Teamsters, Thugs & Power

TEAMSTERS, THUGS & POWER

By Brian Flanigan

"Where is Jimmy Hoffa? Cali (313) -761-7297."

The garish bumper sticker, , slapped on the rear end of a "double" roaring toward Chicago on westbound 1-94, bounces crazily before your straining eyes.

Where, indeed, is the little strongman who mysteriously disappeared a month ago while he was maneuvering to regain control of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters?

Through all the rumors and speculation, two facts are clear:

First, James Riddle Hoffa, in his forty-year union career, helped weave an astonishing web of corruption and influence that stretched across the country.

Second, for whatever reason, Hoffa no longer served a purpose in the business of the accumulation of power by big labor, organized crime, and whatever allies could be bought, borrowed, or stolen in government, the media, and elsewhere.

Some speculate that he was set up by his foster son and former bodyguard, Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien (continued on page 3)

The Teamster Empire: How Hoffa Did It

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. . . or by current Teamster boss Frank Fitzsimmons. Richard Nixon's 1971 order commuting Hoffa's sentence barred him from union activity until 1980; but the courts may have been ready to rule the ban unconstitutional, freeing Hoffa to campaign openly for leadership.

Others contend that Tony Provenzano ("Tony Pro"), a New Jersey Teamster honcho, or Anthony Giacolone ("Tony Jack"), a Detroit Mafia chieftain, wasted Hoffa because he wouldn't listen to the mob and retire. It has also been suggested that Hoffa was threatening to go to a grand jury and testify against Provenzano and others in order to create leverage to get back in the union.

Hoffa and Tony Pro had fallen out while both were serving time at the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and Mafiosi found Hoffa less pliable than Fitzsimmons, who took over after Hoffa was locked up in 1967.

For four decades, Jimmy Hoffa showed them how the game was played. In what looks like the end, the spider became one of the flies, caught in his own web of corruption, deals, and back-room conspiracies. Like many another gangster before him, he became a victim of his own arrogance, ruthlessness, and hunger for power.

What They Could Do

Although Hoffa is gone, the structure he built remains, its reins in other hands. The Teamster empire, as its propaganda proudly states, is "part of the American life," its influence extending into every realm of political power in the country.

Through its direct control of millions of workers in the critical transportation industry alone, the Brotherhood is capable of shutting down the economy of any major city, should that suit its purposes, by stopping the movement of food, clothing, industrial materials, and everything else. And when we take into account Teamsters' alliances with organized crime and their ability to exert a powerful influence in every "legitimate" sector of society, a truly imposing juggernaut of reactionary power begins to emerge.

In May 1959, following the McClellan Committee investigation of the Teamsters, Life Magazine characterized Hoffa's organization as a "national threat" and wondered at what the Teamsters might do if allowed to continued unchecked. Today, after fifteen more years of consolidation, expansion, and political maneuvering, the possibilities can only be surmised by duly noting the alleged role of Chile's truck drivers- in league with the CIA-in paralyzing the city of Santiago and hastening the destruction of Salvado Allende's Marxist government late in 1973.

The story of Hoffa's climb to power, and of the Teamsters' subsequent rise to their present formidable position, needs to be told in order to put into perspective the disappearance of Hoffa and the undiminished - in fact still growing - power of the organization he built on the backs of working people. It is far from enough to ask, "Where is Jimmy Hoffa?" The press continues to exploit the news value of the disappearance, with its romantic aspects of intrigue and violence, while ignoring more disturbing questions: How did Hoffa get as far as he did? Who helped him? How come nobody stopped him? How much power do the Teamsters have, and what are they doing with it? And now that Hoffa is out, where are they headed next?

The Blitz Of The Midwest

In 1932, a bunch of Detroit dockworkers, led by a tough-talking, hard-punching teenager named Jimmy Hoffa, joined the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Although he was one of the youngest members of the "Strawberry Gang," which had shut down a southwest side Kroger loading dock a year earlier, Hoffa became the acknowledged leader of Teamsters Local 299, Detroit's largest.

The brash youngster immediately joined forces with Owen "Bert" Brennan, head of Detroit Local 337, and in the early 40's the two truckers organized the Michigan Conference of Teamsters, with Hoffa in the Driver's seat. In 1945 Hoffa was officially elected president of Local 299. Two years later he became the state's number one Teamster after being elected president of Joint Council 43.

With this solid base of truckers, dockworkers and laborers, Hoffa began a blitzkreig of the Midwest that rivaled, in its undisguised grabbing of power, anything Hitler was doing at the same time in Europe.

