"I Heard You Paint Houses": Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa (41 page)

The day after the election the information picket line came down and the newspaper went back to normal and Delaware had a new United States Senator. It’s hard to believe that was over thirty years ago.

There have been things written about this incident and I am always mentioned in them. They say that this maneuver is what got Senator Joe Biden elected. Especially the Republicans say that if those newspaper inserts from the Boggs side got delivered inside the newspapers it would have made Joe Biden look very bad. The Boggs ads coming as they almost did that last week there would have been no time for Biden to repair the damage. I have no way of knowing if Joe Biden knew if that picket line thing was done on purpose on his behalf. If he did know he never let on to me.

I do know that when he became the U.S. Senator, the man stuck by his word he gave to the membership. You could reach out for him and he would listen.
”

 
chapter twenty-five
 

That Wasn’t Jimmy’s Way

Jimmy Hoffa’s time in a cocoon ended in March 1973, when his parole ended. He was no longer on paper. He was now free to come out as a butterfly and travel wherever he wished and say whatever was on his mind.

In April 1973 at a Washington banquet, Jimmy Hoffa ascended the podium and announced that he was going to launch a legal challenge to President Nixon’s restriction on his pardon. In his announcement Jimmy Hoffa surprised no one when he asserted that he intended to challenge Frank Fitzsimmons for president of the Teamsters at the 1976 convention.

Jimmy Hoffa’s timing was right in at least one other respect. Fitzsimmons would no longer have the friendship and backing of a strong president in Richard Nixon. The very month of Hoffa’s announcement was an especially grim time for Nixon, as the Watergate scandal steamed ahead. As a result, Nixon had more concerns than Jimmy Hoffa. Nixon’s inner circle was in the midst of a mad scramble to control the Watergate burglary. At the end of the month that Hoffa announced his planned legal challenge to the pardon restriction, Nixon’s chief of staff at the White House, H. R. (Bob) Haldeman resigned. Haldeman would later go to jail. A month earlier, Charles Colson, Nixon’s special counsel, had left the White House for private practice, to reap the Teamsters’ legal business before going to jail. Soon the Arab oil embargo would grip the country and give Nixon still more to worry about.

Following Hoffa’s announcement of the legal challenge and his plans to run in 1976, Frank Sheeran gave his friend and mentor a colorful endorsement,, “I’ll be a Hoffa man ’til the day they pat my face with a shovel and steal my cufflinks.”

“
There was no way Jimmy could lose come 1976. It wasn’t just a matter of the delegates being for Jimmy; the rank and file was even more for Jimmy. If that wasn’t good enough, not too many people in the union had favorable things to say about Fitz. He was weak and that’s why Jimmy put him in. What Jimmy didn’t consider was that his weakness would be a very appealing character trait to certain people in the alleged mob.

Jimmy’s supporters gave a testimonial dinner for Jimmy for his sixtieth birthday in February 1973. They held it at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, the same place mine would be held a year or so later. I was right there, front and center, and there was a strong turnout even though Fitzsimmons didn’t want anybody to go. Harold Gibbons was the only member of the executive board who showed up. Like they did at mine, they had a professional photographer there. Jimmy got me to pose in a number of pictures with him, including one of us shaking hands that I prize to this day.

I visited Jimmy at Lake Orion right after he had that problem in Miami at a private meeting with Tony Pro. At that meeting in Miami Jimmy wanted to get Pro’s support in 1976. Instead what he got was a threat from Pro that he’d kidnap Jimmy’s granddaughter and rip Jimmy’s guts out with his bare hands. In Miami after the meeting Jimmy told me he was going to ask Russell to let me do what I had to do against Tony Pro. This time he didn’t say anything about being my driver on the thing. Jimmy was serious now. Jimmy and Pro hated each other and they were both capable of doing to each other what they said they were going to do. It was a matter of who got off first.

I came to Lake Orion to follow up on the Miami thing. Jimmy mentioned again that something had to be done about Pro, but he didn’t tell me to talk to Russell or do anything. Then Jimmy said that Fitz wasn’t a made man and he didn’t need approval from anybody to take care of Fitz. Jimmy said he was already lining up a cowboy to do what he had to do against Fitz if it came to that.

I knew Jimmy had some recent contact with Charlie Allen and I said, “You’re not thinking of using Allen, are you?”

Jimmy said, “Hell no. He’s a bullshitter. All talk.”

I said, “I know that. I’m glad you know that.”

(Neither one of us mentioned Lloyd Hicks at that time, but I certainly thought about it. Lloyd Hicks was an officer with a Miami local. Hicks was a part of Rolland McMaster’s faction, and McMaster was one of those who left Jimmy for Fitz. McMaster was the kind of person that Jimmy hated for desertion. When Jimmy and Pro met in Miami, Lloyd Hicks bugged the meeting room for McMaster. Hicks went out to the bar, got a few drinks in him, and went around bragging that he was going to have a tape of the meeting between Jimmy and Pro. Which would then be of interest to Fitz. Which would then make Jimmy flip out more than a little bit.

