes and throwing. Look at that
Speaker 1: one that was like soaring. Those things are glide. That's
Speaker 1: pretty impressive. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I
Speaker 1: didn't even realize he had such a good arm. I
Speaker 1: had heard, you know, just from around the office. People
Speaker 1: like to talk about all the things that Tristan can do,
Speaker 1: so I had heard he had an incredible arm. But this,
Speaker 1: this really proves it. It is impressive. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll spend another episode talking about all of Tristan's talents,
Speaker 1: but why don't we dive into this one? So, Mango,
Speaker 1: what was the golden age of skyjacking? So this is
Speaker 1: actually an era I didn't know much about until I've
Speaker 1: read this incredible book. It's called The Skies Belonged to
Speaker 1: Us by Brendan Corner, and most of today's research comes
Speaker 1: out of that book. And of course we've supplemented it
Speaker 1: with stories and facts we've pulled from other sources. But listeners,
Speaker 1: if you're at all interested in this topic, definitely pick
Speaker 1: up Corners book The Skies Belonged to Us because it
Speaker 1: is fascinating. So the Golden Age was basically between nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, and this is when security at airports was
Speaker 1: super lax, and over a hundred fifty flights were hijacked
Speaker 1: in the American airspace during that time. Supposedly, at the
Speaker 1: height of the trend, planes were hijacked nearly once and
Speaker 1: sometimes twice a week. Yeah, I mean there were stories
Speaker 1: of pilots who have been hijacked multiple times. It was
Speaker 1: almost routine by that point. And so we're passengers being
Speaker 1: killed during this or what was happening? No, So that's
Speaker 1: the crazy thing, right, Like the hijackers were mostly pretty
Speaker 1: civil and the airlines handled it all very coolly. So
Speaker 1: often a hijacker just wanted to save passage out of
Speaker 1: the country, or wanted money, or to make some sort
Speaker 1: of political statement. And you read the story and you
Speaker 1: can't imagine how many hijackings are just happening one after another.
Speaker 1: It's like people just walked onto planes and decided to
Speaker 1: hijack them on the spot. It's business people, academics, blue
Speaker 1: collar workers, people who were out of work, kids. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are more than a few stories of teenagers doing this,
Speaker 1: and supposedly every time there was press about a new
Speaker 1: type of hijacking like skijacking, a plan for political justice
Speaker 1: then something that would lead to all these copycats. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's truly insane to read these accounts, but from my
Speaker 1: reading of the era, it really does seem like it
Speaker 1: was also more of an innocent time and these hijackers
Speaker 1: weren't really looking to harm or even bothered the passengers.
Speaker 1: I mean, that does sound weird to say, and and
Speaker 1: I know you don't want to downplay the violence, because
Speaker 1: there were definitely some deaths and injuries, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: nearly as many as you'd expect from this time. And
Speaker 1: this this is a little bit off topic, but from
Speaker 1: that same period, I started reading this book called Days
Speaker 1: of Rage, just by Brian Burrow, and it's about Weatherman
Speaker 1: of the nineties seventies, and one of the things that
Speaker 1: struck me was that this bi agent told the author
Speaker 1: that in nineteen seventy two, setting off bombs was actually
Speaker 1: a pretty common way to voice political protests. And it's
Speaker 1: baffling how many bombs went off without people getting hurt
Speaker 1: during that time. The agent was saying that they were
Speaker 1: over nineteen hundred bombings that year alone, and in an
Speaker 1: eighteen months span there were actually twenty five hundred bombings.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine that? Twenty hundred bombings, and so sometimes
Speaker 1: they were like five protest bombings in a single day.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really unimaginable, like those sorts of numbers. Then,
Speaker 1: were there a lot of fatalities? No, I mean kind
Speaker 1: of like you were saying with the sky jacking, that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of the thing that really weren't. People tended
Speaker 1: to use these small explosives and they target these abandoned buildings,
Speaker 1: and the bombs were treated maybe like a public nuisance.
Speaker 1: And this sounds insane to say this, but they were
Speaker 1: almost treated as a way for a political group to
Speaker 1: drop a press release. You'd have this explosion, they'd get
Speaker 1: some attention, and then they would make their statement. And
Speaker 1: according to Burrows, it was considered almost like the semi
Speaker 1: ex up to its strategy for being heard. It just
Speaker 1: sounds so lawless and I don't ever want to return
Speaker 1: to those times, but you can see how commandeering a
Speaker 1: massive air bus kind of has that same appeal. It
Speaker 1: seems both quaint but also shows how desperate people were
Speaker 1: to be heard. So I do want to get into
Speaker 1: the Golden Age. But your bombing story remind me about
Speaker 1: one of the weirdest things I remember learning in college,
Speaker 1: and it's that Yemen used to be considered one of
Speaker 1: the best places in the world to be kidnapped, Like
Speaker 1: it was really just about holding you until someone forked
Speaker 1: over at ransom. And this was kind of the practice
Speaker 1: even through the nine nineties. So I read this one
Speaker 1: account from an American diplomat who was kidnapped there, and
Speaker 1: he said that while the initial shock of being kidnapped
Speaker 1: is of course unnerving, once he was brought to the
Speaker 1: kidnappers lair, they greeted him with this beautiful recited poem
Speaker 1: what And then they fed him well and offered him
Speaker 1: caught to chew, which is, you know, that mild stimulant.
