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## The FBI’s Vault and What It Contains
The Cooper case file, now housed in the FBI’s public records vault, is one of the largest and most complex investigation records in the bureau’s history. The 66-volume file represents roughly 40 years of active investigation, covering thousands of leads, hundreds of serious suspects, laboratory analyses, interviews with witnesses and potential witnesses, aerial surveys, ground searches, and the correspondence generated by decades of public tips.
The vault release has allowed independent researchers and journalists to examine material that was previously restricted. Some of this examination has produced new theories and new proposed suspects. None of it has produced a verified identification.
The 2016 resource redirection did not seal the file or halt the release of records. The FBI has continued to process requests for case documents under the Freedom of Information Act, and portions of the file have been made available to the public on an ongoing basis. Researchers have used this material to reconstruct the investigation’s history, identify the suspects who were most seriously investigated, and track the evolution of the bureau’s own theories about Cooper’s identity and fate.
What the file cannot provide is the answer. It is a record of what was tried, what was found, and what was not found. It is an archive of an investigation that never arrived at a conclusion.
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## Why the Case Endures
The D.B. Cooper case has a specific place in American popular culture that goes beyond the ordinary fascination with unsolved crimes. Part of this is the nature of the crime itself—an audacious, methodical daylight hijacking that produced no violence and ended with a man walking off a plane into the sky.