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08/15/03
Not
a Campaign Stop
An odd
assortment of cars and an armored truck converged at Engineer
Springs in southern California on the evening of August 16,
1926. Each vehicle bore a campaign sticker for Charles
C. Crail, Los Angeles County candidate for judge. The
twelve dozen or so men each had a new canteen, weapons, and
an assortment of tobacco products. Their purpose, though,
was not electioneering; it was revolutioneering. Led
by former Mexican General and politico Enrique Estrada, the
band intended to spark yet another revolt in Mexico and so
topple the government of President Callas. In what
was one of the Bureau’s largest cases that decade, the
Bureau thwarted Enrique’s insurrection and earned the
gratitude of the Mexican government.
Although
we get along well with Mexico today, stepping back to the
1920's we see that this friendship is of recent vintage. Especially
in the years following the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the
political situation along our border was volatile. Turmoil
in Mexico often led to problems in the US, like the raids
in which Mexican strongman Pancho Villa and his banditos killed
several US citizens. For this reason, the US held to
a policy of neutrality towards the competing parties in Mexican
politics. It was the job of the FBI (known at that time
as the Bureau of Investigation) to enforce this neutrality
and many Agent case hours were spent following up the latest
rumors of revolution.
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General Estrada
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In 1925,
General Estrada became the center of many of these rumors. That
year he had been on the losing side of political/military
battle and had to flee to the United States. By March
1926 Estrada rumors had become so strong that Los Angeles
SAC Lucian Wheeler directly asked him whether or not he was
plotting revolution. Estrada denied any interest in insurrection,
but he was lying. He had been laying the groundwork for
his return to Mexico for more than a year, having contacted
the Parker Hardware Co. of Los Angeles about the purchase
of weapons almost as soon as he settled in California. At
that time, Estrada had no money; his interest was purely speculative.
Within
two months of meeting with SAC Wheeler that March 1926, though,
Estrada’s financial resources improved. Friends
unknown transferred $20,000 to his bank account and Estrada
immediately began placing orders with the Parker Co. to purchase
400 Springfield rifles from a New York supplier as well as
other implements for war. New York Agent John Haas learned
of the unusually large purchase order almost immediately and
alerted the Los Angeles Division that the Parker Co. was amassing
a sizeable collection of war material. At that time no
evidence connected the purchase to Estrada.
Unaware
of Federal interest in Parker Co. rifle order, Estrada and
his coconspirators combed the Mexican communities in the LA
area for recruits. They promised money and future positions
in the government to potential revolutionaries and assured
their supporters that everything was fixed with the Department
of Justice; some were even given papers “documenting”
this claim and each recruit received a new canteen, money,
and tobacco, and was told he would get a rifle at the
appropriate time.
On August
4, the rifles arrived in California and were immediately moved
to a Los Angeles warehouse. The Parker Company also bought
two machine guns, several trucks, four planes, and a quantity
of nickel/steel armor plate for Estrada. Company salesmen
tested the plates’ durability by firing rifles into
it. When it passed this test, they arranged for it to
be attached to the sides of Estrada’s trucks. And
when the machine guns arrived, a Parker Co. representative
set each up in his hotel room to measure its height so that
the armorer could cut holes in the trucks’ sides for
the guns.
The Bureau
did not learn of many of these details at first, but an old
informant’s help quickly revealed the major outlines
of the case. On August 9, Francisco LaMadrid contacted
Agent Edwin Atherton. LaMadrid was an old friend of the
Bureau and worked for the Auto Theft Bureau of the Automobile
Club of California. He had provided crucial information
about Marty Durkin after Durkin, an auto thief, murdered SA
Shanahan in October 1925. LaMadrid had continued to work
closely with LA agents on Dyer Act cases, but it was his connections
with the Mexican community and government of Mexico that brought
him to the Bureau in August 1926. He took Atherton to
Lower California (a part of Mexico) to meet with a Mexican
official who told Atherton about Estrada’s plot.
Within
hours, the entire Los Angeles Field Office was brought in
on the investigation. Agents were assigned to keep Estrada’s
rifles under constant surveillance. Agents Manuel Sorola
(one of our earliest Hispanic Agents) and Emilio Kosterlitzky
(a polyglot of Russian birth) tapped their sources in the
Mexican community for information. Other Agents followed
Estrada’s men as they recruited revolutionaries throughout
the area.
Meanwhile,
SA Edwin Atherton was assigned to lay the groundwork for patrolling
the border and over the next several days he and LaMadrid
familiarized themselves with the roads and geography between
San Diego and Mexico. As there were few roads over which
Estrada could lead his small army to Mexico, Atherton could
quickly build a net of federal, state, local law enforcement
to cover the land.
Road
Trip
Staking
out the rifles paid off. The Bureau knew immediately
when Estrada was ready to launch his plot and as the trucks
were loaded on Saturday August 14, the Bureau was ready. With
canvass hiding their armor plating, one of Estrada’s
trucks pulled out accompanied by a carload of conspirators;
the armor on the second truck wasn’t finished so it
had to follow later. LA Agents Daly, Hopkins, and Findlay
closely monitored the truck’s progress. From other
sources it was known that the other members of the conspiracy
would meet the truck near the border to receive their rifles
and orders.
