The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (10 page)

As Davis languished in her cell, working on her doctoral dissertation about Immanuel Kant’s
concept of force, her cause was taken up by defense committees in nearly six dozen countries. Day-Glo posters and sympathetic pamphlets featuring her beautiful visage became ubiquitous on campuses from Paris to Bombay. The Rolling Stones pleaded for her freedom with the song “Sweet Black Angel,” contending that she was “Not a gun-toting teacher / Not a Red-lovin’ schoolmarm” but rather a “sweet black slave.” And a coalition of Soviet artists, headed by the composer Dmitry Shostakovich, wrote an open letter to President Nixon, begging him to “use his influence to
release Miss Davis.” When she was finally granted bail in February 1972, her $102,500 bond was posted by a total stranger who put up his family’s dairy farm as collateral; he did so because he believed that Communist ideals were consistent with the
teachings of Jesus Christ.

Like virtually everyone else in America, Roger Holder had been aware of the Davis case for months. But as he read an account of the trial that April day, an inexplicable anger overwhelmed him. The story described how prosecutors were trying to introduce a series of fawning letters that Davis had sent to George Jackson, the Black Guerrilla Family leader whose liberation had been the courthouse assault’s ultimate goal; apparently unaware that she was a lesbian, the state theorized that Davis had participated in the plot in order to elope with Jackson. (Jackson had subsequently been killed by guards at San Quentin Prison, during an alleged escape attempt in August 1971.) “That so much love could exist anywhere, in any two people, even between us, I never realized,” she had written in one of her intellectual mash
notes. “It makes me feel all fluttery and weak, not though in the sense of succumbing to weakness, for it makes me feel so much stronger, with you my strength without end,
my life-long husband.”

Holder was incensed by the prosecution’s efforts to use Davis’s private letters against her, a tactic he deemed disrespectful. Now drawn to the ex-professor’s cause, he went to the library to read up on her legal travails. As he thumbed through back issues of newspapers, one courtroom photograph from 1971 caught his eye: that of a cheerful Davis giving a black power salute while a glum Ruchell Magee sat at the defense table, arms bound behind his back.

Holder meditated on that image and the juxtaposition of hope and despair contained within it. His blood boiled at the humiliation of Magee, a man who bore a passing resemblance to Holder himself. And he fixated on the wry purse of Davis’s lips, which belied the intense focus apparent in her eyes. Holder didn’t think she was beautiful, exactly—he much preferred fresh-faced white girls—but he still felt some magnetic tug at his heart, as if her clenched fist were a signal
directed only at him.

In that moment, everything clicked for Willie Roger Holder. He finally knew how he and Cathy Kerkow were meant to leave their mark.

W
HEN THE
FAA’
S
antihijacking task force first convened in February 1969, its ten members knew they faced a daunting challenge—not only because of the severity of the crisis, but also due to the airlines’ intransigence. Having spent vast sums on Beltway lobbyists, the airlines had the political clout to nix any security measure that might inconvenience their customers. So whatever solutions the FAA proposed would have to be imperceptible to the vast majority of travelers.

John Dailey, a task force member who also served as the FAA’s chief psychologist, began to attack the problem by analyzing the methods of past skyjackers. He pored through accounts of every single American hijacking since 1961—more than seventy cases in all—and compiled a database of the perpetrators’ basic characteristics: how they dressed, where they lived, when they traveled, and how they acted around airline personnel. His research convinced him that all skyjackers involuntarily betrayed their criminal intentions while checking in for their flights. “There isn’t any common denominator except in [the hijackers’] behavior,” he told one airline executive. “Some will be tall, some short, some will have long hair, some not, some a long nose, et cetera, et cetera. There is no way to tell a hijacker by looking at him. But there are ways to differentiate between the behavior of a potential hijacker and that of
the usual air traveler.”

