Loaded with ‘spies’

* EDITOR’S NOTE: The Daily Pilot has agreed to republish The Verdict,

the ever-popular column written for many years by retired Corona Del

Mar jurist and historian Robert Gardner, in exchange for donations to

the Surfrider Foundation. This column was originally published April

3, 1993.

Tom Heffernan was one of the better people. A barrel-chested guy

with a nice smile and a deep voice, Tom was the resident special

agent of the FBI during the early days of World War II.

I was an ONI officer stationed in San Pedro. Orange County was my

assignment. Tom and I worked on many cases together and became close

friends.

In those days, both agencies were given the task of investigating

cases in the field of domestic or counter-intelligence -- espionage,

subversion and sabotage -- Tom in the civilian community, me in the

naval establishment.

In those highly patriotic, post-Pearl Harbor days, there weren’t

many subversives. Actually, Tom and I spent most of our time

disproving charges of subversion. For example, some anonymous creep

had reported to the FBI that our future supervisor, Heinz Kaiser, was

pro-Nazi. After all, he did have a German name. Of course, everyone

who knew Heinz knew that you couldn’t find a more patriotic person in

the whole country. Still, Tom and I had to make an investigation and

put the true story in the FBI files to combat an anonymous tip.

The poor Americans of Japanese ancestry were of course favorite

targets of the nutty fringe. A local law enforcement official

trumpeted that a certain Japanese person had been found with

“dangerous chemicals near our water supply.” The water supply was the

bone dry Santa Ana River, and the dangerous chemicals were the poor

guy’s high school chemistry set. So, too, every Japanese farmer had a

long-range radio transmitter by which he was sending to Tokyo highly

classified military secrets. All those goofy reports had to be

investigated.

At this point, I would like to point out that the FBI and ONI

recommended against the expulsion of people of Japanese ancestry. Tom

and I made our small contribution to those reports.

I don’t remember that anyone made any charges of espionage, but we

did investigate a lot of reports of sabotage. For example:

One morning, we were called to the new lighter-than-air base being

constructed in Tustin. During the night, one of those huge hangers

being constructed had blown down. I must admit it was quite a sight.

You never saw a bigger pile of wrecked lumber. According to the

contractor, this had to be sabotage. Not so. Investigation revealed

it was a case of pure carelessness.

The hangers were constructed by using a huge fan-like contraption

mounted on a flat car. The workmen worked on the edges of the

contraption as it was moved along the same railroad tracks. At night,

they were supposed to put some chocks under the wheel of the railroad

car. One night, a workman forgot to do so. During the night, a wind

came up, the car moved backward on the tracks and the whole structure

collapsed.

So, too, the skip loaders used in the construction of the El Toro

Marine base kept breaking down. This had to be sabotage.

Hardly.

Investigation revealed that the contractor in his zeal to get the

job done was using skip loaders that were fast but simply too light

for the job, and they kept breaking down.

The list goes on and on. After about a year of not catching a spy,

a subversive or a saboteur, I put in for combat intelligence and went

overseas. Tom put in for a transfer to some other part of the country

that hopefully had more spies, subversives and saboteurs than Orange

County.

Came to the end of the war and I resumed my old law partnership

with Don Harwood. Lo and behold, who should pop up in 1947 but Tom

Heffernan. We took him in, I was appointed to the Superior Court, the

firm became Harwood and Heffernan, then Mark Soden and Bob Corfman

joined it, and it became Harwood, Heffernan, Soden and Corfman, the

most prestigious law firm in the harbor area.

As far as I know, neither the FBI nor ONI ever caught a spy, a

subversive or a saboteur in Orange County. Of course, they didn’t

catch many in any other part of the country, either.

There just weren’t that many.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a retired judge and a longtime Newport Beach

resident.