Hoffa began moving in earnest when he was named negotiating chairman of the Central States Drivers' Council.

A long the way Hoffa, always very basic in his concepts, started practicing his "muscle" theory: "Always have more muscle than the other guy. You win that way." From Minnesota, Hoffa went on to Ohio, and the juke box racket.

Using the Central States Drivers' Council as a club, he began negotiating area-wide, instead of locally, as had been the past practice. He leapfrogged pockets of resistance and returned later to squeeze them into submission. He played off companies - or even local unions - against one another. And he developed both working and personal relationships with the best pro muscle in the business -- the Mafia and the remnants of Detroit's Purple Gang.

Hoffa's main man in Ohio was Cleveland's William Presser, honcho of that state's lucrative jukebox rackets. By the early '40's, Presser realized that being lined up with "the little guy from Detroit" meant that it was easier to control the action: "You don't use my jukeboxes, you don't get your beer delivered." In quick succession, Presser became president of Cleveland's Local 555, Joint Council 41, and the Ohio Conference of Teamsters.

Presser's right hand man was Louis "Babe" Triscaro, a former prizefighter who was president of Local 436 of the Excavation and Race Track Workers and vice-president of Joint Council 41. Triscaro had underworld connections on both coasts.

In 1945. Presser sent Eugene C. "Jimmy" James into Detroit to start jukebox Local 985. The ambitious James, in his push to expand. began cutting into Mafia turf, a situation that caused hostilities until Hoffa agreed to bring William Bufalino into the local. Married to the niece of Angelo Meli. a reputed Detroit Mafioso, Bufalino was later to act as one of Hoffa 's many lawyers in what carne to be known as the "Teamsters Bar Association."

Ripping Off The Rank And File

Four years later Hoffa wired up an arrangement with Chicago's Paul "Red" Dorfman that would make "the little man" a labor king and the mob a ton of money.

Dorfman, who had racket roots that stretched to the East Coast, was the president of the Windy City's Waste Handlers local, a job he'd inherited 10 years earlier after Leon Cook, the local's founder, was found dead. (Another local officer was Jack Ruby, who would gain fame 15 years later for ventilating Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas.)

The reason for the Hoffa-Dorfman merger was a collective bargaining issue recently won by the Teamsters -- the health and welfare fund, the predecessor of the notorious pension fund. In January, 1949, the Michigan Conference of Teamsters Health and Welfare Fund was born. In November, the Central States Welfare Fund was created.

The rip-off of the Teamster rank-and-file was relatively simple.

On March 8, 1951, with Hoffa behind the scenes pulling the strings, "Red" Dorfman's son Allen, representing the Union Casualty Company, became the sole insurance agent for the Michigan Conference Fund. Not much later. Allen and Red's wife Rose created the Union Insurance Company and became the agents for both the Michigan and Central States Funds.

While he was victimizing his union membership, Hoffa also set up shop with John T. "Sandy" O'Brien and Joey Glimco, king of Chicago's cabdrivers.

The mob-connected Glimco, who had a rap sheet as thick as a telephone book, had run Teamsters Local 777 since 1937, although in the books he was only listed as a local "trustee." Glimco's specialty was shaking down both businessmen and other local officials. O'Brien, an International Union vice-president and head of Chicago's powerful Local 710, added to his pocketbook by simply skimming off a percentage of each member's dues for himself.

Hoffa's strong ties to Midwest labor and crime figures soon led Harold Gibbons - and St. Louis - into the Detroiter's camp.

Gibbons, a silver-haired veteran of 20 years in the labor movement, was considered one of the Teamsters' few "liberal eggheads." In the early 50's, mob people started leaning on the St. Louis union operation and, in desperation, the stately Gibbons sought Hoffa's help.

The "little man" straightened things out and brought Gibbons and his brain trust into the number two seat in the Central States Conference. Knowing that he was moving on a faster track, Gibbons retained the services of Robert "Barney" Baker, a 300-pound ex-prize-fighter from New York's waterfront who gave Gibbons

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some East Coast hook-ups.

In 1954. Hoffa used his growing power with government officials to stop an investigation being conducted in Cleveland by Ohio Congressman George Bender. The inquiry ended shortly after it began and a few months later Bender was given Teamster support in his Senate race. He won.