Dailey, who had spent the bulk of his career designing aptitude tests for the Air Force and Navy, created a brief checklist that could be used to determine whether a traveler might have malice in his heart.
^*
Paying for one’s ticket by unconventional means, for example, was considered an important tip-off. So, too, were failing to maintain eye contact and expressing an inadequate level of knowledge or
concern about one’s luggage.
^†
Dailey fine-tuned his criteria so they would apply to only a tiny fraction of travelers—ideally no more than three out of every thousand. He proposed that these few “selectees” could then be checked with handheld metal detectors, away from the prying eyes of fellow passengers. Most selectees would prove guilty of nothing graver than simple eccentricity, but a small number would surely be found to be in possession of guns, knives,
or incendiary devices.

In the late summer of 1969, the FAA began to test Dailey’s anti-hijacking system on Eastern Air Lines passengers at nine airports. When a man obtaining his boarding pass was judged to fit the behavioral profile, he was discreetly asked to proceed to a private area, where a federal marshal could sweep his body with a U-shaped metal detector. One of Dailey’s assistants secretly videotaped this process, so the FAA could ascertain whether travelers took
offense at the intrusion.

Dailey pronounced the experiment a roaring success, noting that his profile selected only 1,268 out of 226,000 passengers; of those beckoned aside for a brief date with the metal detector, 24 were arrested on weapons
or narcotics charges. More important, selectees rarely seemed to mind the extra scrutiny; when interviewed afterward, most said they were just happy to know that something was finally being
done to prevent hijackings.

Satisfied with the subtlety of Dailey’s system, the airlines began to voluntarily implement the program in November 1969, right after Raffaele Minichiello’s highly publicized escape to Rome. Almost immediately, hijackings in American airspace dwindled to a handful—just one in January 1970, and one more the following month. Janitorial crews started to find guns and knives stashed in the potted plants outside airport terminals, possibly left there by aspiring skyjackers who lost heart after seeing posted notices that electronic
screening was in force.
^‡

But there were two fatal flaws in how the FAA’s system was implemented. The first was that pilots and stewardesses were not told which of their passengers were selectees. If a hijacker claimed to have a bomb, the crew had no way of knowing whether he had been searched prior to boarding—and thus no way of determining whether his threat was a bluff. All they could do was err on the side of caution and obey the hijacker’s every command.

The system’s more fundamental weakness, though, was the fact that it depended entirely on the vigilance of airline ticket agents. They, rather than professional security personnel, were responsible for applying Dailey’s checklist to every passenger they encountered. Over time the agents’ attention to detail was bound to flag as they processed thousands upon thousands of harried customers each day. It is simply human nature to grow complacent.

A
RTHUR
G
ATES
B
ARKLEY
finally snapped after the Supreme Court gave him the cold shoulder. He had been embroiled in near-constant litigation since 1963, when he lost his job as a truck driver for a Phoenix bakery. (He was fired for harassing a sales manager, who claimed that Barkley kept calling him to critique his job performance.) Barkley had initially sued his former employer for shorting him on nineteen
days’ worth of sick-leave pay. He later turned his ire toward the IRS over a $471.78 tax bill, arguing that his wages had been miscalculated. After his federal lawsuit against the IRS was dismissed for lack of substance, he asked the Supreme Court to hear his appeal. He opened his petition with a memorable line: “I am being held a slave by the United States.”

Barkley was certain the nine wise men of Washington, D.C., would recognize the depth of his persecution and deliver the vindication he had been seeking for seven years. But as they do with 99 percent of the petitions they receive, the justices denied his request without comment. Barkley resolved to make them
pay for their insolence.

Over breakfast on June 4, 1970, Barkley informed his wife, Sue, that he would be flying to Washington, D.C., later that morning. The forty-nine-year-old World War II veteran had made the trip a few times before, to plead his case to indifferent bureaucrats at the IRS and the National Labor Relations Board. He promised Sue that this would be his very last visit to the nation’s capital. “I’m going to settle the tax case today,” he said as he
kissed her goodbye.

When Barkley arrived at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, the ticket counter at his TWA gate was mobbed. The airline’s lone metal detector was on the fritz, and the two overwhelmed ticket agents were unsure what to do if anyone fit the FAA’s skyjacker profile. They decided to avoid that dilemma by giving each passenger the most cursory of glances as they speedily issued boarding passes. Barkley, a ruggedly handsome man with slick blond hair and a pressed plaid blazer, did nothing to arouse suspicion as he checked in for Flight 486 to Washington, D.C.’s,
National Airport.