Speaker 1: And there are other accounts of this too, like so
Speaker 1: the Washington Post had interviewed this man who was he
Speaker 1: was giving cigarettes and cookies and teed to keep his
Speaker 1: spirits up, and another person was you know, told to
Speaker 1: teach kids English to stave off his boredom, and allowed visitors,
Speaker 1: and he could go on these walking tours of the
Speaker 1: city and make phone calls home, and he was even
Speaker 1: brought reading materials that he requested. It's crazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: I imagine the tourism board coming up with a slogan
Speaker 1: of like how they're the best place in the world
Speaker 1: to be kidnapped. And I don't want to make light
Speaker 1: of this, but it really is just so bizarre to
Speaker 1: read about this stuff, I know, and it was considered
Speaker 1: pretty normal. And often after a few days when the
Speaker 1: ransom payment had gone through, the kidnapped folks would emerge
Speaker 1: with souvenirs like they take home beautiful curved daggers and
Speaker 1: luxurious robes. That guy who has read that beautiful poem,
Speaker 1: he still has a copee of that poem. It's insane.
Speaker 1: But obviously it's not like that anymore, especially since like
Speaker 1: all Kinda and other extremists have gotten into the act
Speaker 1: now being kidnapped as much more deadly. And you know,
Speaker 1: Yemen's four star kidnapping reviews have certainly gone down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it is completely terrifying. But all right, well
Speaker 1: let's bring this back to the Golden age that we
Speaker 1: were talking about before. So just just to set the
Speaker 1: scene a little bit here, this general period was one
Speaker 1: of a lot of political unrest. We're talking about again,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one nineteen seventy two, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: going on, think about you know, the Vietnam War and
Speaker 1: civil rights and hippies and black panthers, and you know,
Speaker 1: the Cold War is going strong, and there's quite a
Speaker 1: bit of political distrust of the establishment during this time.
Speaker 1: And of course you know there have been a few
Speaker 1: skyjackings in other countries as well. Right, that's right, And
Speaker 1: hijacking wasn't even the preferred terms, So hijackers were mostly
Speaker 1: called escape ease during this period, partially because hijacking was
Speaker 1: seen as this almost negative term that had been lingering
Speaker 1: from the prohibition era. Yeah, you know, supposedly the term
Speaker 1: came from these highway robberies, you know, when a mobster
Speaker 1: would greet you with a friendly hijack and before of
Speaker 1: course taking your truck and all the alcohol that it
Speaker 1: was guarding. Yeah, but this was a little different since
Speaker 1: they weren't you know, typically mobsters. It was mostly people
Speaker 1: just defecting from communism, and there was an early case
Speaker 1: of three different planes being simultaneously rerouted from Czechoslovakia to
Speaker 1: West Germany, where the defectors were welcomed like heroes. And
Speaker 1: then there was there was almost this like cute story
Speaker 1: where six hijackers took over a plane in Europe. They
Speaker 1: made the pilot fly over Lisbon so they could drop
Speaker 1: leaflets from the sky and it was just like print
Speaker 1: outs protesting the government there. And once they had sort
Speaker 1: of distributed all their flyers, they asked to be dropped
Speaker 1: off in Morocco. I mean, it makes it sound so harmless,
Speaker 1: you know, but that people saw planes is their only
Speaker 1: way to flee from their home countries. Is it's really
Speaker 1: interesting to think about, you know, Like during that time,
Speaker 1: there's all this back and forth of people fleeing Cuba
Speaker 1: to come to the States and then people demanding that
Speaker 1: planes be rerouted to Havana. Yeah, that stuff is fascinating.
Speaker 1: In fact, the first U s light that was skyjacked
Speaker 1: was by a guy who wanted to be taken to Havana.
Speaker 1: He took a knife into the cockpit and demanded the
Speaker 1: plane go there. But what's Also interesting about the time
Speaker 1: is that you couldn't really take a plane that far.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that, Well, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the sixties and there's one story will get into the
Speaker 1: later of of a guy who wanted to be taken
Speaker 1: to North Korea, but a plane just wouldn't get you
Speaker 1: that far. So even in the eighties when my family
Speaker 1: would go back to India, the trip would take forever.