The Fabled Pension Fund

The following year Hoffa negotiated his first pension plan as part of a Central States contract. Under terms of the agreement, each employer paid $2.00 per worker each week into the fund, which was called the Central States, Southeast, and Southwest Pension commonly known as the Pension Fund. Filling rapidly, the Pension Fund quickly became a gigantic slush fund, with millions of dollars available for kickbacks. It turned out to be the vehicle that would destroy Jimmy Hoffa.

In February, 1956, Hoffa broadened his power base into the East Coast when he helped two labor-related mobsters, Tony "Ducks" Corallo and Johnny Dioguardi, take over the New York Teamsters.

Corallo, known as "Ducks" because of his unique ability to duck convictions, and Dioguardi ("Johnny Dio") had waged a five-year battle for control of the union with "Honest Tom" Hickey. Corallo, the vice-president of Local 239, controlled five other Teamster locais; Dio, an ex-Sing Sing strongman, had his fingers in half a dozen more. To destroy Hickey, Hoffa pushed through charters for several "paper" locais that made a voting difference for the two mobsters, who then took control in New York.

Across the river in Hoboken, New Jersey, a shakedown artist named Tony Provenzano was taking control of the New Jersey Joint Council and lining up with Hoffa.

In the same year, "the little man" was helping out Chicago 's Paul "The Waiter" Ricca, a former Capone eider statesman who was in deep tax trouble. Because Ricca needed cash desperately, Hoffa and Brennan agreed to buy his palatial Long Beach, Indiana summer home. Hoffa 's Local 299 and Brennan's Local 337 combined to pay $150,000 for the 25-room mansion, which included a swimming pool, tennis courts, and a 12-room servants' quarters. They said it would be used as a "union training center."

A Close Cali

As 1957 began, Teamster International president Dave Beck sat in the Union's new Washington, D.C. headquarters (known as "Skinhead's Marble Palace" by the membership), wondering whether the ninth vice-president -- James Riddle Hoffa -- had enough power to take his job away.

Five years earlier, Hoffa, who was still biding his time, had agreed not to run against Beck, the Seattle trucker who had put together the powerful Western Conference. Having insured Beck's election in 1952 by his support, the stocky Detroit dockworker was now ready to take over.

And he was going to get help from a rather interesting source. Two relatively unknown sons of a Massachusetts bootlegger, soon to become noted for their Ipana smiles and an addiction to touch football, had decided to bust Beck for some shady dealings.

During an investigation into corrupt government procurement practices, Robert F. Kennedy discovered that Beck had used $150,000 of union funds to improve his estate, which he then sold to the union, which then turned right around and gave the estate to Beck as a lifetime home. In an effort to help get rid of Beck, Hoffa retained a New York lawyer, John C. Cheasty, to act as a double agent on Kennedy's committee. Cheasty went to Kennedy and told him the whole deal. Hoffa was put under FBI surveillance and then arrested for bribery.

Just when it looked like the Feds had Hoffa in a hole, he applied a subtler variation of his "muscle" theory. His name was Joe Louis.

Edward Bennett Williams, Hoffa's attorney, selected eight blacks to sit on the jury for the bribery charge. Midway through the proceedings, a black newspaper ran a front-page article which featured photographs of Hoffa with one of his other defense attorneys, a black woman named Martha Jefferson. The newspaper was hand delivered to the home of every black juror.

The day Hoffa was to take the stand, former-world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, who was flown in from his third-floor Chicago walk-up by Barney Baker and Allen Dorfman, walked into the courtroom to "visit" with his old friend Jimmy Hoffa.

Hoffa was found not guilty after less than four hours of jury deliberation.

A few months later Louis showed up on the payroll of the Mercury Record Company in Chicago, an outfit that had recently received a sizable loan from the Teamsters Pension Fund. In later years, the champ's wife Martha would figure in several Pension Fund kickback schemes.

On August 20, 157, Hoffa was called to testify before the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor-Management Field -- commonly known as the McClellan Committee, or "McClellan's Playhouse 90." as Hoffa called it. Robert Kennedy was the Committee's chief counsel, and his oldest brother John, a Massachusetts senator, was a member.

Our Jimmy, Right Or Wrong

For almost a month, the Committee grilled the former Detroit dockworker about several trucking companies employing Teamsters -- whom Hoffa supposedly represented -- that had been set up by businessmen to give Hoffa and Brennan profit at no cost to themselves. In return, they would "keep the labor peace." The companies were incorporated in Tennessee under their wives' maiden names. This "sweetheart arrangement" seemed to be a clear violation of the recently passed Taft-Hartley Act, which forbade union officials from receiving any payment from companies.

