John Birges

Harvey's Resort Hotel bombing
The bomb explosion on August 27, 1980
Location	Stateline, Nevada
Date	August 26–27, 1980
Target	Harvey's Resort Hotel
Attack type	Bombing, attempted extortion
Weapons	Dynamite improvised explosive device
Deaths	0
Non-fatal injuries	0
Perpetrators	John Birges and three others
Motive	Extortion

The Harvey's Resort Hotel bombing took place on August 26–27, 1980, when three men planted an elaborately booby trapped bomb containing 1,000 pounds (450 kg) of dynamite at Harvey's Resort Hotel (now "Harveys") in Stateline, Nevada, United States. The mastermind behind the bomb, former millionaire John Birges, was attempting to extort $3 million ($8.9 million today) from the casino, claiming he had lost $750,000 ($2.2 million today) gambling there.

The FBI went to the spot they believed to be the ransom drop, but due to vague directions, Birges was waiting at a different location. No money was paid to Birges.

The bomb was cleverly built and virtually tamper-proof. The ransom note said that the bomb could not be disarmed even by the bomb builder, but if paid $3 million he would give instructions on which combination of switches would allow the bomb to be moved and remotely detonated. The FBI determined that it would take four men to move it and there was no way to know if the bomb was truly disarmed or safe to move. The FBI decided that the bomb would have to be disarmed in the hotel. All guests and their belongings were evacuated from the hotel and the gas main was shut off.

After studying the bomb for more than a day through x-rays, bomb technicians decided that, although there were warnings from the bomb maker that a shock would trigger the device, the best hope of disarming it was by separating the detonators from the dynamite. The technicians thought this could be accomplished using a shaped charge of C-4. The attempt to disarm the bomb failed as the technicians did not know that dynamite had also been placed in the top box containing the detonation circuit; the shaped charge detonated the top box explosives, which caused the rest of the bomb to detonate. The bomb destroyed much of the casino, although no one was injured. Harrah's Casino (which was connected to Harvey's Resort via a tunnel) was also damaged by the explosion, which broke many of the casino's windows.

The bomb, one of the largest the FBI had ever seen, was loaded with dynamite Birges had stolen from construction sites in Fresno. According to FBI experts, the Harvey's bomb remains the most complex improvised explosive device they have examined, and a replica of "the machine", as the extortionists called it, was still used in FBI training as of 2009^[update].