INVESTIGATIONS: Rats’ Nest

Arkansas’ Senator John McClellan and his labor investigating committee reconvened in Washington last week to poke some more into the rats’ nest of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Into the committee’s hearing room came San Antonio’s Roy J. Gilbert to tell how the Teamsters had tried to organize his 135-vehicle Southwestern Motor Transport, Inc. in 1955. When he balked at the Teamsters’ demands, Gilbert said, they stoned and tossed homemade fire bombs at his trucks, planted marijuana in the cars of Southwestern employees, made threatening telephone calls. They also considered shooting Gilbert from ambush and wrecking his home with hand grenades given them by a friendly Army supply sergeant at Fort Sill, Okla.

Behind Gilbert came Texas Ranger Zeno Smith, in cowboy boots, shirt, hat—and with bugged recordings to back up Gilbert’s story. The Rangers had listened in while one Buck Owens, ex-Teamster bullyboy turned Ranger informer, tossed leading questions at San Antonio Teamster Business Manager Raymond Shafer in motel room conversations. Sample exchange, splashed with BEEPs to blot out the profanity:

Owens: Did you set it (a Southwestern Motor truck) afire? Or Suttle?

Shafer: It wasn’t either one of us. BEEP no, we were too hot on that BEEP of a BEEP.

Owens: Who done it? You know I ain’t going to say nothing about it.

Shafer: Across the river.

Owens: Some Mexican across the river set it afire? How much did it cost you?

Shafer: $25. Them BEEPS will kill you for $50 down there.

Owens: You mean you give a Mexican $25 and he went over and burned S.M.T. trucks, no kiddin’?

Shafer: They got a deal over there, boy. Those union men can go over there and get any BEEP BEEP thing done you want done. They are stronger than BEEP over there.

Rounding out two days of testimony, Chairman McClellan zeroed in on a reported plan by Teamster Shafer to jump a Southwestern driver, etch the word rat in acid on his forehead. Scowled angry John McClellan: “Don’t you agree with me that anyone who would give such orders as that is a rat himself?” Slick-looking Teamster Shafer blushed, swallowed, declined to answer on ground that the answer might incriminate him.