In 1954, Navy veteran and Oklahoma attorney Fred Harber moved to northwestern OC and commenced his career as owner and manager of properties, starting with a gas station. His holdings increased rapidly.
He soon snagged a gig as planning commissioner in his town of Buena Park, which, like other communities in the area, sought to maintain its agricultural character (dairies, chicken ranches, etc.) and avoid development. He became a City Councilman; then Mayor. By ’59, he also became acting city manager of the contiguous town of Cypress, another town dominated by dairy farming.
To observers’ dismay, Harber introduced a rough dose of partisanship into local city politics; further, he helped build an old-fashioned “political machine” complete with party “bosses.” Meanwhile, he maintained involvement in Democratic Party politics at the state and local level.
The City of Cypress, like Buena Park, sought to block development and maintain a focus on agriculture. Hence, it was shocking when, in 1961, newly-elected Cypress city councilman and local dairyman Job Denni was charged with the attempted bribery of developers (to grant use variances, I think). His trial occurred in 1962, and received much attention.
News coverage did not then connect Harber to the case.
Surprisingly, Denni was acquitted. Four years later, he died in a crash of his private plane.
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| Fred Harber, early 60s |
Not long after, former aides of Supervisor Battin held a press conference to depict Harber as the secret OC “kingmaker,” the man who, in his mind at least, ran the county—and Battin, too. Reporters confronted Harber with those notions, and he played coy. His denials, it seemed, provoked mirth. Perhaps the story was true!
With the Dick and Doc operation going great guns, Harber helped Caspers win the June 1974 primary, and they celebrated that victory with a trip, along with eight other men, starting down in Baja, on Harber’s boat, the Shooting Star. Under somewhat mysteriously circumstances, the boat foundered in a storm with all hands lost, including Harber and Caspers. The search for survivors was conducted by the likes of Caspers’ planning commissioner, Brent Spendlove (who, like Denni, later died in a crash of his private plane [1975]), and Caspers’ chief assistant (both at Caspers' Savings and Loan and at the County offices), Tom Fuentes. Despite enormous expense and effort, no bodies were ever found. All ten who were on the boat were declared legally dead.
As Caspers’ death became clear, the question arose as to Caspers’ replacement on the OC board. Local Republicans assumed that Fuentes would be appointed (by Governor Reagan), but that plan ran afoul of a technicality and Tom Reily got the job instead. Fuentes then went off to becomes a priest (it didn’t take; he soon returned to OC to settle into his role as GOP kingmaker and Iron Fist).
Here’s today’s part of the story:
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| Tom Fuentes (the Caspers years) |
In deposition, Jordan relates this story: He purchases a parcel in El Toro with assurances, from County officials, that it has the needed permits to construct a mobile home park (they had been secured by the property's previous owner). But when he pursues the project, he is informed that there are problems. At one point, Jordan is told that Supervisor Caspers has changed his mind about the desirability of the mobile home project, preferring condominiums. Jordan thus alters his plans, but that proves unworkable, and so he returns to the mobile home plan. In April of 1974, his permits are revoked. Eventually, he is informed by Caspers that, to solve these problems, he needs to talk with Fred Harber. Jordan is persuaded to join Harber and Caspers on Harber’s yacht, the Shooting Star, in Baja, where the three can do some fishing and some talking. Harber eventually makes clear that, if Jordan wants to pursue construction projects in OC, he’ll have to fork over some serious money:
“He wanted $10,000 now and $2,000 per month [declared Jordan]. And I said, ‘How long does this $2,000 go on?’ And he [Harber] said. ‘How long do you plan to develop in Orange County?’”
Harber said that he would keep part of the money, and the balance would go to “make large loans to people running for political office,” according to Jordan’s deposition.
Jordan plays along, but, according to him, he then contacts the DA’s office—or at least deputies or investigators there—where a plan begins to form to catch Harber and Caspers red-handed:
Jordan’s deposition describes how he and his attorney, Robert (Sam) Barnes, planned to make the payoff with marked money with the cooperation of the district attorney’s office.
“After we’ve cleared it with District Attorney Cecil Hicks…that we’ll arrange for me to go back to Fred Harber and pay him the money, in marked bills. The exact details of the plan were not worked out at this time, but were, I think, that the District Attorney’s office was going to be involved in how we would work it out,” Jordan said.
But then Caspers wins the June primary and he decides to join Harber for one of their Baja trips. Jordan is invited, but he doesn’t think the trip fits with the “gotcha” plan, and, besides, the Shooting Star doesn’t strike him as seaworthy. He decides not to go.
Then the ship is lost with all hands.