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Special
Agent Findlay
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Special
Agent Hopkins
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By telephone,
SAC Wheeler informed Atherton that the truck was leaving Los
Angeles around dusk. Atherton immediately began to assemble
his net. His first move was to arrange his lines of communications
at the San Diego Hotel where he had been staying. He
made “special arrangements … with the telephone
operators …to transmit all phone calls promptly [to
Atherton’s hotel room];” “…a few boxes
of candy were distributed to insure this service.” Unobtrusive
cover was also assigned to the hotel switchboard to ensure
that “interested persons” did not approach the
switchboard operators. Cell phones, of course, were decades
away and mobile, two-way radios would not be in use until
the late 1930’s so investigators had to rely on land-line
telephones to coordinate an operation that stretched from
Los Angeles to the Mexican border.
Over
the next several hours, Estrada’s truck meandered south
towards San Diego. The General and his closest advisors
monitored the progress from a hotel in La Mesa, California,
with a map on his bed. As his trucks checked in, Estrada
told the drivers where to go next. Problems, though,
arose almost immediately. That night, the truck only
made it as far as Santa Ana before it had to stop due to engine
trouble.
 Now
repaired, the truck started up again the next morning and
proceeded South followed by its Federal shadow. Just
before leaving, the Agents tailing the truck alerted Atherton
that they were on the move again. Atherton called together
his man and told them to report to his hotel wearing civilian
clothes. Later that day, as the truck got closer to the
border, Atherton ordered his group to move out in two cars
to check potential border crossings. Mrs. Atherton –
who was not a Bureau employee - remained at the hotel to act
as contact point between her husband, his fellow agents on
the road, and SAC Wheeler in Los Angeles.
For several
hours Atherton’s men checked the border for signs of
the truck or those who would meet it. They found nothing
all afternoon. Putting their heads together, Atherton
and LaMadrid figured that Estrada would most likely use a
point near the town of Dulzura. They had remembered a
minor road to Mexico Dulzura and the town of Engineer Springs
and Atherton concluded that it was the likely route for Estrada’s
expeditionary force to use.
Arriving
at the Dulzura Creek Bridge, Atherton learned his hunch had
been correct. Immigration Inspectors their told Agent
Atherton that a canvas covered truck reportedly containing
building materials had recently passed. Atherton reported
to Mrs. Atherton what he had learned and told her that he
would attempt to find the truck. Failing that, the group
would return to the hotel to await word from other Agents.
Success,
though, was immediate. Driving towards Engineer Springs,
Atherton noticed a canvas covered truck parked on the side
of the road. At first they passed the truck to see if
there were other vehicles further down the road. Finding
none, they turned around and returned. At the truck,
they arrested Juan Estrada, a relative of Enrique’s,
and several other Mexicans who had hidden in the brush near
by. Atherton and the other law enforcement officials
then settled in to await the rest of the conspirators.
The
Trap at Engineer Springs is sprung
A trickle
of recruits began to arrive, converging on the location alone
or in small groups. Atherton questioned each recruit
upon arrest, but had to stop almost immediately as they “began
to arrive so rapidly and in such large numbers” that
individual questioning was impossible. To avoid blocking
traffic on the road with prisoners and cars, Atherton had
the vehicles parked in a large circle nearby, headlights on,
prisoners in the center.
By 10:30
that night, 104 insurrectionists were sitting on the grass
under arrest. As few new revolutionaries were then coming
in, Atherton decided it was time to take the group to jail. Leaving
a border patrol inspector behind, he and the other officers
packed the prisoners into the cars they arrived in and formed
them into a long line on the road. The convoy set off
for San Diego. Law Enforcement vehicles and men were
on either end of the line and the prisoners drove in the middle. The
inspector arrested another six plotters that night after the
long line of prisoners left to drive themselves to jail.
Nor was
SA Atherton finished arresting plotters. While en route,
a Maxwell touring car with seven Mexicans passed the line
of prisoners and finally passed Atherton’s lead car. The
Agent pulled the car over and called out in Spanish “Do
you have any instructions?” Taking the agent for
a fellow insurrectionist, the driver handed him a sheet of
paper with directions on how to get from Los Angeles to Dulzura. The
Mexican also provided Atherton with a name and number to contact
if problems arose in getting to the rendezvous. Under
arrest, the Maxwell and its occupants joined the line.
At Spring
Valley, Atherton pulled over another car. The driver,
Frank Talamantes, claimed to be a Special Deputy Sheriff of
Los Angeles. The Crail sticker on his car suggested something
else. Two more arrests were made and Talamantes Studebaker
joined the line of prisoners too. Upon Arriving in San
Diego very early Monday morning, August 17, Atherton found
the county jail was too small to accommodate his catch of
110 or so prisoners and dozens of cars. The convoy, therefore,
proceeded to the nearby Marine Base where the prisoners were
put up while they awaited trial and sentencing.
The
General Did Not Escape
Many
hours before Atherton arrived with his prisoners, the ring
leaders of the conspiracy were arrested. Agent Hopkins
had arranged for this to occur just after Estrada’s
truck arrived in Dulzura. With several local law enforcement
officials, Hopkins confronted Estrada and the small group
of his closest advisors who had gathered in a San Diego hotel
room to oversee the expedition’s progress. Dressed
in military clothing under a civilian outfit, Estrada awaited
word that his army had gathered. Although he was invited
to join his men, Estrada was not taken to Dulzura, but to
the Marine Base where his army was imprisoned
In February
1927, Enrique Estrada was convicted and sentenced to 21 months
in jail and a $10,000 fine; the other leaders received similar,
but lighter, sentences. The rank and file defendants
received little or no punishment. After serving his sentence,
General Estrada returned to the Los Angeles area and ran a
language school for a time before returning to Mexico to live;
he died in 1940. As a sign of its gratitude, the Mexican
Government presented engraved pocket watches to the primary
case Agents. Each SA gave his watch to SAC Wheeler to
be returned to the Mexican government; then as now, they could
not accept such gifts.
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