Preparedness Day Bombing

The Peparedness Day Bombing took place on July 22, 1916 in San Francisco. It was a False Flag coordinated by the San Francisco Law and Order Committee of San Francisco industrialists, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the Railroads, and by Hearst Newspapers to disrupt labor opposition to entering the First World War and to the growth of the U.S. Navy in the name of "preparedness." The bombing was blamed on a labor organizer named Tom Mooney, and his trial and conviction became known as the American Dreyfus Case.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of one Newspaper editor, Fremont Older, the wrongful conviction gradually emerged; however, Older was never able to personally accept the bombing had been a planned by civic leaders. Although substantial evidence of perjury and an photographic alibi emerged, Mooney was not pardoned until 1939.

The Bombing also marked a number of firsts in regard to Federal "Deep State" investigations. On November 22, 1918 Older's newspaper, "The Call" published, in full, The Denismore Report, a leaked "classified" US Dept. of Labor investigation of the San Francisco District Attorney's office. The Federal investigation involved installing secret federal wiretaps and recording all incoming and outcoming calls to the District Attorney's "Dicatphone." The report caused a nationwide sensation, and it was read into the Congressional Record - much like the Pentagon Papers would similarly be read into the record fifty five years later.

Unfortunately, the popular positive reception to the Dept. of Labor's Denismore Report and the tools and techniques used both to compile it as well as to leak it to the public also proved formative to the adoption of such techniques by the fledgling FBI at the Dept. of Justice. During Prohibition, the Dept. of Labor's authority to conduct such investigations was significantly curtailed and then elimnated, but the Dept. of Justice's was expanded.

Before the bombing

"Preparedness" was an organized propaganda effort nationwide to step up United States armament for eventual entry into the First World War. It featured parades in major cities - one took place in New York on May 13, 1916. This effort was opposed by labor, and unions did not participate in the New York or Chicago parades.

The San Francisco Labor Council was aware of rumors that labor's enemies were concocting some sort of "disturbance."

Whereas, it has come to our attention that, because united labor is opposed to the fostering of the war spirit by "preparedness parades," an attempt may be made by the enemies of labor to cause a violent disturbance during the San Francisco Parade and charge that distubrance to labor in hope of discrediting labor organizations in the eyes of the citizens generally: Therefore, be it resolved: That in order to forestall any possible frameup of this character...we hereby caution all union men and women...to be especially careful and make no other protest that their silent nonparticipation on the peparedness parade.

The Bombing

At 2:06 an tan suitcase exploded at the intersection of Steuart and Market Streets. Six people laid dead or dying. Four others would die later. Many others remained injured - some maimed for life.

Authorities arrived immediately. Barely fifteen minutes later, Frederick Colburn of the Chamber of Commerce and District Attorney Charles Fickert directed an off-duty Oakland firefighter to hose down the entire scene – the gore of Lawlor’s head, which had been blown off, and the bits and pieces of a heavy tan suitcase seen left at 1:50 PM by two short men “dark complexioned, possibly Greek, Italian or Mexican” as described by Clifton – all washed away, compromising the evidence “to avoid distressing the public.” Fickert sent Clifton away, saying he had ample witness statements including an account of Martin Swanson, head detective for both Pacific Gas and Electric and Union Railroad. William Randolph Hearst’s papers ran an Extra hitting the streets at 2:45 PM running the same editorial, warning the public San Francisco was in the grip of a “Mafia of pacifists, anarchists, and coddlers of criminals” and something must be done. Two months later, a tall, ruddy-complexioned Irish-American Labor organizer “anarchist” and “socialist” Tom Mooney was convicted on the eyewitness testimony of a “gentle cattleman” named Fred Oxman and sentenced to the death penalty.

One newspaper held out against the calls for “preparedness” – Fremont Older’s The Bulletin patronized by C&H Sugar magnate and religious pacifist John Spreckels – the force behind the Balboa Park beautification of San Diego. The paper on April 11, 1917, in a remarkable feat of investigative reporting, published letters between District Attorney Fickert and Oxman, showing PG&E had written, coached, and paid for the eyewitness’s testimony and travel in advance of the bombing. Fickert penned back in Hearst’s Examiner that the Bulletin was an “adviser of bloodthirsty anarchists … to convince you Mooney is the victim of an infamous conspiracy.” Within a year, the Bulletin’s shareholders were bought out, and a new executive editor pushed out Older for creating “unpatriotic controversy.” Shortly thereafter, the paper closed, but by that time America had entered the war and bodies of America’s best and brightest were strewn on Flanders’ Field. Strangely enough, Hearst invited Older to work at his other SF paper – The Call (once owned by Spreckels) and given editorial independence.

On Friday Afternoon, November 22, 1918, two weeks after the war’s end, The Call published in full a highly secret and confidential Federal Dept. of Labor report where Labor Dept. Agent George Parson installed secret wiretaps on the District Attorney Fickert’s dictaphone. It revealed Fickert had fixed cases and admitted Mooney’s malicious prosecution was directed by an attorney for the US Dept. of Commerce, a California supreme court justice, and was coordinated by the fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigation, founded 1908. Soon thereafter, fearing “red communism,” Congress stripped the Dept. of Labor of its investigatory authority and the “Palmer Raids” took place across the nation. Later, Older would admit he promised to withhold publication until after the 1918 California gubernatorial election in exchange for the right to publish.

Bibliography

The definitive work on the bombing is John C. Ralston's "Fremont Older & the 1916 San Francisco Bombing: A Tireless Crusade for Justice" 2013: the History Press.