National Affairs: Fear Under Floodlights

The witness in the packed, TV-floodlighted Senate Caucus Room trembled with fright as he told his story to stern-faced Senator John McClellan and the labor-management rackets investigating committee. What brawny ex-Lumberman George Francis Heid, 35, was afraid of was not the power of the U.S. Government, as represented by the McClellan committee. It was the power of the Teamster Brotherhood, the U.S.’s biggest labor union (membership 1,500,000). Heid knew that testifying against Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa and his henchmen might bring ugly reprisals by Hoffa’s ex-convict bullyboys. But with a pledge of protection by the committee. Heid huskily admitted that, under Teamster threats, he had perjured himself in 1956 by testifying in defense of a Minneapolis Teamster boss who was charged with blowing up the car of a rebellious fellow Teamster (and duly convicted).

“A Living Hell.” Heid was only one of several committee witnesses whose evident terror proved the Teamsters’ power to punish and intimidate. Another Minneapolis ex-Teamster, Arthur Morgan, 43, wept as he told that threats and harassment made his life “a living hell” since he testified against Teamster brass before the McClellan committee a year ago. “Every night practically.” testified Morgan, “the telephone would ring all night long, and my wife would get calls that asked if the children were home from school, and she would say that they are, and they would tell her, ‘Maybe you are lucky tonight, and maybe you won’t be so lucky tomorrow night.’ ”

Fear of hard-boiled Hoffa was evident in the behavior of witnesses called to testify about a $17,500 payoff that Detroit laundry operators handed over in 1949 to avert a threatened strike of Teamster truck drivers. Committee investigators had scraped up some persuasive evidence that at least $10,000 of the payoff had found its way to Jimmy Hoffa. Under questioning, Hoffa conceded that he got $10,000 in “loans” from the bagmen who collected from the laundrymen. but beyond that, his memory failed him. He could not recall any details about repaying the loans, nor could he produce any records to prove that he did repay them.

Finding Hoffa uncooperative, the committee called up two Detroit laundrymen who had signed affidavits indicating that they thought at least part of the payoff went to Hoffa. But something had happened to make the witnesses wary. Obviously frightened, they shied away from their notarized affidavits, professed sudden doubts whether Hoffa really got any of the money after all.

A Thawed Curl. Despite Hoffa’s studied forgetfulness and witnesses’ fright, the committee added some gamy paragraphs to the malodorous Hoffa record.* According to committee documents and testimony:

¶ A construction firm owned by Hoffa front men used $235,000 in Teamster welfare funds as working capital.

¶ From 1948 to 1956, Hoffa listed a total of $60,322 on his federal income tax returns under such vague categories as ‘”collections.” Testified he: “My business associate in Detroit has some horses and he places some bets, and we are fortunate to win some money.” Asked whether he had any records of the racehorse winnings, Hoffa said that his betting partner, Teamster Vice President Owen B. Brennan, kept the records. Called to the witness chair, Brennan avoided Hoffa’s testimony, refusing to testify for fear of selfincrimination. Growled Chairman McClellan: “Is the taking of the Fifth Amendment one of the prerequisite qualifications for advancement [in the Teamsters]?” On his lawyer’s signal, Brennan took the Fifth again.

¶ A heavyweight prizefighter managed by Hoffa’s pal Owen Brennan drew $75 a week for two years as a Teamster welfare-fund claims investigator but did no investigating at all, instead he did odd jobs on Brennan’s horse farm. The prizefighter’s straightforward testimony about his Teamster days (now ended) flatly contradicted what Hoffa told the committee a year ago, and Chairman McClellan said he would ask the Justice Department to investigate the conflict.

¶ In the seven months since he elbowed flabby Dave Beck aside and took over as Teamster president, Hoffa has done nothing to clean the ex-convict thugs out of the Teamsters or sever the businesslike connections between his union and the underworld. Said Chairman McClellan to Witness Hoffa: “You have created an impression in the minds of some people that possibly one of the reasons you don’t [act against the hoods] is because you are in the same category.”

As the testimony piled up, the insolent curl that seemed frozen on Hoffa’s lips early in the week thawed into a grim straight line. And there was plenty more piling-up to come: the committee put Hoffa on notice that he would have to remain available for “several weeks.”

*A record to which Michigan’s union-backed Democratic Senator Patrick McNamara seemed oblivious this week when he declared in a TV interview that if the Teamsters “really want” Hoffa, “I’ll go along with that, because they’re all my constituents.”