Rolland McMaster. The real businessman of the Teamster trio—Hoffa, Fitzsimmons, and McMaster —was McMaster, who was now Hoffa’s powerhouse on the Central States iron and steel negotiating and grievance committees. In late 1949 McMaster filed a certificate with the state of Michigan indicating that he was planning to do business under an assumed name. Claiming to own and control the M & G Cartage Company, he placed the corporation in the maiden names of his wife and sister-in-law. Not surprisingly, the firm’s address was that of McMaster’s farm in Wixom, Michigan. He owned no trucks and had no employees; yet he made money, lots of it. One business venture involved William Rumminger, owner of a Detroit company, Aero Cartage. In 1953 and 1954 Rumminger worried increasingly about his declining business, particularly with his major account, Douglas Trucking Lines, a local steel hauling outfit. The following year he approached McMaster, who was the business agent for Douglas’s employees. Touched by Rumminger’s sad tale about his failing enterprise, McMaster promised to help the salesman by “putting in a good word” with the McLouth Steel Corporation, one of the largest steel producers in the Detroit area. As quick as you can say “shakedown,” Rumminger had landed the steel hauling business from McLouth for Douglas, picking up a small fortune for himself in the process. But McMaster’s services didn’t come cheap; he and Rumminger made a deal. “It was more or less on a partnership basis,” as Rumminger put it. “I split my personal net with him, which was about three percent, on the McLouth business. ”7 Rumminger paid all McMaster’s “commissions” into M & G Cartage. In the first two years of their partnership, McMaster, according to his income tax returns, pocketed $19,711 from Rumminger’s business alone. McLouth’s executives contended that any business Douglas Trucking received McLouth’s executives contended that any business Douglas Trucking received from McLouth via Rumminger was based upon the merits of Rumminger’s Aero Cartage and had nothing to do with McMaster’s intervention. As to McMaster’s payoffs, the McLouth version was that Rumminger was a “pretty stupid businessman” to pay McMaster when he was going to get their business anyway. McMaster also owned Powers Trucking Company, established in 1950; Reed Transportation Company, 1953; Ram Transport Corporation, Inc. (with an anonymous man known only as “Allen”), which succeeded Reed Transportation, 1954; and Aggregates Transport Company, which succeeded Powers Trucking in 1956. In 1951, with Local 299 trustee George Roxburgh and Local 337 official James Clift, McMaster founded Canter’s, Inc., which owned a riding stable; and, with his nephews, the Enterprise Equipment and Leasing Company, which bought, leased, and sold trucking terminals.8 Incredibly enough, all McMaster’s business ventures—even those involved with trucking—functioned with nonunion employees, when there were employees. By the mid-fifties Hoffa and his top men had either ruined or bought their major enemies in labor and business. They had clawed their way from poverty to great personal wealth and, even more important to them, to power. They had also become tasty bait for ambitious politicians and investigators by the score. Slapping official inquiries away, like the countless dolls Cagney slapped in Public Enemy, Hoffa himself was the Cagney figure of the fifties. Hoffa traveled first class but wouldn’t let bellhops carry his luggage. He insisted on driving himself around town, and he remembered people, faces and names. His general defiance of “bourgeois respectability” enhanced his popularity among the workingmen who watched their cigar-smoking union leaders and bosses alike flee to country manors in sleek black chauffeur-driven limousines. Hoffa went on living in the modest house he had bought for $6800 after his marriage. Few union members knew of Hoffa’s private defiance of bourgeois respectability: that his household contained a “foster son,” Charles O’Brien, and often the foster son’s mother, Sylvia Pagano Paris. Friends and associates who knew the family well thought that, because of Hoffa’s fondness for teenage Chuckie, the boy was probably his own son. Apparently the strange household ran smoothly. According to a family friend, Mrs. Hoffa and Mrs. Paris were good friends, and the Hoffas’ children, Barbara and James, got on well with Chuckie. Although things were going well for Sylvia Paris, one of her ex-lovers, Frank Although things were going well for Sylvia Paris, one of her ex-lovers, Frank Coppola, was looking for work. Coppola, like Luciano and others in the international drug