Later that night they found Hicks with I don’t know how many bullets in him, but more than one gun’s worth, that’s for sure. It was like there were two shooters doing the man’s house. If Hicks had a tape he no longer had a tape. At that particular time The Redhead and I happened to be in Miami on Jimmy’s side of the matter.)

At Lake Orion Jimmy told me he was working on his lawsuit to get rid of the restriction and he was going to file it after he got some more ammunition. I said I’d be a plaintiff on that part of the lawsuit that would be brought by active Teamsters who wanted Jimmy back in the union. Jimmy told me he was going to have a money drop for me in a couple of months to Mitchell as soon as he got some things straightened out. He told me to remind him when my testimonial dinner was scheduled, because he was going to be there no matter what. I told Jimmy I had been holding up on the dinner, waiting for when it would do him the most good. Jimmy told me he appreciated my loyal support. He knew I was running for reelection of Local 326 and he offered to help, but I told him I wasn’t going to have any problem with my local.

Later that year in October I got a call from Jimmy to go over and see The Redhead. I went to the Branding Iron and he had another suitcase for me. It wasn’t as heavy as the last one, but it had some heft. It had $270,000 in it. I drove down to the Market Inn. I didn’t even have a drink. As soon as I walked in a guy came up to me who I didn’t know and he said he was going to take me where I had to go. We got in his car and drove up to an impressive house. I got out and rang the bell and Mitchell answered the door. I handed him the bag and he handed me an envelope with an affidavit in it. This time, no chitchat. I drove back up to Philly and met Russell at a restaurant and he read the affidavit that Mitchell had given me in the envelope and took care of it after that.
”

I, JOHN W. MITCHELL, being duly sworn, depose and say:

1. That neither I, as Attorney General of the United States, nor, to my knowledge, any other official of the Department of Justice during my tenure as Attorney General initiated or suggested the inclusion of restrictions in the Presidential commutation of James R. Hoffa.

2. That President Richard M. Nixon did not initiate with or suggest to me nor, to my knowledge, did he initiate with or suggest to any other official of the Department of Justice during my tenure as Attorney General that restrictions on Mr. Hoffa’s activities in the labor movement be a part of any Presidential commutation for Mr. Hoffa.

John W. Mitchell (S)

Sworn to before me this 15th day of October, 1973

Rose L. Schiff

Notary Public, State of New York

A little more than a year later, while this affidavit was still wending its way through the court system on behalf of its purchaser, the man who swore an oath to its truth, John W. Mitchell, would be convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice as a result of his outright lying under oath in the Watergate cover-up.

With the affidavit in hand, an affidavit as yet untainted by its author’s perjury conviction, Jimmy Hoffa put his campaign in overdrive.

On February 16, 1974, Hoffa accused Fitzsimmons of “traveling all over the country to every damn golf tournament there is, when being president of the Teamsters is an 18-hour-a-day job.”

In a television interview Hoffa pointed out that “Fitzsimmons is crazy. He goes to a shrink twice a week and he’s running a union for more than two million Teamsters?”

Hoffa began regularly referring to Fitzsimmons as “crazy” and a “liar.”

In retaliation, Fitzsimmons fired Hoffa’s wife, Josephine, from her union position and she lost her $48,000-a-year income. At the same time Fitzsimmons cut off James P. Hoffa’s $30,000-a-year legal retainer. Chuckie O’Brien, who had grown up in the Hoffa household as a foster son and called Hoffa “Dad,” kept his Teamsters job. O’Brien became increasingly close to Fitz and increasingly estranged from Hoffa. Jimmy Hoffa, an earnest family man, was outspokenly disappointed in O’Brien’s divorce and strongly disapproved of O’Brien’s gambling habit and spendthrift ways. Jimmy Hoffa refused to support O’Brien for president of Detroit’s Local 299 and the split widened.

On March 13, 1974, Hoffa filed his much-anticipated lawsuit. This time, instead of his usual cast of yes-men lawyers, he used a renowned civil-rights attorney, Leonard Boudin. In his suit Hoffa claimed that he had no knowledge of the restrictions at the time he walked out of prison on December 21, 1971, and had never agreed to them. Furthermore, even if he had agreed to them, the president lacked the constitutional authority to restrict his or any other person’s pardon in such a way.

There is an old maxim that young lawyers learn: “If you can’t beat them on the law, beat them on the facts.” Here, the argument that Boudin was making on his client’s behalf was an argument that he and many other constitutional scholars considered a winner. That left the government to argue the facts and Jimmy Hoffa, through his actions, unwittingly provided the government with a factual argument.

Hoffa and his special friends had provided Boudin the facts to allege in the lawsuit to supplement the legal argument. Accordingly, the lawsuit claimed that the restriction did not originate from a proper source, such as the attorney general, but had “originated and derived from no regular clemency procedure but was caused to be added to said commutation by Charles Colson, Special Counsel to the President, pursuant to an agreement and conspiracy.”

In a television interview after his legal papers were filed, Hoffa expounded on that part of his lawsuit: “I’m positively sure that he had a hand in it and I’m positively sure that he was the architect of the language…. He did it to ingratiate himself with Fitzsimmons. And in doing so got the job of representing the Teamsters. And Fitz did it, through Colson, to be able to keep the presidency of the International Union.”