The Skies Belong to Us

BRENDAN I. KOERNER is a contributing editor at Wired and the author of Now the Hell Will Start , which was optioned by filmmaker Spike Lee. A former columnist for both The New York Times and Slate , he was named one of Columbia Journalism Review's "Ten Young Writers on the Rise." Visit theskiesbelongto.us and follow him at @brendankoerner.

In an America torn apart by the Vietnam War and the demise of sixties idealism, airplane hijackings were astonishingly routine. Over a five-year period starting in 1968, the desperate and disillusioned seized commercial jets nearly once a week, using guns, bombs, and jars of acid. Some hijackers wished to escape to foreign lands, where they imagined being hailed as heroes; others aimed to swap hostages for sacks of cash. Their criminal exploits mesmerized the country, never more so than when the young lovers at the heart of Brendan I. Koerner's The Skies Belong to Us pulled off the longest-distance hijacking in American history.

A shattered Army veteran and a mischievous party girl, Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow commandeered Western Airlines Flight 701 as a vague protest against the war. Through a combination of savvy and dumb luck, the couple managed to flee across an ocean with a half-million dollars in ransom, a feat that made them notorious around the globe. Koerner spent four years chronicling this madcap tale, which involves a cast of characters ranging from exiled Black Panthers to African despots to French movie stars. He combed through over 4,000 declassified documents and interviewed scores of key figures in the drama-including one of the hijackers, whom Koerner discovered living in total obscurity. Yet The Skies Belong to Us is more than just an enthralling yarn about a spectacular heist and its bittersweet, decades-long aftermath. It is also a psychological portrait of America at its most turbulent, and a testament to the madness that can grip a nation when politics fail.

The epic story of two broken Americans - a shattered Army veteran and a mischievous party girl - who together in 1972 pulled off the longest-distance hijacking in U.S. history.

Contents
Prelude 1
1. "Keep Smiling" 3
2. Coos Bay 12
3. "I Don't Want to Be an American Anymore" 35
4. Sweet Black Angel 58
5. "I'm Here and I Exist" 67
6. Operation Sisyphus 86
7. "There Are Weathermen Among You" 105
8. "Can't You Get a Chopper?" 126
9. "It's All a Lie" 136
10. The Choice 144
11. "We Are Going to Be Friends" 160
12. "My Only Bomb Is My Human Heart" 171
13. "How Do You Resign from a Revolution?" 189
14. "The Olympics Wasn't Anything" 203
15. "Monsieur Lecanuet, Anyone Can Steal . . ." 216
16. Omega 234
17. Tweety Bird 243
18. Erased 261
Acknowledgments 275
Notes 277
Index 309