Flight 7 Is Missing

by Ken H. Fortenberry

  There is no indication that the congressman ever responds.

  As expected, Pan Am blasts the newspaper reports as ridiculous and remains adamant that Stratocruisers are safe, that all inspections are handled by the book, and that the union’s complaints are merely public posturing in advance of contract negotiations.

  Still, there is concern among Pan Am mechanics and the union that the CAB will once again protect Pan American and whitewash the official investigation report about what happened to Romance of the Skies.

  Their concerns seem warranted following the issuance of the CAB report on Flight 7 on January 20, 1959, my mother’s thirty-fourth birthday.

  FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

  FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover finishes reading the Dick Tracy cartoon in the Wednesday, November 20, morning Washington Post and Times-Herald and tosses it onto the seat beside him as his shiny black, bulletproof 1957 Cadillac pulls into the basement garage of the US Justice Department on Pennsylvania Avenue. The cartoon has brought a momentary smile to the director’s face this morning, because it features a cute dog confiscated from a crook who has just been arrested.

  Hoover is a devoted dog lover, and reading the exploits of the crime-fighting Dick Tracy is a welcome daily diversion from the onslaught of headlines that spotlights a world full of communist subversives who Hoover believes are determined to destroy the America he loves.

  Minutes earlier chauffeur Tom James Crawford had arrived at Hoover’s upscale colonial home and respectfully listened to the Boss’s customary morning grumbling about anything and everything on the short drive to FBI headquarters. Hoover is preoccupied with thoughts of communist subversives even as his agency is being rocked and embarrassed by last week’s startling news of the upstate New York arrests of more than fifty Mafia members, arrests made by state troopers and local law enforcement officers, not the all-powerful, all-knowing FBI.

  He has built his career on arresting notorious gangsters, but has been consumed in recent years with what he calls the “communist conspiracy” and has publicly discounted reports of a nationwide network of American gangsters operating right under his nose. He has assigned more than 400 agents to keep tabs on and arrest domestic subversives and those he suspects of being commies, but fewer than a dozen to fight organized crime. He sees communists everywhere—hiding behind suits in federal agencies, organizing workers on loading docks, even sowing seeds of disruption in classrooms—all determined to bring the nation to its knees. There is no Mafia, he has claimed, and now he has been proven wrong.

  He is more obsessed with what he calls a “burr-headed” young Negro preacher named Martin Luther King Jr., a man Hoover believes is a communist sympathizer and a threat to national security, than he is with the massive criminal enterprise being run by the likes of Vito Genovese, Giuseppe “Joe the Barber” Barbara, and Carlo Gambino.

  Hoover has convinced himself and much of the American public that he has the whole world in his hands (or by its cojones), and now he must admit that he has been wrong about organized crime and must take immediate steps to correct his negligence.

  Hoover hates it when events spin out of his control and force him to take public action, and he’s pissed off this morning by the emerging PR nightmare, which will be hard to manage without the assistance of his capable and loyal assistant director and press liaison, Louis B. Nichols, the number three man in the agency. Nichols has carefully crafted the reputation of both Hoover and the FBI for more than two decades, but he retired three weeks earlier, leaving a big hole in the agency’s mammoth PR apparatus and in Hoover’s ego-feeding machine.

  Nichols had been Hoover’s private fix-it man and handled political dirty work that included wiretapping and leaking information to chummy reporters about public officials who were suspected communists. Nichols also was the man who received advance copies of popular conservative radio commentator Paul Harvey’s script for Hoover’s comments and approval.

  “Dammit,” Hoover tells himself, “Nichols is going to be a hard man to replace.”

  The last thing he wants to deal with this morning is a dispute with another federal agency. Nor does he have any desire to be sucked into investigating something like a damn airplane crash that doesn’t give him the glowing prime-time/page-one headlines he craves. Hoover does not tolerate criticism of the FBI, and occasionally he will give those who dare a dose of medicine, like investigating the personal lives of reporters who write critical articles or conducting covert smear campaigns against the publications that print their work.