Speaker 1: It was a twenty two hour journey. And the reason
Speaker 1: was that from JFK you'd have to make a pit
Speaker 1: stop in Paris or London, and then you fly to
Speaker 1: Cairo to refuel there, and then you go to Delhi
Speaker 1: to refuel, and then you get to Bombay. Like everyone
Speaker 1: on the plane was going from JFK to Bombay and
Speaker 1: it was ludicrous, right, But actually, in Corner's book, a
Speaker 1: lot of the stories are hijackers negotiating as their plane
Speaker 1: is being refueled or then being directed or redirected to
Speaker 1: another airport before they're you know, getting their money in
Speaker 1: parachutes and then they take off for the international journey.
Speaker 1: But part of Havana's appeal was that you could actually
Speaker 1: touch ground in a communist nation without having to refuel
Speaker 1: just so strange. Well, you know, I was looking into
Speaker 1: the whole Cuba America relations during that time, and it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to see what was happening. So after Castro
Speaker 1: takes over, the Cubans start hijacking planes to land in
Speaker 1: the US. You're mostly Key West or Miami. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the funny things was that this ad exact name,
Speaker 1: Irwin Harris, immediately started claiming these planes. His whole thing
Speaker 1: was that he'd run a super expensive tourism campaign for
Speaker 1: Havana and Castro and the government still owed him close
Speaker 1: to five hundred thousand dollars for his efforts, so kind
Speaker 1: of being a showman, he welcomed them as his own.
Speaker 1: But here's the weirdest part of this. The US government
Speaker 1: actually let him auction off the planes and keep the
Speaker 1: money from this. Castro was obviously peeved that people were
Speaker 1: stealing Cuban planes and fleeing the country, but the fact
Speaker 1: that the US wasn't giving the planes back and instead
Speaker 1: letting Harris auction them off, I mean, that just got
Speaker 1: him angrier. And that was, of course the whole point.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what the American government wanted to do,
Speaker 1: and so they let Harris sell eleven planes. Eleven planes
Speaker 1: feels insane. But at that time, the U S didn't
Speaker 1: really believe anyone would steal an American plan, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean they were a little bit cocky
Speaker 1: about it because, you know, as they thought about it,
Speaker 1: like who would want to leave America? And so suddenly
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one, when a hijacker demands that a
Speaker 1: US plane reroute to Cuba, things start to shift a
Speaker 1: little bit. So obviously Cuba becomes a big lure for
Speaker 1: American dissidents, and people think they're going to be welcomed
Speaker 1: with open arms, and particularly those who have been disenfranchised.
Speaker 1: Because Castro was telling the world he's building a new
Speaker 1: type of country. Yeah, you know, as one skyjacker put it,
Speaker 1: as he saw the runway lights, quote, in a few hours,
Speaker 1: it would be dawn in a new world. I was
Speaker 1: about to enter paradise. Cuba was creating a true democracy,
Speaker 1: a place where everyone was equal, where violence against blacks injustice,
Speaker 1: and racism, where things of the past. I'd come to
Speaker 1: Cuba to feel freedom at least once, you know. But
Speaker 1: of course that freedom he longed for wasn't really the case.
Speaker 1: And Castro loved that these flights were coming in because
Speaker 1: it humiliated the US and he got a little bit
Speaker 1: of ransom out of it. I think you charged the
Speaker 1: airlines something like bucks to return each plane. You know
Speaker 1: also that this is funny because the US and Cuba
Speaker 1: didn't interact, but there was actually this quick form to
Speaker 1: make that transaction happen, and they would have to do
Speaker 1: this through the Swiss embassy in Cuba. Just for being
Speaker 1: able to retrieve these planes. It's so strange, that's funny. Well,
Speaker 1: how are the passengers on the planes treated like I
Speaker 1: I know in some cases passengers were let off on
Speaker 1: the first refueling, but uh, I'm guessing that always didn't
Speaker 1: happen in these kidnappings in Cuba. Well, you know, often
Speaker 1: the passengers on the planes got a nice night out
Speaker 1: of it, which you know, they'd they'd be put up
Speaker 1: in a fancy Havannah hotel, they'd be given cigars and
Speaker 1: smooth RUMs, the ability to go shopping, and then they
Speaker 1: just be put back on the plane and they'd go home.
