THE LEGEND LIVES ON FROM THE TEAMSTERS ON DOWN OF THE BIG GUY THEY CALL JIMMY HOFFA

6/18/13

The FBI is once again digging around for Jimmy Hoffa, this time in Oakland County, Michigan and at the behest of aging Detroit Mob boss Tony Zerilli.  Mr. Zerilli was underboss of the Detroit Mob at the time of Mr. Hoffa’s disappearance in 1975 and so is in a position to know what happened to James Riddle Hoffa.

So far, the feds have found concrete slabs on the property in which they are digging, but no remains of Mr. Hoffa.  Digging will resume tomorrow.  Remember, however, that 38 years have passed since Mr. Hoffa went missing, so one wonders what could be found…or what could be gained from finding whatever that might be.

At any rate, I thought it was a good time to reprint a piece I wrote last Fall…when local authorities in Roseville Michigan were digging for Mr. Hoffa.

DIGGING FOR JIMMY HOFFA…AGAIN

9/27/12

The cops are digging around for Jimmy Hoffa again.  Police in the Detroit suburb of Roseville, Michigan are reportedly conducting tests around a driveway in that town looking for the body of the late Teamsters leader.   This particular bout of Hoffa searching reportedly comes in response to claims by a late stage cancer patient who saw fit to clear his conscience by reporting that he saw what could have been people burying a body under the driveway around the time of Mr. Hoffa’s disappearance from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township in 1975.  

This, of course, is not the first time that law enforcement officials in some jurisdiction or another have searched for the body of Mr. Hoffa who, popular rumor has it, is actually buried in the end zone of the old Meadowlands, which is one of the few places that hasn’t been searched.  In fact, when my brother-in-law Tim decided to put a very nice pool in the backyard of his Long Island home, I counseled him to call, say, the Suffolk County Police, or maybe the feds, and tell them that he had heard rumors that Mr. Hoffa was buried in his backyard.  After the authorities had dug up the backyard and found nothing, I advised him to say something like

“Sorry for your trouble, boys.  No need to fill the hole back in; I don’t want to put you to any more trouble.”

Tim could have thus saved plenty of money on the pool installation,   He did not follow my counsel.  His loss.  But I digress.

As an amateur student of the American Mob, I have long been intrigued by the Hoffa case.  In fact, when I lived in the Detroit area in the early ‘80s, I made it a point to dine at the Machus Red Fox just because that is the point from which  Mr. Hoffa disappeared.  It wasn’t much of a sacrifice; it was quite a good place, but, again, I digress. 

Mr. Hoffa was the president of the Teamsters from 1957 until, technically, 1971.   But he was convinced of bribery and of misuse of Teamster funds in 1964 and finally went away in 1967, when he appointed his old pal Frank Fitzsimmons acting head of the Union.   Mr. Hoffa formally resigned as head of the union in 1971 and Mr. Fitzsimmons formally assumed the role of Teamsters president.  Shortly thereafter, Mr. Hoffa was pardoned by Richard Nixon, supposedly (probably, okay, definitely) in exchange for a Teamster endorsement of Mr. Nixon’s reelection.  But a condition of the pardon was a prohibition on union activities for Mr. Hoffa until 1980, the date on which his sentence would have ended were it not for the pardon.   This condition reportedly (probably, okay, definitely) was inserted at the behest of Mr. Fitzsimmons and those who were reportedly (probably, okay, definitely) running the Teamsters at the time   Why?   While Mr. Hoffa played ball with the Mob, especially regarding loans from Teamsters pension funds for, among other things, Vegas casinos  (loans, by the way, which proved money good and at least modestly profitable), he was not controlled by the Mob and could say “No.”  Mr. Fitzsimmons, on the other hand, was little more than a Mob puppet who didn’t dare say “No” to the people who were keeping him in his lucrative sinecure atop the Teamsters. 

So the Mob was very comfortable with Mr. Fitzsimmons and wanted to take no chances on a return of the powerful and headstrong Mr. Hoffa.  The result was the disappearance of Mr. Hoffa in 1975, while he was plotting his return to power through Local 299 in Detroit.  The prime suspects in the disappearance of Mr. Hoffa have long been the late Tony Jack Giacalone, a Detroit mobster, and Tony Pro Provenzano, a New Jersey Teamster official who just happened to be a capo in the Genovese family.  There are, of course, other theories about why Mr. Hoffa had to go, mostly centering around possible testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (Former Chicago Boss Sam Giaconda’s meeting his untimely demise about the same time provides grist for that particular mill.), but the most plausible explanation for Mr. Hoffa’s death was his efforts to upset the apple cart, or apple truck, at the Teamsters.

So what?

This recent bout of digging for Mr. Hoffa give me an excuse to ask a question that has always troubled me about the Hoffa case:  why did the Teamsters and the Mob, without whom the then leadership of the Teamsters did little of much import, press for Mr. Hoffa’s release from jail, even with the accompanying restrictions on his union activity?   Did they honestly believe that Mr. Hoffa, a tough, resourceful, power hungry, but nonetheless effective for the members union guy was just going to say something like “Okay, fellas, I’ll just stand aside and let a pygmy like Frank Fitzsimmons do your bidding with my union; after all, that’s what the law says I have to do”?    While the Mob, broadly speaking, has never been as omniscient or omnipotent as popular enthusiasms would have you believe, the guys who run it are not stupid.   Wouldn’t they have been better off keeping Hoffa in jail until 1980, when he would have been 67, not old but older than 58, and Mr. Fitzsimmons, or some successor, would have been more entrenched and hence harder to unseat?   I know all about union brotherhood considerations and the promises made to Mr. Hoffa to try and get him out, but when money, and especially so much money, was at stake, the people who were in charge cared little for such relatively minor considerations.

We know why Nixon pardoned Hoffa.  But why did the Teamsters make the deal that led Nixon to pardon Hoffa?   This question has intrigued me since…about 1975.