Besides delving deep into his relationship to known mobsters, the Committee also questioned Hoffa at length about a Sun Valley, Florida land deal in which almost $500,000 (from both Local 299 and the Pension Fund) had been invested.

Late in September, Senator John McClellan adjourned the hearings by leveling almost 40 charges against Hoffa for misusing union funds and obstructing justice.

Beck, whom the Kennedy crew had finally caught up with, backed Hoffa at the convention a week later. Despite the threats of McClellan Committee charges and possible expulsion from the AFL-CIO for their recently revealed corrupt leadership, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers elected James Riddle Hoffa president by an overwhelming margin.

Wheeling And Dealing

But the "little man" still faced some big problems.

By the end of the year Hoffa was fighting on four fronts. On November 25, lic went on trial with Brennan and Bernard Spindel in New York for a

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wire-tapping charge after it was discovered Hoffa was tapping the telephone conversations of his lieutenants. In Washington, a trial challenging his presidency was beginning. In early December the AFL-CIO convention, opened in Atlantic City, New Jersey, with Hoffa and his Teamsters high on the agenda. Finally, the continuing McClellan Committee probes were cutting deeper into Hoffa's empire.

Five days before Christmas, the jury in the wire-tapping trial announced that it was deadlocked 11-1 for conviction. New York Judge Frederick Van Pelt Bryan declared a mistrial.

Despite pleas by the truckers' secretary-treasurer, John English, for a one-year grace period "to clean up house," AFL-CIO President George Meany introduced a motion to expell the Teamsters from the AFL-CIO for failing to remove "the hoodlum element" from the union's hierarchy.

In January, 1958, Hoffa took office as provisional general president. He was placed under the watchful eye of a Board of Monitors, ordered set up by the judge hearing the rank-and-file convention challenge.

At about the same time, Arthur Dresser, a close friend of Hoffa's got a $5,000,000 loan from the Teamsters to buy a 547-acre parcel of land. The seller was a real estate group that fronted for an intricate web of "Cuban Connection" mob characters. Among their acquaintances was Bebe Rehozo, who had made a small fortune off a tire recapping racket during the rubberless World War II years. He had a little bit of help from his friends. including a young Republican lawyer named Richard Nixon, whose job it was to check out allegations of black market activity in rubber.

While investing obscene amounts of Pension Fund money in shaky mob land ventures, Hoffa was also taking control of the Miami National Bank, founded three years earlier by Florida crime figures in order to launder funds en route to Switzerland. The bank, which passed into Hoffa's hands in the form of a loan, was also a piggy bank for Meyer Lansky, the so-called "accountant of organized crime" who, like Hoffa, used the bank to stash kickbacks.

Hoffa continued to appear frequently before the McClellan Committee. During one stretch of testimony, he told Bobby Kennedy he saw nothing wrong with using union funds to contribute to the re-election campaigns of Detroit judges. This practice had saved Frank Fitzsimmons, Local 299's vice-president, when he was indicted for taking money from employers. The charges were later dismissed when the pudgy Hoffa underling showed up in front of one of the Teamster judges for trial.

Throughout that year several Hoffa alIies -- Joey Glimco, Sandy O'Brien, Bert Brennan, Barney Baker, Johnny Dio, and Tony Pro -- were put on the hotseat. Early in 1959, Allen Dorfman was called to testify about the $4,000,000 in commissions and fees (almost half of them excessive) that he had received since Hoffa had put him in the "insurance" business. Dorfman, like Tony Pro and numerous others, took the Fifth.

By Land, Sea,Or Air

During the early part of 1959, Hoffa moved ahead with his master plan of organizing. The Detroit slugger wanted to have a complete stranglehold on the nation's transportation system. So, while the McClellan Committee spit out daily examples of labor corruption and racketeering, Hoffa quietly held meetings on the West coast with Harry Bridges, head of the International Longshoremen, and representatives of the International Longshoremen 's Association on the Hast coast. And in an effort to slide into the air industry, Hoffa made a $200,000 loan available to striking east coast members of the Flight Engineers Union.

But before Hoffa could marshall his forces for the major organizing drive he envisioned, trials started cramping his style.

As testimony taken by both the McClellan Committee and the Board of Monitors was nearing completion, Hoffa was ordered on January 20, 1960, to stand trial tor misusing Pension Funds in the ill-fated Sun Valley land hustle.

Two years later, while his monstrous legal staff was still running the government in circles, the Detroit Teamster was indicted by a Nashville grand jury. Along with his lifelong friend Bert Brennan. Hoffa was charged with receiving over $1,000,000 from a favorable arrangement involving a trucking company.