Speaker 1: Hijacking was actually happening so often that Time magazine even
Speaker 1: put out a little guide for being skyjacked. And you
Speaker 1: know how to make the most of that experience. It's
Speaker 1: so weird. I was looking at some of the tips
Speaker 1: and they're like one of them was don't ring the
Speaker 1: button for the flight attendant, since that, you know, that
Speaker 1: could startle the hide jacker. So great, but also recommended
Speaker 1: the chorus lines and Dacris and shopping for East German cameras,
Speaker 1: you know, which you could get for a steel in
Speaker 1: Havannah's markets. That's so weird. And what happened to the hijackers, now,
Speaker 1: this is actually a pretty different story. Castro was was
Speaker 1: really full of contempt for these hijackers, so they weren't
Speaker 1: treated like Harris. And why is that. Well, he didn't
Speaker 1: want revolutionaries in his country, is really what it came
Speaker 1: down to. So, you know, when they landed, they were
Speaker 1: taken in for these brutal interrogations. Castro was actually convinced
Speaker 1: that some of these people were spies for the US government.
Speaker 1: You know, depending on what the interrogators thought, their fate
Speaker 1: was made up for them. Some of them ended up
Speaker 1: in sugarcane fields, which was just nightmarish, and you know,
Speaker 1: some people were lashed and beaten and the conditions were
Speaker 1: pretty terrifying. The other option was being sent to a
Speaker 1: place called the Hijackers House. And at one point this building,
Speaker 1: which was just like two stories tall, it had sixty
Speaker 1: hijackers there, but they got a stipend of I think
Speaker 1: it was forty pasos and onth But the living wasn't easy.
Speaker 1: I think each person only got about fifteen or sixteen
Speaker 1: square feet of personal space when they were living there. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I didn't really think about the fact that there would
Speaker 1: be like sixty hijackers stuck in one communist house. It
Speaker 1: kind of sounds like the worst season of the real world. Like,
Speaker 1: but why did people still come to Cuba? I don't know,
Speaker 1: man Go, I've seen some pretty terrible seasons of the
Speaker 1: real world. But to your question, I have read a
Speaker 1: few accounts of this, and you know, even though the
Speaker 1: information about the conditions in Cuba was being covered by
Speaker 1: the press and spreading to the US, people were still
Speaker 1: just kind of hopelessly starry eyed that Castro would see
Speaker 1: their case differently. Actually, let let me just quote Corner here.
Speaker 1: He says, um, every skyjacker was an optimist at heart,
Speaker 1: supremely confident that his story would be the one to
Speaker 1: touch Castro. The twenty eight year old air to a
Speaker 1: New Mexico real estate fortune. He had hijacked the Delta
Speaker 1: Airlines jet while inexplicably dressed as a cowboy. You've got
Speaker 1: so she allo student from Kalamazoo, Michigan who wanted to
Speaker 1: study communism firsthand. You've also got a thirty four year
Speaker 1: old Cuban exile, and he diverted a flight because he
Speaker 1: could no longer bear to live without his mother's delicately
Speaker 1: seasoned free holays. So the list goes on and on.
Speaker 1: It's just crazy. Well, I want to get into what
Speaker 1: the airlines did and why it took them so long
Speaker 1: to fight back. But before that, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: So welcome back to Part time Genius, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about the golden age of hijacking. Well, did I ever
Speaker 1: tell you about the time I was in the kind
Speaker 1: of Do airport. I'm not sure. Maybe. So this was
Speaker 1: just before the millennium, and I was done with my
Speaker 1: study of broad program and leaving a few days early
Speaker 1: just to visit my relatives in India. And at the
Speaker 1: front of the airport and come and Do there was
Speaker 1: an X ray machine, but the line for it was insane.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm curious, so I looked a little closer,
Speaker 1: and for a single machine, there was just so much
Speaker 1: bureaucracy going on around it. Like there was one guy
Speaker 1: who was barking orders, making sure you took all your
Speaker 1: belongings and put them on the conveyor belt in the
Speaker 1: right order, and then there was someone else kind of
Speaker 1: rearranging and repacking them as they fed into this X
Speaker 1: ray machine. And then there was a third guy on
Speaker 1: the other side, and he was meticulously putting stickers on
Speaker 1: each bag to show what had gone through the machine.
Speaker 1: But no one was actually looking at the X ray part.
Speaker 1: So did you end up saying anything? I mean, who
Speaker 1: do you tell? Right? Like, I just kind of noticed
Speaker 1: and laughed it off, and that's usually where I cut
Speaker 1: the story off. But this is the scary part. So
Speaker 1: someone else must have been noticing too, because two or
Speaker 1: three days later, the same afternoon flight I took from
Speaker 1: Cutman due to DELI on the same airline was actually hijack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's insane, right, So they took the plane to Afghanistan
Speaker 1: and it was tense. There were people on the tarmac
Speaker 1: For two days. I was glued to the TV because
Speaker 1: I was really afraid I knew someone on the plane. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was also a flight that I thought about taking,
Speaker 1: you know, postponing my trip by two days. But thankfully,
Speaker 1: no one on the plane was hurt. And this was
Speaker 1: pre nine eleven, so it was before there were these
Speaker 1: really strict security measures that most of these airports. I
Speaker 1: think when I flew out of Philadelphia that summer earlier
Speaker 1: for my trip, my parents even dropped me off at
Speaker 1: the gate before I went. And I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: you remember that, but like people could actually go to
Speaker 1: the gates or receive you there. It's crazy, but it's
Speaker 1: almost hard to remember what security used to look like
Speaker 1: in the eighties or nineties, let alone in the sixties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. I mean security was definitely lax in the
Speaker 1: sixties and it's pretty fascinating to read about it because
Speaker 1: you know, the responsibility was pretty much on the airlines
Speaker 1: to maintain that security. So why is that. Well, they
Speaker 1: didn't want to spend money on the security to stop
Speaker 1: these hijackings. I mean, they're they're big thing was no violence.