traffic, had been nearly forced out of business by the cooperative effort of U.S. and Italian narcotics officers. “Luciano ran the whole show,” says Charles Siragusa of the Bureau of Narcotics. “He had the contacts with the Italian manufacturers of heroin and operated without challenge. Until we put an end to the traffic in the early 1950s, he had been traveling illegally to several countries, including the United States and Cuba, setting up additional drug routes.” Siragusa and his men had been closing down Luciano’s drug outlets since 1950. The big bust occurred in April 1952, when narcotics agents intercepted a green trunk containing six kilograms of heroin, valued at $80,000. The trunk, which had a fake bottom and sides covered with old clothes, was on its way from Coppola to the Detroit receivers, John Priziola and Raffaele Quasarano. That same year the Italian government indicted both Priziola and Quasarano in absentia for involvement in the dope ring. Records confiscated from Coppola and his partner, Salvatore Vitale, were evidence of the Detroit men’s complicity. “Since the Detroit mob was the principal supplier of heroin for the rest of the country— through Coppola and Vitale—it was the worst hit from the raids we conducted,” says Siragusa. “Later, Vitale returned to the United States— California, where he had family— and was arrested and put in prison for a few years. When he got out, he accused Priziola and Quasarano of cheating him out of about $80,000 worth of heroin which the Detroit boys said had been adulterated. Because Priziola and Quasarano refused to pay, a big meeting of hoods was set up in California. There Priziola decided to give the old man $20,000—probably only because they were both related to the Matranga mob family out in California. “But Vitale still wasn’t happy, so he went to Detroit to collect and never returned. His son-in-law told me that he was killed by Priziola and Quasarano.” Under extreme pressure from the American and Italian governments, the Luciano network had crumbled, and by 1954 it was replaced by French Corsican drug traffickers Giuseppe and Vincent Cotroni. The Cotroni brothers ran what was later known as “the French Connection.” Dope manufactured in Marseilles was later known as “the French Connection.” Dope manufactured in Marseilles was routed to North America, where it was distributed and sold for street consumption. Sixty percent of the heroin was shipped across the Atlantic, then through the St. Lawrence Seaway to Montreal. Needing protection and the contacts to handle the merchandise, the Cotroni brothers solicited the services of their American mob friend, Carmine Galante, the former Vito Genovese gunman who had become the underboss in the Joseph Bonanno crime family. Galante maintained two major distribution routes. The busiest was simply southeast through Buffalo, where it was handled by Steffano Maggadino, a former Bonanno bodyguard, and to New York City, where Galante did business with syndicate leaders Genovese and Thomas Lucchese. The second major path was west from Montreal to Toronto, Ontario, then to Windsor, and across the river to Detroit. Still maintaining strong relations with Lucchese crime captain John Ormento, the Melis’ Long Island relative, Priziola and Quasarano remained in charge of Detroit’s drug importing business. They were also co-owners of the Motor City Arena and the chief promoters of the boxer Hoffa and Brennan owned. “Hoffa was not at all averse to using the Teamsters Union as a means of protection for those who were associated with the narcotics traffic,” Vincent Piersante says. “By protection, I mean he went as far as giving some of those involved jobs with the union. And others, like Priziola and Quasarano, were protected by Local 985. Using Sam Gompers’ “reward your friends, punish your enemies” philosophy, Hoffa went into the 1952 IBT convention in Los Angeles knowing that he was powerful enough to choose and then destroy the next Teamster president. The headliner of the Los Angeles convention was Dave Beck, from Seattle. Pudgy and red-cheeked, Beck was the image of an overheated, beardless Santa Claus with sweat marks under the arms of his expensive suits. Since he controlled the Western Conference of Teamsters, it was appropriate that his moment of glory be staged in his own backyard. moment of glory be staged in his own backyard. Old Dan Tobin, who had served the union well—or at least without major scandal—for forty-five years, had decided to retire in favor of Beck, his close associate. Although a grass-roots “stop-Beck” movement briefly upset the pro- Beck delegates, the little Michigan Teamster boss came to the