Guilty As Charged

Three days before Christmas, despite what appears to be a strong government case, Jimmy Hoffa was found not guilty by a Nashville jury. He wasn't home free, however.

Kennedy's investigators discovered that some of the jurors had been bought (or almost bought), on May 9, 1963, Hoffa and five others were indicted again in Nashville -- this time for jury tampering. The master of Dodge City dealing had run smack into the middle of the New Frontier.

Found guilty of bribing the jury, Hoffa was sentenced on March 12, 1964 to eight years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Six months later a Chicago jury, after listening to testimony about Hoffa's Pension Fund loans and subsequent kickbacks, found him guilty of misusing union funds, adding five more years of prison time.

For the next three years, Hoffa used every possible angle to try to stay out of the joint. Only this time, for the first time in 25 years, he didn't have more muscle than the other guy.

Free Hoffa

On the morning of March 7, 1967, James Riddle Hoffa walked into the office of Luke Moore, a U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia. That afternoon a cell door in Pennsylvania's Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary slammed shut behind the guy who had started his illustrious union career 35 years earlier as one of Detroit's "Strawberry Gang."

Despite lobbying efforts, bribery attempts, and high-pressure politicking by everyone from William Loeb to Audie Murphy. Hoffa remained behind bars for almost five years.

Loeb, editor of the Manchester, N.H. Union Leader, mounted a campaign to pressure Edward Partin -- a Louisiana Teamster whose testimony had been the most damaging to Hoffa -- into changing his story. Loeb's newspaper had received more than $2,000,000 in "loans" from the Teamsters Pension Fund in the years immediately prior to Hoffa's busts.

On December 29, 1970, New Hampshire Senator Norris Cotton, representing Loeb, delivered a petition with 300,000 signatures asking President Nixon to release Hoffa. At the same time Audie Murphy, World War II's most decorated soldier and a washed-up B-movie star. was also trying to get Partin to change his testimony.

Three times in the next four years, Hoffa made application for parole. Each time he was denied.

Welcome Back, Jimmy

On December 23, 1972, re-elected President Nixon signed an Executive Grant of clemency for 49 persons. One of them was Jimmy Hoffa. Attached to his pardon was the condition that he "not engage in direct or indirect management of any labor organization prior to March 6, 1980, and if the aforesaid condition is not fulfilled this commutation will be null and void..."

Hoffa came out of the joint talking publicly about prison reform and plotting privately about how to get back into the Teamsters driver's seat.

A running feud had developed between Hoffa and his "hand picked successor" Fitzsimmons, who had deeply entrenched himself with both the mob and government figures, particularly Richard Nixon. Mob members found the pliant Fitzsimmons an easy guy to work with because he didn't cause problems, and the sagging jawed ex-lieutenant enjoyed playing golf outside his condominium in La Costa, California, a sprawling complex financed with Pension Fund money.

Hoffa, who became Tony Pro's enemy while they shared space at Lewisburg, wasn't exactly getting hero's welcome from the mob. Their old ally Jimmy Hoffa had become a liability, compared to a rubber ball like Frank Fitzsimmons. Although he always worked hand-in-hand with them, the mob had never dominated Hoffa.

Using his $1.7 million Teamster pension as a partial power base, Hoffa started a comeback. He criss-crossed the country, strengthening old ties and building new ones. While appealing Nixon's restriction as cruel and unusual punishment, Hoffa served notice he was back on the scene and still the biggest game in town.

On July 30, 1975, just about lunchtime, James Riddle Hoffa disappeared.

Teamsters Roll On

Although the "little man" is gone, a lifetime of empire-building come to an end, the Brotherhood remains -- continually extending its already immense economic and political influence into new areas of "the American life." In the past several years, in addition to consolidating their position as a dominant force in the transportation industry, the Teamsters have moved increasingly into the service industries and are showing special interest in government service workers, one of the most poorly represented segments of labor. By joining up with agri-business to sabotage the grass-roots United Farmworkers organizing effort, they have moved into the production and packaging end of the food industry, whose distribution they of course already control.

The Teamsters have survived -- thrived, in fact. through expose after expose; intense and prolonged investigation with all the resources of the federal government; and the withdrawal of support by the rest of organized labor. Any speculation that they would be crippled by the loss of Hoffa has long ago been proved wishful thinking. The empire has outlived the emperor; and where its influence ends-nobody knows.