Speaker 1: And when they did this risk benefit analysis and they
Speaker 1: decided to calculate it out the way they saw it
Speaker 1: was as long as the passengers weren't being harmed, it
Speaker 1: was actually cheaper for the airlines to just comply with
Speaker 1: a hijacker. They'd agree to send him on a joy ride,
Speaker 1: maybe give them a little bit of ransom money, and
Speaker 1: just deal with all the canceled flights that happened because
Speaker 1: of this, And that was all seen as preferable rather
Speaker 1: than paying for more security at the airports. And you know,
Speaker 1: you also look at ticket sales at the time, I mean,
Speaker 1: they were at an all time high in the airlines
Speaker 1: believe that subjecting people to checking bags and patting them
Speaker 1: down was it was kind of like treating them like criminals.
Speaker 1: And so they didn't want ticket sales to drop from
Speaker 1: any of these measures, so they fought tooth and nail
Speaker 1: against adding any security. In fact, they had a really
Speaker 1: strong lobbying arm just to prevent that from happening. It's
Speaker 1: really weird to think about that airlines weren't actually trying
Speaker 1: to lessen the threat of hijackings. And it's also interesting
Speaker 1: that like skyjacking evolved and how it evolved, Like people
Speaker 1: were stealing planes in the nineteen sixties, and it was
Speaker 1: always to fly to a different country. But the airlines
Speaker 1: were caught off guard the first time someone actually demanded
Speaker 1: a ransom. Why would that be? I guess it just
Speaker 1: didn't occur to them, like they thought that skyjackers were
Speaker 1: a higher class of criminal and just interested in safe passage.
Speaker 1: But changed with this guy named Arthur Gates Barkley in
Speaker 1: ninety three. So Barkley was this truck driver who has
Speaker 1: let go from his job and had a lot of
Speaker 1: court cases that he'd filed and just wasn't winning any
Speaker 1: of them. One was over a five dollar tax bill
Speaker 1: which he claimed was miscalculated. Anyway, he was disgruntled and
Speaker 1: he petitioned the Supreme Court, who of course didn't want
Speaker 1: to hear his case. And he was so angry that
Speaker 1: no one was listening that he decided to hijack a plane.
Speaker 1: So does he take it to Cuba or where does
Speaker 1: he go? No? In fact, the pilots were stunned when
Speaker 1: he sent it only thirty miles off course to Dallas, Virginia.
Speaker 1: He wanted a hundred million dollar ransom from the Supreme
Speaker 1: courts coffers. He was specific about that in exchange for
Speaker 1: the safety of the passengers on the plane. And this
Speaker 1: is an insane ask, right, Like, a hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: is a lot of money, and he's clearly desperate and
Speaker 1: not in his right mind, and of course the airline
Speaker 1: is totally unprepared, so instead they bring him a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, which is a little less than a hundred million. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's what quick calculation, and I think that's
Speaker 1: a thousand times less than a hundred even a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. I mean that's still a lot of money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But he was pissed. So there's this dance where he
Speaker 1: gets the pilots to take off and then he lands again,
Speaker 1: trying to get his full hundred billion dollars, and this
Speaker 1: time the Feds are ready. They just shoot out the
Speaker 1: landing gear and everyone on board escapes out this back
Speaker 1: hatch while he's distracted. In fact, this is a great
Speaker 1: story of a photojournalist on board who waits to be
Speaker 1: the last person and he coolly snaps the photo of
Speaker 1: Barkley just angry in a pile of hundred dollar bills
Speaker 1: before he jumps out the hatch, and then the Feds
Speaker 1: come on board to arrest him. But the interesting thing
Speaker 1: is how the hijackers. Spouse responded once Barkley was arrested.
