How An IED Found In A Nevada Casino ‘Defeated’ An FBI Bomb Squad in 1980

Wow! 1980, and an IED. Did we even know about an IED in 1980? This IED was huge and impenetrable by the FBI. Good Story.

On the morning of Aug. 26, 1980, an employee of Harvey’s Wagon Wheel Casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, discovered two stacked metallic grey boxes on the casino’s second floor. Unbeknownst to the employee, the boxes had just been delivered to the building by two men posing as delivery guys for IBM. One of them was John Birges, a Hungarian immigrant with a colorful past that included a stint as a Luftwaffe fighter pilot during World War II and eight years in a Siberian gulag.