rescue, quashed the phantom challenge, and sewed up the election for Beck. In return Beck promptly entrusted Hoffa with an IBT vice presidency and a seat on the Teamsters’ general executive board. Arrogant and brassy—nicknamed “His Majesty the Wheel”—Beck had little direct contact with the operations of the union. For the first five years of his administration he remained aloof from it all, calling on his friend, President Dwight Eisenhower, at the White House and making speeches on U.S. foreign policy. Detached from the rank and file, Beck allowed Hoffa to represent him on union business. “Jimmy was always out front, trying to develop as a national figure,” McMaster says. “Now we were happy with that, because we supported him. He was Beck’s assistant … a troubleshooter for him. In other words, if there was trouble, he told Jimmy. Of course Jimmy would call his boys in.” Hoffa’s philosophy of organizing was indicative of his complex and pragmatic personality. Strikes for recognition on a regional basis, he often said, worked as much against the worker and his union as it did against management. “So when Jimmy had difficulty getting some of the bigger companies to sign our contracts,” Dave Johnson explains, “he’d only strike five or six of them, letting the little companies operate. This would cause the employers to be fighting not only us but among themselves too. “Hoffa told us a hundred times: If a company in New York is having problems with the contract and won’t sign and it hauls into Michigan, then we’ve got to stop them in Michigan and other states that are key to their business. With all that pressure, the company usually came around. But several states, especially in the South, were causing headaches for Jimmy, and he had to do something about them.” Antiunion sentiment was especially strong in Tennessee, one of the last holdouts from the Central States Drivers Council’s regional contract. Hoffa sent from the Central States Drivers Council’s regional contract. Hoffa sent McMaster to Nashville to change some minds. Taking with him Flint Local 332 business agent Frank Kierdorf— ex-convict, a Teamster torch and nephew of joint council organizer Herman Kierdorf— McMaster worked with local Teamster leaders against independent owner-operators and other nonunion factions. Don Vestal, formerly of Dallas, Texas, led the Tennessee pro-Hoffa forces. Once arrested for attempted murder—he later pled guilty to a reduced charge of assault and battery—Vestal was the president of Nashville’s Local 327. In 1952, because of his loyalty to Hoffa, he became the head of Tennessee’s Joint Council 87, representing seven locals. As a close Hoffa confidant and one of five top Hoffa representatives, Vestal was given the money and manpower to neutralize his union’s enemies in the state. With Hoffa’s help he recruited heavies from trucking companies and formed a brutal goon squad which was involved in 173 known separate acts of violence against the nonunion opposition. Operating in several states, including Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and even New Jersey, the special units of leg-breakers were led by William A. Smith, a Local 327 “assistant business agent” Vestal appointed in 1953. Smith, an explosives expert, had twelve convictions for a variety of strongarm crimes. “McMaster and his enforcer, Frank Kierdorf, came down to Tennessee to supervise the action,” Vestal says. “Plus Hoffa wanted to make sure that we weren’t messing around with any of the companies owned by his friends in Chicago. And you just didn’t mess with Mac. I once saw him hit a man so hard you’d have thought a mule kicked him.” After a long, violent campaign which included bombings, shootings, and sabotage, Tennessee, like other states around it, fell into the fold of the Central States Drivers Council, which within four years included twenty-two states. The victory in Tennessee was a milestone in Hoffa’s career, and McMaster was now Hoffa’s number-one strongarm specialist. During the Tennessee campaign the national IBT, at Beck’s instigation and with Hoffa’s enthusiastic approval, moved its headquarters to Washington, D.C., to be closer to national policy decisions that affected labor—and the politicians be closer to national policy decisions that affected labor—and the politicians who made them. In 1955 the IBT moved into its brand-new marble palace, just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Capitol Rotunda. Hoffa began to spend much of his time in Washington, running the union for Dave Beck. Frank Fitzsimmons, Local 299’s vice president, assumed many of his boss’s day-today duties in Detroit. With Hoffa’s consent