  Intimidation is a powerful weapon in Hoover’s arsenal, and he doesn’t hesitate to use it.

  After pulling up to FBI headquarters, chauffeur Crawford dashes around the Cadillac and opens the left rear door as Hoover, impeccably dressed in a black Brooks Brothers custom-tailored suit, picks a tiny, almost invisible, piece of lint from the left vest area and straightens the traditional white handkerchief in his breast pocket. His Vitalis-slicked hair is perfectly in place.

  Hoover is a demanding man, a man of precision, and he enters the elevator a few minutes before 9:30 a.m., right on schedule.

  Gordon A. Nease has been hard at work for several hours when Hoover arrives. Nease has risen through the ranks from an hourly office clerk and typist in March 1935 to a special FBI agent. By 1957 he has a fifth-floor office right outside the door to Hoover’s thirty-five-foot inner-sanctum office suite and is one of Hoover’s most trusted confidential assistants. One of his responsibilities is to weed through the stacks of teletypes, letters, and telegraphs each morning before the director arrives and to prioritize, with the assistance of Hoover’s long-time personal secretary, Helen Gandy, the director’s agenda for the day.

  This morning something has caught Nease’s eye, and he decides to immediately bring it to the director’s attention. He tells the director’s secretary that he would like to speak personally with the director as soon as he settles in.

  Hoover is seated at his huge, polished, mahogany desk, surrounded by the American and FBI flags, when Nease carefully, but confidently, walks in a few minutes later. Hoover demands respect and adores compliments, but detests sycophantic behavior. Nease knows the drill.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Yes, what is it, Mr. Nease?”

  Nease places some papers on Hoover’s desk and respectfully steps back.

  “Sir, I wanted to bring to your attention some information we’ve received this morning from Texas pertaining to the crash of the Pan Am Stratocruiser.”

  Hoover immediately interrupts.

  “Texas? Pan Am? You know we’re not involved in that crash, Mr. Nease, and I’m not about to let the CAB drag us into it. They can’t solve it, and we’re not going to let them put the blame on us. No way.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand that, but I think this might be worthy of your attention.”

  Minutes earlier the FBI in Washington had received a call from Corpus Christi, where a nervous real estate agent named Ray Hostutler claimed he had information that had “direct bearing” on the crash. Hostutler said that he had a letter from a Dow Chemical Company official in Oklahoma City that might help solve the mystery of what had sent the giant airliner to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Hostutler had been encouraged to call, collect, to the resident FBI agent in Corpus Christi or the resident agent in Houston and to relay the information, but so far he has refused.

  “They might not believe me. Washington should handle this. Some prominent people may be involved,” he told an agent who answered Hostutler’s call to FBI headquarters..

  Hostutler went on to state that on August 23, 1957, he made a phone call to an undisclosed person at Dow Chemical in Oklahoma to set up an appointment the following morning, presumably to discuss a real estate deal.

  “The appointment was not kept, but a portion of the Dow Chemical Company blew up the morning of August 24, 1957. He met the official later on other matters,” Hoover reads, then places the memo about the Host
utler call aside.

  “We’re not getting involved in this crash, Mr. Nease, but maybe we should follow up, considering this fellow’s claim that some prominent people might be involved.”

  It is no secret that Hoover has hundreds of top-secret files on the most prominent people in Washington and has kept his job for more than thirty years not only because he has built the FBI into the most respected and formidable law enforcement agency in the world, but also because of the private dossiers he has accumulated on Washington politicians.

