Nation: Scotto: Out of the Dock

The waterfront boss is convicted in Manhattan

As a vice president of the International Longshoremen’s Association and head of its Local 1814 in Brooklyn, Anthony Scotto, 45, has long been laden with two very different reputations. A personable and articulate man who favors $500 pinstripe suits and expensive Manhattan restaurants, Scotto has lectured at Harvard University on labor relations, serves as a trustee of the Brooklyn Academy of Music and counts some of New York’s most prominent politicians among his friends. But because of his occupational affiliation with the city’s notoriously corrupt waterfront and his 1957 marriage to the niece of Mobster Albert Anastasia, police considered Scotto to be a criminal. In 1969, the FBI went so far as to identify him as a capodecina, or lieutenant, in the Mafia family of Carlo Gambino, an allegation that the union leader vehemently denied.

For ten weeks, the two images of Scotto have clashed in a federal courtroom in Manhattan where he was tried on 44 counts of accepting illegal payoffs, evading income taxes and racketeering. Last week, after deliberating for five days, the jury found Scotto guilty on 33 of the charges. Convicted with him was Anthony Anastasio, executive vice president of Local 1814.

The major charges against Scotto were that he had accepted $300,000 over five years from two dockside businessmen, William Montella Jr. and Walter D. O’Hearn Jr. As evidence, the prosecution produced 27 tape recordings from FBI eavesdropping on Scotto’s conversations over a period of five months. On one 1978 tape, he could be heard accepting $5,000 in cash from Montella in the men’s room of a New York City hotel. Montella, the onetime owner of a marine carpentry company, testified that the payment was supposed to help prevent labor troubles.

Montella was hardly a model witness. He told the court that he could go to jail for “100 years” if he confessed all his past crimes. Said he: “On the waterfront, no business is completely honest.” Montella even explained how to persuade a reluctant bar owner to sign over his business. “You take a hair blower,” he instructed the rapt court, “get it hot and put it on his neck until he signs. He’ll sign.”

The trial also produced evidence that Scotto, who is paid a salary of $120,000 a year by Local 1814, operated in a style far removed from the grimy docks. Montella testified, for example, that he had built Scotto a swimming pool cabana for free at his Catskills summer home. Scotto answered that he had paid $10,200 for this work but that he had paid in cash. Scotto also acknowledged that he acquired a 13% interest in a multimillion-dollar East Side apartment building for only $26. He dealt mainly in cash, he said, to thwart the continuous harassment by Government agents.

Scotto admitted receiving a total of $75,000 from Montella and O’Hearn but insisted that the money was intended for political contributions. The union leader said that he in turn donated $25,000 in cash to New York Governor Carey’s re-election campaign in 1978 and $50,000 in cash through an associate to Lieutenant Governor Mario Cuomo’s unsuccessful campaign for mayor of New York City in 1977. Making political donations of more than $100 in cash is illegal, but Scotto claimed ignorance of the law. Both Carey and Cuomo denied any knowledge of the contributions.

To bolster his defense, Scotto produced an extraordinary parade of character witnesses, including Carey and former New York City Mayors Robert Wagner and John Lindsay. Carey characterized Scotto as “trustworthy, energetic, intelligent, effective and dedicated.” He is, testified the Governor, “one of the outstanding young labor leaders in the United States.” After the verdict, Carey changed his assessment. Said he: “I feel compassion for Mr. Scotto’s family and regret that a person of such considerable talent and ability has violated our laws.”

Scotto vowed to appeal; if his conviction is upheld, he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and, after his release, will be barred from regaining his union post for at least five years.