Speaker 1: So instead of feigning ignorance like you'd imagine most wives
Speaker 1: of criminals might, she was almost supportive. Like she was
Speaker 1: filmed in front of boxes and boxes of legal correspondence
Speaker 1: that Barkley had been sending out, and she said kind
Speaker 1: of what we're saying at the top of this show,
Speaker 1: that this was an act of a person who didn't
Speaker 1: have a voice. And as she put it, quote, he
Speaker 1: believes in this country and the constitution. He believes in
Speaker 1: what he was fighting for in World War Two, but
Speaker 1: the government wouldn't even listen to him. He did it
Speaker 1: to get someone to pay attention to him. He was
Speaker 1: trying to help us, but he made it worse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can sense the desperation there. But yeah, there
Speaker 1: was this genuine public rooting for the outlaw at that time.
Speaker 1: And of course those weren't the only types of criminals.
Speaker 1: You know, there's the dB Cooper hijacking, which also emerged
Speaker 1: in this era. Was the swave gentleman Robbert who hijacked
Speaker 1: a plane and parachuted off with all these bags full
Speaker 1: of money. And of course there's the story of Holder
Speaker 1: and kirk Ow, who I know you want to talk
Speaker 1: about a little bit. You know, there was lots of
Speaker 1: glamor in this crime, but you know, the airlines were
Speaker 1: just absolutely resistant to doing anything to prevent it. In fact,
Speaker 1: you know, there's this memo from nineteen sixty eight that
Speaker 1: Eastern Airlines sent out to all employees and it made
Speaker 1: it clear that all attempts at heroism by the pilots
Speaker 1: were totally forbidden, and instead all cockpits were equipped with
Speaker 1: the flight to Cuba charts. You know, regardless of their destination,
Speaker 1: they had to know how to get there. They also
Speaker 1: had these little cars to show them how to communicate
Speaker 1: with the Cuban ground crew in Spanish once they arrived.
Speaker 1: That's so weird, and it's odd that that's the best
Speaker 1: that the airlines of the government, you know, could come
Speaker 1: up with. Well, you know, there were a few ideas
Speaker 1: that cropped up to try to soothe the problem without
Speaker 1: adding the burden of security. Of course, yes I'm curious,
Speaker 1: but what I was gonna do? Well, some seem smart
Speaker 1: on the surface. We're talking about nineteen sixty eight here
Speaker 1: in the State Department offered free one way tickets to
Speaker 1: Cuba for anyone who wanted to go, and this was
Speaker 1: on the condition that people wouldn't return. Of course, you know,
Speaker 1: Castro wasn't having any of that. He didn't want them
Speaker 1: in his country, and of course not Yeah, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine f A entertained all sorts of ideas.
Speaker 1: One of these included building a replica Havanah Airport in
Speaker 1: South Florida, just to trick the high checkers. Then as
Speaker 1: they really got into they they realized, you know, that
Speaker 1: might be expensive to build. But you know, they also
Speaker 1: consider things like trap doors or giving flight attendants tranquilizer darts.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the proposals from the public
Speaker 1: was to make all passengers wear boxing gloves so that
Speaker 1: they couldn't operate a gun on board. There was another
Speaker 1: let's see what else here, you know you've got you
Speaker 1: could you could play the Cuban national anthem and see
Speaker 1: who stands up? I guess, and it just it started
Speaker 1: to get silly. But you know, people were just resigned
Speaker 1: to the fact that this is what air travel was.
Speaker 1: And in night, the Pittsburgh Presses editorial board wrote an
Speaker 1: editorial that said, quote, it seems the best we can
Speaker 1: do is add airplane hijacking to the list of things
Speaker 1: we don't like, you know, along with sin and high taxes.
Speaker 1: That is really such a baffling idea that everyone was
Speaker 1: just willing to accept this, And I know there was
Speaker 1: also a little bit of a psychological profiling that got
Speaker 1: popular at the time to you know, to try to
Speaker 1: better understand the mind of these criminals. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: was looking at this as what so, so you're talking
Speaker 1: about the David Hubbard and and and all that psychoanalysis stuff, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to me. So Harvard interviewed I think thirty
Speaker 1: or forty skyjackers and came away believing that they all
Speaker 1: shared a similar past. He was just like pop psychiatrists
Speaker 1: who became really popular. And uh. He assumed that all
Speaker 1: skyjackers had strict religious moms, they had dads who are alcoholics,
Speaker 1: they had been bullied, and this is sort of the
Speaker 1: clincher that they were all bad and incompetent with women.
Speaker 1: And that last part is important because that's what made
Speaker 1: them interested in airplanes, which he saw as a stand
Speaker 1: in for their members triumphing over gravity. These theories, you know,
Speaker 1: when Hubbard was actually propped up by the airlines because
Speaker 1: he thought skyjackers were too smart to be stopped by
Speaker 1: any of these security measures. So that suited the airlines
Speaker 1: because it took the blame off of them, you know. Instead,
Speaker 1: he thought that if the public linked these crimes to
Speaker 1: sexual inadequacy and also train more female astronauts to make
Speaker 1: flying seem less. Macho, I guess the crimes might then stop.