  Hoover directs that the following teletype be delivered immediately to the special agent in Houston:

  11-20-1957

  PLAIN TEXT TELETYPE

  URGENT

  SAC, HOUSTON

  Crash of Pan American World Airways, Flight Seven Naught Eight, San Francisco to Honolulu, November Eight, Nineteen Fifty Seven, Destruction of Aircraft or Motor Vehicle

  (Several lines deleted) both Corpus Christi, Texas, telephone (deleted) telephoned bureau headquarters this morning requesting that Agent obtain from him a letter he received from Dow Chemical Company, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, official relative to captioned crash. (deleted) says letter has direct bearing on the cause of the crash. Interview today and SUTEL details bureau.

  HOOVER

  Former FBI Special Agent Robert A. Collier arrives at Washington National Airport on an early-afternoon flight from San Francisco. For the past several days he has been working on a contract basis as a crash investigator for Pan Am, and although he has presented what he has learned so far to the FBI office in San Francisco, he feels the need to share that information with someone at FBI headquarters in Washington.

  Collier, a Texas-born attorney, joined the FBI immediately after graduation from the University of Texas Law School in 1940 and became an assistant to director Hoover and later one of his top aides. He left the FBI in 1951 to become chief counsel to the US House Judiciary Committee, on Hoover’s recommendation, and later worked for the US Senate Subcommittee on Investigations. Over the past few years he has been a lobbyist and an attorney in private practice but has remained in close contact with his former colleagues at the FBI, including the director himself.

  Pan Am executive vice president Sam Pryor Jr., had hired Collier a few days after the crash to assist the airline and the Civil Aeronautics Board in determining why the airliner went down.

  Perhaps not coincidentally, Pryor has been a key contact for the Central Intelligence Agency and its predecessor organizations, including the Office of Strategic Services, since the 1940s and has provided cover to American spies everywhere Pan Am has a presence across the world. A Republican party luminary and national committeeman, the Greenwich, Connecticut, resident is a close friend of the Rockefeller family and had been a key figure in something called the Airport Development Program, a hush-hush Pan American wartime plan to develop a secret 10,000-mile network for air transport for military cargo and transport planes during World War II.

  A call from the wealthy and well-connected Pryor is not something to be ignored. He is known as a man who can make big things happen in business, government, and politics all around the world. Collier left Washington almost immediately after the phone call from Pryor and has been working day and night in California since then in an attempt to unravel the mysterious plane crash.

  Shortly after arriving back in Washington, Collier is sitting in the office of assistant FBI director F. C. Holloman and outlines what he knows about the crash and the suspicious circumstances surrounding purser Oliver Eugene Crosthwaite, a man who has not publicly emerged as a suspect. Collier tells Holloman that Crosthwaite had been suspected two or three years earlier “in connection with alleged smuggling,” but nothing could be proven, and that Crosthwaite had been suffering some kind of “emotional disturbance” since the death of his wife a few months earlier.

  He also passes along claims that Crosthwaite had been having difficulty controlling his teenage stepdaughter, but local police told the investigator that Crosthwaite had been “incoherent when explaining that relationship and what may—or may not—have been going on.”

  “Medical examiners are conducting a special examination of Crosthwaite’s body today,” Collier informs Holloman.

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Well, to determine anything—any significant facts—that might help us understand what brought the plane down. They still don’t have a clue, but there is some conjecture that Crosthwaite might have knocked out the crew members who were forward in the plane and that the forward compartment might have actually, up until the crash, been inaccessible to the rest of the crew.”

  He then explains what they have learned so far about the crash, including the belief that the plane hit the water at full speed and was significantly off course, but had reported everything was A-OK less than thirty minutes before it vanished.

  “The plane would have had to be traveling at full cruising speed to have reached the point where we believe it went down,” he explains. “This indicates to us that the plane was not slowed down because of any mechanical trouble, but was in full speed up until the time of the crash.”

  “That does sound strange,” Holloman observes.

  “In fact, it appears as though the plane hit the water at an angle and at full speed. It probably went directly to the bottom of the ocean, and the bodies and debris floated up from the wreckage.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because the area where the bodies and debris were found had been previously searched without success. There was nothing there one day, and then there was.”

