Ventura man writes about his role in bombing Harvey's Casino

For many men, recollections of building something alongside their fathers conjures up memories of soapbox derby cars or birdhouses.

For John Birges Jr., the memories trigger the time he and his dad built a bomb. More specifically, a bomb to blow up Harvey's Resort Hotel and Casino in Lake Tahoe.

"He was a genius, but also insane," Birges Jr. said of his father. "I had a lot of issues with my dad."

Which is why in 1980, when John Birges Sr. was in deep gambling debt to Harvey Gross and concocted a plan to extort $3 million from the casino, he was able to browbeat his 19-year-old son into helping him build one of the most impenetrable bombs the FBI has ever seen.

Birges Jr., of Ventura, recounts the infamous tale of the bombing plan — and everything that went wrong with it — in his recently self-published book, "Bombing Harvey." The story of his father's downward spiral and how he lured his sons into helping him with the extortion plot is much more of a Keystone Kops tale than an "Ocean's Eleven" — with the exception of one very well-made bomb.

Birges Sr. was a Hungarian immigrant who made a fortune in the U.S. with his businesses, including landscaping, a restaurant and a vineyard. He wasn't above making a few illegal bucks along the way, at one point growing marijuana in his vineyards so Birges Jr. could sell it to friends.

He also was an awful father.

Birges Sr. focused on making money, and what little attention he paid to his two sons often involved physical and verbal abuse. Birges Jr. left their Clovis home when he was 16 and hoped he wouldn't see his family again. Three years later, his brother knocked on his door and said their father needed his help.

"He says he's going to blow up Harvey's Casino," his brother, Jim, told him.

Birges Sr. had gone into deep debt after developing an unhealthy relationship with blackjack. He owed the casino tens of thousands of dollars and had run through his savings.

"Son, I am broke. I have lost everything. I have nothing left to live for," Birges Sr. told his son. "I am going to build a bomb, and I need your help."

Despite all the abuse Birges Jr. suffered, the fact that his father wanted his help while peppering him with praise made the 19-year-old Birges Jr. want to aid his dad.

"Finally, my dad was giving me some recognition and believing in me," Birges Jr., now 51, said recently from his surfboard shaping shop in Ventura.

He said he never really thought his father would pull off the plan and get the bomb past security, so he decided to help out.

First off was stealing the needed dynamite from a construction site, which wasn't much of a stretch for Birges Jr., who was a bit of a petty thief and stoned dusk till dawn. Once they had more than 1,113 pounds of dynamite, they started figuring out how to make an impenetrable bomb. Birges Sr. and Birges Jr., who always tinkered with electronics as a kid, started designing the bomb with a maze of switches and various triggers, including an altimeter and a device that would trigger the bomb if flooded. Though they were making a bomb that would become legendary in the annals of FBI history, Birges Jr. never thought the plan would work. Or that anyone might get hurt. Or that he could end up in prison.

There were bumps along the way — like when Birges Jr. found his father laying out the dynamite in the 100-plus degree Clovis summer — but finally the work was nearly done. As completion got closer, the reality of what his father was doing set in, and Birges Jr. tried to talk him out of it. But the overbearing father had returned and was determined to carry out his plan. Only when they were loading a half-ton bomb into a van and it rolled over Birges Jr.'s hand did he have an excuse to back out. Birges Sr. scrambled and got two guys from his landscaping business to do it instead.

On Aug. 25, 1980, the men wheeled the large metal bomb with an IBM cover on it, told security it was a copier and left it with a note detailing what to do if they wanted the instructions to defuse it.

Though the casino had hundreds of bomb threats a year, it didn't need long to realize this one was serious.

The casino was cleared, a perimeter was set up, and the people who had been losing their money at slots now stood outside to see what was going to happen.

"People didn't take it seriously. It was like a carnival atmosphere, and people were printing T-shirts," said Phillip Sublett, a newspaper copy editor who is writing a book on the bombing and maintains the definitive website on it,

Meanwhile, Birges Sr. and his sons were set up around the various points where the complex money drop was established, waiting for their $3 million. And waiting. And waiting.

The helicopter pilot misread the directions of where in the mountainous terrain he was supposed to land for part of the drop. Even if the Birgeses did get it, they would have found a package with $5,000 carefully laid on top of scraps of paper.

Meanwhile, Chris Ronay, an FBI agent in the explosives department, was brought in from Washington, D.C., to investigate the case. By the time he got to Lake Tahoe, officials had decided to put a small dynamite charge on top of the bomb to try to separate the brain of the bomb from the dynamite. Birges Jr. anonymously called the police, directing them to flip one of the switches to make it safer, but the message never reached the right people. Their plan was quickly falling apart.

Birges Sr.'s girlfriend, a probation officer, got in a car wreck and had to be dumped at the hospital anonymously. Birges Jr. got a speeding ticket on the way home.

Though Jim Birges also called authorities to tell them which switch to flip, they never did.

Ronay said the reality was that no matter whether they had gotten exact instructions on how to dismantle the bomb, it was going to blow up in the casino. Everything else was too unsafe.

At 3:46 p.m. on Aug. 27, with TV cameras rolling and tourists cheering, the small charge meant to disarm the bomb was triggered. But seconds later, a half-ton of dynamite exploded, collapsing walls and sending a cloud of shattered glass and concrete dust all the way into another state — which was just across the street. It was the largest extortion bomb that exploded in the history of the U.S.

Ronay and the entire FBI wanted to know who was behind it. A $500,000 reward was offered. Birges Jr. and the rest of his family were no longer licking their wounds about the failed extortion plot and instead were looking over their backs.

Eventually, the speeding ticket, the trip to the hospital and a host of other clues led back to the Birgeses. The FBI agents told Birges Jr. it was his dad they were after, and though he held out as long as he could, he eventually rolled over on his father.

Birges Jr. and his brother told the FBI everything in exchange for leniency. They were convicted of conspiracy to commit extortion and given three years of probation.

"These were kids," Ronay said. "They should have known better. They paid the penalty. It was the old man who was a dictator."

Birges Sr. was given 20 years in prison. He'd call his son from prison, saying he was set up, he was innocent and that it was a big conspiracy. In 1996, he died in prison of liver cancer.The FBI made a replica of the bomb, which has become famous for its simple complexity and is still used in training.

In 2004, Birges Jr. decided to write his book while he was serving time for a drunken driving charge. He would handwrite his recollections, which found their way to Nina Arnold, his co-author.

"There are times when I still can't believe I was involved in it," he said. "I'm just glad no one got hurt."

He's sober now and has left the world of extortion plots and bomb-building long behind him.

These days, the only thing he makes is surfboards.