Troubles at the Concord Naval Weapons Station
Hicke
You were the U.S. attorney during some of the most troubled times in our history, I think.
Poole
There was a lot of it. One time, some of these people—I've forgotten exactly who they were now—but they got a log of a young
tree and they put it on the railroad track, and it was discovered in time to stop it. But then I got a great many demands.
I remember Bill [William] Knowland, who had been a United States senator and had come back to the [Oakland] Tribune, his family paper. There's a federal statute on the books that provides for the death penalty for someone who attempts to
wreck a railroad train. The presence of the log was spotted maybe a whole day before the train got there, but that made no
difference. People were demanding for me to have the grand jury return this indictment. The death penalty was involved in
this. I said, "This is the silliest damned thing I know of." But, you know, in a way it was frightening.
When the Tribune didn't get what it wanted, they printed a couple of articles that reflected on my good judgment, common sense, and trustworthiness
to hold office. I knew better than to argue with a newspaper. When that happened and people came over and asked me for a comment,
I said, "I'm not going to comment on what the papers have said. In our judgment it was a damn fool thing to do, but also in
our judgment, this was deliberately put there at such a time and place"—the train ran there about twice a day and it was a
freight train hauling supplies. That was what it was about. It was hauling supplies from the Port of Oakland up to the Concord
Naval Weapons Station where they stored all these weapons.
Hicke
War protest or something?
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Poole
Yes, that's what that was. I said, "If they'd done the same thing on the right-of-way where the trains go by at sixty, seventy
miles an hour, it would have been altogether different. But, obviously, they put it down there and in the course of the day,
somebody driving a car on the adjacent highway said, `What's that doing on the railroad track?' And that's what really happened
there." I could have kicked those students all over the lot who did it.
You remember, there was always an effort to try to enter the premises of the Concord Naval Station. The last thing I remember
about it was there was this group that sat on the tracks when the train was coming, and one of them didn't get up and he got
his legs cut off.
Hicke
Oh, yes.
Poole
But I mean there's been this fascination with trying to shut down the Naval Weapons Station, and that sort of thing. They
would bring boats out in the vicinity of the Golden Gate Bridge, not Golden Gate, but of the Bay Bridge to prevent ships from
either taking off from the Port of Oakland or coming to the Port of Oakland, and threatened, "We'll put our bodies in the
way and you'll have to kill us." I talked to the navy people about it, and I suggested to them that they get one of their
big ships they had and go by there, and what's going to happen is, they're going to put their hands up on the gun rails of
the boat, and they think that maybe they can rock your boat over. So turn the bullhorn on them. It was the dumbest thing they
were doing. That I thought was idiocy.