Fitzsimmons made his friend McMaster his “administrative assistant,” a nonelected position. Thus McMaster was really third in command after Hoffa and Fitzsimmons. “Because Jimmy was always in Washington, and he usually took Fitz with him, we had an executive board meeting,” says McMaster. “I was chosen to run Local 299. But because neither Jimmy nor Fitz wanted to give up any titles, they just called me ‘the administrative assistant,’ which meant that they came to the meetings to add dignity to everything while I did the work.” With aides like Johnson, McMaster, and Vestal working in the field, Hoffa began to assemble a Washington staff of union professionals. His top adviser was Hoffa antithesis Harold Gibbons, a scholarly, dignified liberal crusader. The youngest of twenty-three children, Gibbons had worked his way through a maze of government jobs and several labor organizations. He was with the Teamsters because in St. Louis his CIO union had been in competition with Teamsters Local 688; both unions were organizing the area’s warehousemen. When Gibbons and the head of Local 688 went to Dave Beck for advice, he suggested a merger of the two locals. In 1948, providing some $78,000 in severance pay to Local 688’s officers from his CIO local’s treasury, Gibbons moved in and became president. He had literally purchased the union. 9 As soon as he took over, Gibbons began to have problems with the St. Louis union dissidents—whom he calls “hoodlums”—and he went to Hoffa for help. “Jimmy listened to my problem and told me just to place some of these fellows on my local payroll. Then, in a few months, I’d be taking orders from them,” says Gibbons. “He also told me that I could grab the first one that walked in, take out my gun, and shoot him in the head.” Gibbons walked away shaking his head while Hoffa laughed; he continued to have problems until Hoffa finally came to St. Louis with Johnson, McMaster, and other musclemen and cleared up the situation. Then, through Beck, Hoffa and other musclemen and cleared up the situation. Then, through Beck, Hoffa put the entire St. Louis joint council into trusteeship to prevent a rebel takeover, selecting Gibbons as trustee. Soon after that Hoffa named Gibbons secretary-treasurer of the newly formed Central Conference of Teamsters, founded in 1953 to complement the already-established Southern and Western Conferences. “Hoffa was an intense worker who knew the union from top to bottom,” Gibbons says. “His working hours and demands on his staff’s time were difficult to keep pace with. But he had a way of handling people which made them want to make the sacrifices. We didn’t have as many problems as one would think we would, taking into consideration how different we were. But I always contended that labor unions were a movement; Jimmy viewed them as a business.” With the help of Gibbons and other union leaders in the jurisdiction of the Central States Drivers Council, Hoffa, now a seasoned bargainer, negotiated the 1955 over-the-road contract. In a side deal during those negotiations, Hoffa, Fitzsimmons, and McMaster managed to sell out some owner-operators. McMaster, who had represented employees at Transamerican Freight Lines since the war, had a warm working relationship with its executives and was often accused of either owning a large chunk of the company or receiving payoffs to protect the firm against the Teamsters. He firmly denies both versions: “I would much prefer a friendly than an adversary situation between me and an employer.” McMaster’s growing importance to Hoffa was perhaps best exhibited when Hoffa, as chairman of the CSDC negotiating team, allowed Transamerican to make a separate agreement with the Teamsters, a blatant violation of the master contract. As secretly negotiated by Hoffa and McMaster, Transamerican’s contract included none of the normally expected fringe benefits and instead forced employees to accept a mere 1½ cents per mile raise. Second, while the established grievance procedure called for processing complaints at the local level and, if necessary, sending them on to state Teamster committees and then to the area committee in Chicago, the arrangement with Transamerican provided for all grievances, no matter where they originated, to go directly to either for all grievances, no matter where they originated, to go directly to either McMaster or Fitzsimmons in Detroit. Because Transamerican operated principally with owner-operators, it was clear that Hoffa, McMaster, and Fitzsimmons remained consistent in their intention to get those who owned and operated their own trucks out of the industry. Although the Transamerican grievance procedure didn’t