Speaker 1: What a character and what if our time? Well, let's
Speaker 1: quickly talk about Roger Holder and Kathy Kirko and how
Speaker 1: the government finally put a stop to skyjacking. But first one,
Speaker 1: don't we pause for a little break. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: part time genius, Now, Mengo, I think you wanted to
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about Roger Holder and Kathy
Speaker 1: kirk how and and their whole story, So you want
Speaker 1: to dive into that. Yeah, that's right. So they're the
Speaker 1: Bonnie and Clyde of air travel for sure. Honestly, for
Speaker 1: anyone who really wants to hear the story, you have
Speaker 1: to go get Brendan Corner's incredible book because his reporting
Speaker 1: is incredible. But here's the fifty cent version. So Roger
Speaker 1: Holder ahead this really really rough upbringing. His dad was
Speaker 1: devout and a good military man, and he moved the
Speaker 1: family in good faith to Oregon, but he didn't realize
Speaker 1: how rough it was going to be for the family.
Speaker 1: Roger had this terrible time as a child, like his
Speaker 1: family tries to move in and then someone won't rent
Speaker 1: them the house once they realized as the family's black,
Speaker 1: Roger and his siblings are beaten and bullied mercilessly in
Speaker 1: this very racist town. They end up in the hospital.
Speaker 1: It's truly horrific. He's incredibly smart, but other than building
Speaker 1: model planes and then juggling girlfriends when he's a little
Speaker 1: older because he's smooth and good looking, there's a much
Speaker 1: of a story, but for a few reasons. He ends
Speaker 1: up in listing in Vietnam, and he's an incredible soldier,
Speaker 1: like he's on a number of high profile teams and missions.
Speaker 1: But along the way he sees horrific things, and he
Speaker 1: starts using marijuana to self medicate, you know, which is common,
Speaker 1: but at the time the army and the military were
Speaker 1: going after any sort of drug use. And when he's caught,
Speaker 1: he's massively demoted, like he has PTSD and after winning
Speaker 1: all these honors, he's essentially revoked of any honor and
Speaker 1: he's a private again, and he can't take that sort
Speaker 1: of disrespect after serving for his country and putting his
Speaker 1: life at risk. So he ends up a while at home,
Speaker 1: which is when he meets Kathy Kirka. She's someone who
Speaker 1: grew up in the same town as him, but she's
Speaker 1: now selling pot and working at a massage parlor in
Speaker 1: San Diego, and they kind of fall for each other
Speaker 1: really fast. She has a thing for smart, dangerous men,
Speaker 1: and they're both really sexy and Holders into astrology. He's
Speaker 1: determined that meeting Cathy was fate and that they're destined
Speaker 1: for something big. And when Angela Davis, the Black Panther
Speaker 1: and Professor, is imprisoned holding, kirk how decided to hijack
Speaker 1: a plane to get her out of prison. But before
Speaker 1: they do, Cathy famously asked Holder, what do you wear
Speaker 1: to a hijacking? Like she wanted to be dressed for
Speaker 1: the event. Anyway, their story gets much crazier. They actually
Speaker 1: get five thousand dollars in ransom. They try to fly
Speaker 1: to North Korea, but then they end up flying to Algiers,
Speaker 1: where they joined Eldrige Clever and this international section of
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers and eventually they run for fourteen years.
Speaker 1: They live it up in Algiers. They meet all these
Speaker 1: like famous people in France, Like they're drinking buddies with
Speaker 1: starts and like all these other like philosophers and artists
Speaker 1: and celebrities, and kirk How becomes a socialite. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're everything that was glamorous about at era, but they're
Speaker 1: also kind of sort of the last remnants of it.
Speaker 1: It is just such a strange story art, but do
Speaker 1: you want to tell the listeners what what ended up
Speaker 1: happening to him? So this is the weirdest part. Kathy
Speaker 1: kirk How is still at large, like no one's ever founder,
Speaker 1: and the theories that she fled to Switzerland with a
Speaker 1: fake passport and then just disappeared. She was amazing at languages,
Speaker 1: and it's just a crazy story. And holder along the
Speaker 1: way he had some more mental problems and he decided
Speaker 1: to come back to the States and turn himself in.