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| Landowner Richard O'Neill and his family, 1950 |
Afterword, Jordan’s project comes to grief, owing in part to increased costs. Eventually, it is ruined, and he takes a financial beating. So, in 1975, he sues the County, charging that he “suffered a severe financial setback because of the county’s illegal revocation of the building permit.” In 1978, the judge in the case agreed; hence the settlement, including Jordan’s silence.
The Times’ story (“Caspers, Harber Accused of Bribe Try by Developer”), appearing the next day, lays out the same facts but goes deeper. Its begins thus:
Had not former Orange County Supervisor Ronald Caspers and his campaign adviser, Fred Harber, disappeared when their boat foundered off Baja California in 1974, they might have sailed home to a bribery indictment.
The Times explains that, upon learning that he must talk with Harber to overcome his permit difficulties, Jordan makes inquiries into the fellow and learns that he (Harber) was once caught bribing developers back in his Buena Park/Cypress years. The Times finds sources close to that case and learns that, to avoid prosecution, Harber agreed to cooperate with authorities in their case against Job Denni, but the case collapsed when Denni died.
The earlier shakedown (by Harber) is remarkably similar to the one described by Jordan: $2k a month. Owing to Denni’s death, the public never learns of Harber’s early 60s sculduggery, just as, owing to Harber & Caspers’ death in ‘74, the public never learns of the more recent “pay to play” scheme in El Toro. —If not for Jordan's lawsuit and the resultant settlement.
It is clear from Jordan’s declarations that Harber’s scheme is part of the “Dick and Doc” operation: the funding of campaigns (but to what end exactly?).
The Times article brings Caspers’ assistant, Tom Fuentes, into the narrative. When Jordan discovers that some county office has misgivings about Jordan’s project, he calls Caspers’ office:
…It was too small a matter to take directly to Caspers, Jordan testified, so he asked one of Caspers’ assistants, Tom Fuentes, to find out which county department was so concerned with his project and why.
Jordan said he received a call about a month later from Fuentes, who warned that “we were going to have some problems" but wouldn't elaborate over the phone.
Jordan testified that he hurried to Fuentes’ office where Fuentes said Shirley Grindle, a planning commissioner appointed by Supervisor Ralph Clark, was “asking a lot of questions” about Jordan's mobile home park. Fuentes said Ms. Grindle apparently suspected that construction was deviating from the approved plan, Jordan said.
Jordan testified that he went back to his office and pored over the plans. The location of five mobile home lots had been moved somewhat, but that, Jordan said, was too minor to cause any trouble. He called Fuentes, who arranged a meeting with Bart Spendlove, Caspers’ planning commissioner.
Jordan meets Spendlove at the building site, where Spendlove tells him that, though no one likes the project, as far as he is concerned, Jordan has the needed permits, has already started the project, and so he should proceed. Jordan agrees to grow a row of trees to further obscure the park, and Spendlove is appeased.
Oddly, in parantheses, the Times adds: “Spendlove died 18 months later in a plane crash.”
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| Caspers loved building parks |
Not long after, Caspers calls Jordan to tell him that, Spendlove to the contrary notwithstanding, the project is still problematical. He advises that Jordan contact Fred Harber, who can solve such problems. (So Harber, not Caspers, calls the shots?)
That’s when Jordan learns of Harber’s colorful history of bribery:
…([Jordan hears that] When Harber was city manager of Cypress in the early 1960s, his name was linked to a reported bribery effort there involving a land developer and a city councilman named Job Denni Jr.
(Sources close to the investigation have indicated that Harber, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, agreed to testify that he and Denni were receiving $2,000 a month from the developer. Before the case could go to the grand jury, however, Denni was killed in a plane crash [in 1966] and the case was dropped.)
. . .
Jordan testified that he telephoned Caspers and asked why Harber was so influential in county matters. Caspers replied that Harber had clout with Supervisor Clark and Supervisor Robert Battin because he had arranged campaign financing for both, Jordan said.
He had "clout" with Caspers, too.
After his return from Mexico, Jordan found that the County had put a halt to his project. Evidently, the action was precipitated by Shirley Grindle’s concerns about it. (More on that later. Grindle was not part of the shakedown. Her part in it was likely purely accidental.)
* * *
—That the County (or the insurer) agreed to settle Jordan’s lawsuit by forking over $700,000 suggests, to me, that they viewed Mr. Jordan’s allegations (about the attempted shakedown by Caspers/Harber) as credible.
—That Thomas Fuentes had some role in this tale will be tantalizing to those who have developed an image of the man as ruthless and conniving. There have long been rumors about corruption during the Caspers years (1971-74) and these occasionally are openly stated. For instance, during a heated televised debate between congressional candidates in 1986, a prominent Republican businessman—Nathan Rosenberg—in rebutting a remark about him by Fuentes, was provoked to say: "Coming from Ron Caspers' bagman, I don't feel bad about Mr. Fuentes' comment." (See.)