As the Boeing 727 passed over Albuquerque, Barkley casually walked into the cockpit holding a .22-caliber pistol, a straight razor, and a steel can full of gasoline. In accordance with TWA policy, the pilots assured Barkley that they were willing to take him wherever he wished to go; they just hoped he was intent on Havana rather than some more exotic location.

But escape to another country was not Barkley’s plan. He confounded
the pilots by instructing them to head to Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia, about thirty miles from their intended destination. Aside from requesting this minor adjustment to Flight 486’s itinerary, Barkley had but one other demand: $100 million in small-denomination, nonsequential bills, to be taken directly from the coffers of the Supreme Court. If the money wasn’t waiting for him at Dulles, he vowed to splash gasoline all over the passengers and
light a match.

TWA officials were blindsided by Barkley’s demand for ransom. They, like everyone else in the airline industry, had always assumed that skyjackers were interested solely in obtaining passage to a foreign land. It had never occurred to them that a skyjacker might try swapping passengers for money, like some garden-variety kidnapper. The airline had no procedure in place for dealing with this type of extortion.

TWA knew the Supreme Court didn’t have $100 million in cash, nor the capacity to pay even a fraction of that ridiculous sum. But the airline was scared to break that bad news to Barkley. TWA had to take his threat quite seriously in light of a violent episode that was still fresh in everyone’s mind: three months earlier one of that year’s relatively rare skyjackings had ended tragically when a man named John DiVivo had killed an Eastern Air Lines co-pilot near Boston, before himself being
shot by the flight’s captain. Like DiVivo, who had ordered the Eastern pilots to fly toward Europe until the plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the Atlantic, Barkley appeared disturbed enough to kill: he kept transmitting radio messages in which he demanded that President Nixon, Secretary of Labor George Shultz, and the nine Supreme Court justices be informed that they were all “
unfit to rule.”

With scant time to debate the pros and cons of giving in to Barkley, TWA made the fateful decision to try to mollify him with money. Airline employees were dispatched to two Washington-area banks to round up as much cash as they could on short notice. They returned to Dulles with a total of $100,750.

The airline assumed that Barkley would be reasonable and settle
for this lesser sum. But the litigious former truck driver was in no mood for compromise. As soon as the canvas sack containing the money was delivered to the idling Boeing 727, Barkley pawed through its contents and realized that he had been shorted by a factor of a thousand. He made his extreme displeasure known by pouring the cash onto the cockpit floor. Up to his shins in hundred-dollar bills and his face purple with rage, Barkley ordered the plane to take off without delay.

As the jet ascended over the Virginia countryside beyond Dulles, Barkley radioed back an icy message that he addressed directly to President Nixon: “You don’t know how to count money, and you don’t even know the rules of law.”

The plane circled Washington, D.C., as Barkley pondered his next move. The pilots tried to sell him on the idea of Cuba, but Barkley wouldn’t bite. He seemed suicidal at times and eager to take his fifty-eight hostages with him to the grave. “When you go, you shouldn’t go alone,” he told the pilots at one point. “You should take as many people and as much money as possible.
Never go alone.” The North American Air Defense Command ordered four F-106 fighter jets to shadow the hijacked flight, in case Barkley tried to crash the plane into
a populated area.

But after two hours Barkley decided to give TWA one last chance to deliver his $100 million. This time the chastened airline let the FBI take charge of the situation. At Barkley’s behest, FBI agents lined the runway with a hundred mail sacks, each allegedly stuffed with $1 million. (They were actually full of newspaper scraps.) As soon as the Boeing 727 landed and rolled to a stop, police marksmen
shot out its landing gear. A panicked passenger reacted to the gunfire by kicking open one of the jet’s emergency exits and scrambling out over a wing. The other passengers followed his lead, collapsing into the grass beside the marooned plane—some out of sheer exhaustion, others because they had been drinking whiskey nonstop
since the hijacking began.