Speaker 1: But kind of underlining how much people really didn't care
Speaker 1: about Ski Jackings. Fifteen years after the era, he only
Speaker 1: got something like three years in a medium security jail
Speaker 1: in North Carolina. It's just an insane story. And you know,
Speaker 1: in Kathy kirk how if you're out there, we'd love
Speaker 1: for you to be a guest on the show. You know,
Speaker 1: you can hit us someone Facebook, Twitter or in our
Speaker 1: seven Fact hot line. I mean, actually it's seven for
Speaker 1: a reason, right, I know, yeah, definitely. But you know,
Speaker 1: of course, stories like Holder and Kirkow stopped once security
Speaker 1: measures were put in place at these airports, and that
Speaker 1: was in nineteen seventy three, and then there was an
Speaker 1: agreement that was made with Cuba return hijackers. Basically, both
Speaker 1: the government and the airlines knew something had to be
Speaker 1: done to curb this epidemic. And according to the book
Speaker 1: we've been talking about, this guy's belonged to us. When
Speaker 1: security was tightened, reporters were excited to report the backlash
Speaker 1: from travelers, so they stalked these giants security lines trying
Speaker 1: to get quotes, but there actually really weren't any, and
Speaker 1: people just seemed to accept that there needed to be
Speaker 1: a trade off and we're happy to go through metal
Speaker 1: detectors and weapons checks just to feel more safe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course the airlines just grumbled about the inconvenience
Speaker 1: and price tag. I'm sure, right, Yeah, So there was
Speaker 1: a University of Chicago economist who looked into this and
Speaker 1: and said that the cost of deterring a single hijacking
Speaker 1: was as high as nine point to five million dollars.
Speaker 1: You know, the public was on board and ticket sales
Speaker 1: went up, and it kind of closed the chapter on
Speaker 1: this golden age of skyjacking. What a bizarre era in
Speaker 1: American history. But you know, before we land the show,
Speaker 1: what do you say we pause for a fact off,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna start when the Supernintendo launched. Nintendo supposedly
Speaker 1: made the shipment at night so it wouldn't be hijacked
Speaker 1: by the Yukuza. Mhm. But we talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about dB Cooper. But did you know that the FBI
Speaker 1: has investigated over a thousand suspects trying to find him,
Speaker 1: and apparently the files in the basement of the FBI
Speaker 1: Seattle office phillips several long rows of shelves there. Do
Speaker 1: you know there's actually a bar that celebrates the anniversary
Speaker 1: of DV. Cooper's heist and they do it with a
Speaker 1: lookalike contest. It's an aerial Washington, which I guess is
Speaker 1: where Cooper may have landed, and the festival has all
Speaker 1: this beer and live music toasted dv or Dan Cooper
Speaker 1: as it's called, But there's also a lookalike contest for
Speaker 1: people who not just look like Cooper but also members
Speaker 1: of the plane's crew. That's so strange, are well here's
Speaker 1: a here's another weird one. In five year old man
Speaker 1: hijacked and air LINGUS plane using a cigarette lighter. The
Speaker 1: only thing he demanded that Pope John Paul the Second
Speaker 1: should release a secret prophecy, the Third Secret of Fatima. Basically,
Speaker 1: he wanted religious spoiler and did the Pope deliver? And
Speaker 1: not then? I mean John Paul revealed the secret and
Speaker 1: two thousands so almost twenty years later, which I guess
Speaker 1: got lost in all the press for Dan Brown's book
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, I didn't hear about it. So
Speaker 1: here's the craziest thing I've read about hijacking. Did you
Speaker 1: know there's a Somali pirate exchange where people can bet
Speaker 1: on their favorite real life pirates. Oh wow, that's so evil.
Speaker 1: I know it's pure evil and I read it about
Speaker 1: it in pop Side. But here's what they wrote, land
Speaker 1: Lover Somali civilians can invest in one of seventy two
Speaker 1: maritime companies and hope that their favorite pirate band strikes
Speaker 1: it rich with the successful ransoming of a captured ship
Speaker 1: and crew. I mean it's basically a fantasy lead for pirates.
Speaker 1: And one wealthy former pirate told Reuters that the Stock
Speaker 1: Exchange had won local support by making piracy in to
Speaker 1: a quote community activity, community activity. It almost makes it
Speaker 1: sound sweet. That's funny. All right, Well, did you know
Speaker 1: that in nineteen sixty nine, Alan Fund from Candid Camera
Speaker 1: was on a plane that got hijacked. Now, everybody on
Speaker 1: the plane was totally calm because they thought it was
Speaker 1: part of a prank show. They only realized it wasn't
Speaker 1: a gag when they looked out their window and realized
Speaker 1: they'd landed in Cuba. I love that so actually, I
Speaker 1: think that's a great one to leave us on. What
Speaker 1: why don't you hold onto the fact off trophy for now?
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Well, thank you guys for listening today.
Speaker 1: If we forgot any great facts you'd like to share
Speaker 1: with us, feel free to send us an email part
Speaker 1: time genius at how stuff works dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also call us on our seven fact hot line. That's
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Speaker 1: We love hearing ideas for shows, ideas for Nine Things episodes,
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Speaker 1: for listening, Y, Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
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