Right, but we got a fairly detailed description of what happened: "Using codes that only Rackstraw would have known, Sherwood honed in on two sentences for ana

Right, but we got a fairly detailed description of what happened: "Using codes that only Rackstraw would have known, Sherwood honed in on two sentences for analysis. 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.”" If we trust the facts stated in the article, Sherwood applied a pre-existing code used by Rackstraw to two sentences, each of which contained a hidden meaning. So (according to the journalist!) we don't need the six letters, we just need the two sentences. Which is...fine, sure, that could be a pre-existing agreed upon cipher! But that tells us nothing; this isn't about crypto, it's about simple logic. Even if the code exists (questionable) and appears to match, that doesn't prove Rackstraw is DB Cooper, it just means you can't reject the hypothesis. > without having the background the cryptographer As above, you don't need to be a cryptographer to evaluate these claims. Further, the article doesn't claim he is a skilled cryptographer, nor is what he allegedly did cryptography. As you say, the writing is poor, and the nonsense in the article might have nothing to do with the actual claims being made. But what the article describes is simply nonsense, and can be dismissed out of hand. Whatever is happening, it's not what the author wrote. And as others have noted, we actually know what's in letter six, and there's just nothing there: https://dbcooper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/DBC-Letter-6-3-28-72-Typed-Note-Message-CodeB.jpg https://dbcooper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/DBC-Letter-6... It's a letter from someone apparently claiming to have been trained by the government, and who used that training to steal the money, which means it could have been written by anyone who'd read a single news story about the hijacking; nothing suggests it's from the actual hijacker. And crackpots constantly write letters like this after major cases, and as noted by the article, it can't even be linked to the other letters, much less the hijacker, making it even less relevant. And yet this is what the the article claims is the smoking gun? Please. (Plus...it's just a letter, not the second edition of the Voynich Manuscript. Doesn't mean you can't hide a message in it, but it does make it much harder to conclusively show a message was hidden.)