need ratification, the 1½ cents raise in lieu of fringe benefits did. The owner-operators knew that they were being taken and voted down the agreement. McMaster then made a “goodwill tour” of Transamerican’s terminals in several cities, bringing with him a small group of his associates to provide varying degrees of persuasion. Sympathetic employees were persuaded to sit down with company and union officials, and it was decided to give the new agreement a twelve-week trial. Then a second meeting would be called at which a final judgment on the future of the contract would be considered. But when the twelve-week cooling-off period ended the second meeting was not held, and the owner-operators were stuck with the contract. Although it did not have the immediate impact of the Transamerican deal, one provision of the 1955 Central States master contract had all the earmarks of being even more illicit. Introducing an innovation in workmen’s benefits, Hoffa pushed through a provision that employers would contribute two dollars a week for each of their employees to a pension fund. Formally set up on March 16, 1955, the IBT’s Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund was a strong addition to Hoffa’s massive war chest, which already contained the large sums accumulated in the Michigan Conference and Central States health and welfare funds. Intended to provide a $90 per month pension to supplement Social Security benefits for 110,000 eligible union members who were at least fifty- seven years old and had twenty years of unbroken service, the Central States Pension Fund was governed by a twelve-member board of trustees, composed of six Hoffaloyalist union officials and six friendly executives from the trucking industry. The trustees of the fund were empowered “in their sole discretion, to invest and reinvest the principal and income of the Trust Fund” according to the CSPF’s Trust Agreement, “… and may sell or otherwise dispose of such property at any time and from time to time as they see fit …” Since the fund was authorized to do business in the state of Illinois, where its headquarters were, its trustees didn’t have to look far for a fiduciary manager. Like the two welfare funds, the Central States Pension Fund was handed over to Like the two welfare funds, the Central States Pension Fund was handed over to Allen Dorfman. Through his friendship with Allen Dorfman’s stepfather, Hoffa asked Paul Dorfman’s associate, John Dioguardi, for help in gaining control over the eastern states. With Beck’s blind approval and cooperation, Hoffa created seven “paper locals” in New York City, most of them with no membership and under Dioguardi’s jurisdiction. Passing these dummy unions to his gangster buddies, the racketeer engineered the takeover of the city’s Joint Council 16 in 1956. The margin of victory for the pro-Hoffa supporters came from the votes of the fraudulent locals. The election in New York convinced Teamster watchers that if the growing power of the union remained unchecked, it could rival that of the U.S. government. Among those especially concerned was labor reporter Clark Mollenhoff, head of the Washington bureau of the Des Moines Register and Tribune. He persuaded Robert F. Kennedy, then the chief counsel of the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, to conduct a preliminary investigation. “Bobby Kennedy was already investigating Johnny Dioguardi for his activities in the northeastern garment industry,” Mollenhoff recalls. “So the paper locals episode, plus the operations of Hoffa, Beck, and the Teamsters around the country, made it fairly easy to talk Bobby into promoting a major study of the matter.” Kennedy flew to Seattle, Dave Beck’s home territory, and found documentation that proved that the Teamster president had used over $320,000 of union funds to construct his private home and swimming pool and pay off personal debts. Returning to Washington, Kennedy in turn persuaded his subcommittee chairman, John L. McClellan of Arkansas, to support the establishment of a bipartisan Senate select committee which would look closely at corrupt union and management practices. On January 30, 1957, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field was created, with an initial budget of $350,000. Chaired by McClellan, the committee consisted of four Democrats— McClellan, John Kennedy of Massachusetts, Sam Ervin of North Carolina, and Pat McNamara of Michigan—and four Republicans—vice chairman Irving Ives of New York, Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, Karl E. Mundt of South Dakota, and Barry Goldwater of Arizona. It eventually had a staff of ninety-one employees.