—But what is most interesting here is this part of the Times’ story:
(Sources close to the investigation have indicated that Harber, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, agreed to testify that he and Denni were receiving $2,000 a month from the developer. Before the case could go to the grand jury, however, Denni was killed in a plane crash [in 1966] and the case was dropped.)
$2,000 a month? That’s exactly what Harber was asking of Jordan, according to Jordan’s sworn testimony (his declarations).
Who were these “sources close to the investigation”? —Presumably, people in the DA’s office or other lawyers directly involved. I’m inclined to trust the Times on this point.
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| "Doc" Cella |
But maybe that isn’t odd at all.
Again, I couldn’t find Harber’s name anywhere in the news coverage that I found regarding the Cypress/shakedown story. Perhaps I missed something. (I relied on a search in Newspapers.com.)
—Denni died nearly four years after his bribery trial ended—in a crash of his private plane that also badly injured his son. Is it curious that, like Denni, Mr. Spendlove died in the crash of his private airplane (which, incidentally, also killed his wife and four of his children)? I think this is merely a coincidence. It occurred about 15 months after Harber & Caspers’ mysterious deaths at sea. (Lots of strange deaths, eh? More coincidence?) I did some reading: Spendlove was chosen commissioner by Caspers likely because he was sufficiently pro-development and was otherwise attractive in the community. When Caspers died, Thomas F. Riley was appointed (by Reagan) to replace him (a technicality had prevented appointment of Fuentes, who responded by seeking the priesthood, something he abruptly abandoned a year later, when he commenced becoming the autocratic ruler of OC GOP politics), who replaced Spendlove with a more environment-friendly planning commissioner. As far as I know, Spendlove’s death didn’t serve anyone’s interests. And would anyone kill six people when they only wanted one of them dead?
(Of course!, some will say.)
For what it’s worth, there are other strange deaths in the Harber yarn (Harber’s one-time secretary, who had started working for yet another OC Supervisor in the 90s, was inexplicably killed with a bow and arrow or crossbow. A cold case). More on that later.
* * *
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| Shirley Grindle |
According to the article, Shirley Grindle, a former OC planning commissioner (later renowned for her advocacy of clean and open government), said that she was “shocked to learn that she might have unwittingly been used four years ago in the shakedown of a land developer.”
She was referring of course to the claims made, in deposition, by contractor Richard V. Jordan. Obviously, she took his claims seriously.
According to the Times, “Jordan’s development problems stemmed from Ms. Grindle, a planning commissioner appointed by Supervisor Ralph Clark. Ms. Grindle thought Jordan’s permit was improperly issued and asked Ralph Benson, the deputy counsel for planning affairs, to investigate. … Benson ruled the permit was void, and the permit was revoked, halting construction.”
Said Grindle: “I didn’t know of Caspers’ and Harber’s interest in the matter.”
She said she was unhappy with the way the Department of Building and Safety was being run by its director, Floyd McLellan, “and I was looking for something to nail McLellan on. That’s how I got involved in the act.”
She said she had nothing against Jordan or his project. “I almost feel like calling Mr. Jordan and telling him: Now I know, and I’m really sorry this was happening to you. This is totally against what I believe in . . . at the time, I had no idea this sort of things was going on,” Ms. Grindle said.
The Times reported that Benson now asserts that “he had had no contact with anyone but Ms. Grindle and the Department of Building and Safety before he ruled the permit void.”
That ruling prompted Jordan’s lawsuit against the county for illegally halting—and eventually dooming—his project. Last month, the county’s insurance company agreed to pay Jordan $700,000 as part of an out-of-court settlement.
The Times goes on to explain:
Jordan testified that he had first been warned of Ms. Grindle’s interest in the project by a Caspers’ aide, Tom Fuentes.
Fuentes, now a public relations man [for many years, he lobbied on behalf of corporate interests], Wednesday refused to comment on the contents of Jordan’s deposition or on his contacts with Jordan.
“I’m saddened by what you have written,” he told The Times. “The vilification of his (Caspers’) memory by you is unjustified. To do what you’ve done to Ron’s memory is tragic.”
That’s classic pious Tom Fuentes.
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| Job Denni |
As near as I can tell, no such triggering occurred. I find that odd.
More to come. (Be on the lookout for part 3)
Related reading:
- 'Dick and Doc's' political empire, California Journal, January 1976
- Who Killed Arlene Hoffman? LA Times, Jan. 27, 1995
- The Shooting Star Mystery, Dissent the Blog
- What does Fuentes’ tutelage under, esteem of, and four years with, Ronald "shakedown" Caspers tell us about him?, Dissent the Blog, June 14, 2012
- Hicks’ District Attorney Role Changed as County Changed, LA Times, AUG. 13, 1989
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