  Holloman promises to pass along the information to Hoover, but tells Collier what he already knows: the FBI is not going to get involved unless someone provides proof of a criminal act.

  By late afternoon it is obvious at FBI headquarters that the Hostutler lead from earlier in the day has turned out to be a dead-end, and the special agent in Houston has sent an urgent teletype to director Hoover informing him of his findings. The agent states that Hostutler had come to the FBI’s attention after Jack Gilbert Graham blew up United Airlines flight 629 near Longmont, Colorado, in November 1955 with twenty-five sticks of dynamite he had planted in his mother’s luggage. Forty-four people perished in that flight, including Graham’s mother, and authorities determined that Graham had manufactured a time bomb in order to collect insurance on his mother’s death.

  During the investigation of that case, Hostutler contacted local law enforcement officials alleging he had “inside information” about the murderous bombing. The FBI determined very quickly that Hostutler had a “psychopathic condition,” and Hostutler was never interviewed. The special agent also told Hoover that he had been advised by a Houston psychiatrist that Hostutler was a paranoid schizophrenic.

  “No credence can be put in any statement he might make. No interview being conducted.”

  The following morning former agent Collier calls Holloman and relays some morbid information he has just learned about autopsies conducted on victims of the Pan Am plane crash.

  “Nothing of any interest or significance was really discovered, probably because all of the bodies had been attacked by sharks and were in bad condition. There’s also evidence that sharks had apparently attacked other bodies that weren’t recovered and completely disposed of them. That might account for the fact that other bodies weren’t recovered.”

  Collier then presses once again for the FBI to investigate purser Crosthwaite. He tells Holloman that he has just talked with Pan Am vice president Pryor and he is “very anxious for the bureau to conduct an investigation.”

  “Look, I understand all about jurisdictional limitations, but surely there is some way the director can find a way for the bureau to at least investigate Crosthwaite’s background and activities.”

  “You know the director won’t do that.”

  “Well it seems to me that just a little bit of effort, by someone other than the CAB, might reveal some motive
for him to have destroyed the plane in a suicidal act.”

  “Unless we have jurisdiction to conduct an all-out investigation, it’s just not possible for us to conduct a partial investigation,” Holloman tells Collier.

  Collier reluctantly thanks his former colleague for his time and tells him that he will keep him advised if anything further develops that might be of interest to the agency. He later boards a plane and heads back to California to continue the investigation.

  Why are Collier and Pryor so insistent upon the FBI investigating Crosthwaite? Is it because Crosthwaite is the most likely suspect and deserves a thorough, professional background check? Is it because Pan Am simply wants to point the blame away from the airline (and its maintenance practices). Or is something else involved? Could Collier and Pryor be intentionally trying to push the FBI to examine Crosthwaite to divert attention from other passengers and potential suspects?

  The remains of twenty-six-year-old stewardess Yvonne Alexander are gently placed into a coffin crate and carried from a basement preparation room into a waiting black Cadillac hearse at the Mottell’s and Peek Mortuary on Alamitos Avenue in Long Beach. Recently autopsied and prepared for burial, the body will be driven to Los Angeles International Airport, where it will be loaded onto an airplane and flown to San Francisco International Airport. There, a waiting hearse will carry her remains to the N. Gray and Company Funeral Home at 1545 Divisadero Street, where her grief-stricken mother, Lucille Heindl, will join family and friends for a funeral service in Chapel B at 10 a.m. tomorrow.

  As the hearse bearing her body pulls out of the mortuary, another one backs in. This one will carry what’s left of thirty-six-year-old Navy Commander Gordon Richard Cole, whose remains will be flown to Washington National Airport, where a hearse from a local funeral home will carry the body to Arlington National Cemetery for a full military service on Friday. Cole will be buried in Section 30, Grave Number 1847. The left side of the gravesite will be reserved for his widow, Rosemary.