Harvey’s Casino Bombing Revisited in ‘Bringing Down the House’ Documentary

A new docudrama is examining a decades-old bombardment plot. On Aug. 27, 1980, ii men disguised as photocopier installers delivered a booby-trapped bomb to Harvey’s Resort Hotel Stateline, Nev., on the shore of Lake Tahoe.

The plotters told the FBI that the bomb couldn’t follow diffused, regular past its maker. But the compounding of switches required to vent it so that it could follow detonated remotely inwards a unafraid location, would live provided inward coming back for a $3 1000000 ransom. Ultimately, the extortion plot of ground failed, but the bomb exploded, destroying to the highest degree of the casino.

“Bringing John L. H. Down the House: The Bombing of Harvey’s Casino” pose Wed night on KCRA 3 Sacramento and is useable to watch nationwide via the Go Local streaming platform.

The feature-length documentary, a collaborationism betwixt KCRA and Go Live, revisits the extraordinary events surrounding the patch and hears testimonies from those involved.

Sophisticated Bomb

The Harvey’s bomb was no more ordinary bomb. Delivered to the casino’s indorsement level executive offices at around 5:30 a.m., it was packed with 1,000 pounds of TNT.

It had terzetto split up timers, each circle for different explosion times. It was filled with circuitry and 28 switches, some of which would micturate the bomb go game off and some of which were fakes. There was a stool drift inside, which meant attempting to overflow the bomb would grounds the blow to ascend and blow up it. An atmospheric pressure shift would band it off, too. Any endeavour to leaning it or drill into it would also ensue inward a devastating explosion.

The FBI has described it as mayhap the to the highest degree sophisticated jury-rigged volatile gimmick ever so made anyplace inwards the world, and it is studied to this twenty-four hours inwards FBI grooming school.

The Mastermind

Curiously, though, the plot’s orchestrate had little have edifice bombs. Saint John Birges Sr. was a Hungarian immigrant to Clovis, Calif., who had flown for the German Luftwaffe during WW2. He was captured by the Russians and spent 8 years in a Soviet gulag.

After he arrived inwards the US, he reinforced a successful landscaping business concern and became wealthy. But he had a gambling problem. Birges claimed he lost $750K at Harvey’s – to a greater extent than $2 trillion in today’s money – and he wanted revenge.

Plot Unravels, Bomb Goes Off

The FBI attempted to save the ransom but later claimed they went to the wrong come in because of vague directions. Birges was waiting for it at a different location.

Meanwhile, bomb technicians dictated the topper way of diffusing the gimmick would live to divide the detonators from the dynamite using a molded explosive charge of C-4 explosive. They didn’t realize dynamite had also been placed inward the box containing the detonation circuit.

Birges’ lay claim inwards his ransom take down that the bomb could not be disarmed proved to live accurate.

No single was killed or injured in the blast, and Harvey’s, at present Harvey’s Lake Tahoe, a Caesars property, was rebuilt.

Birges was arrested inwards 1981 following a tipoff to the FBI from the ex-girlfriend of ace of his sons. Birges’ deuce sons testified against their male parent at trial, admitting they were in on the plot, but argued they were bullied into it by their overbearing father. Neither served prison time.

Birges was sentenced to lifespan and died inward prison in 1996 at the age of 74.

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