Investigations
The Select Committee focused its attention for most of 1957 on the Teamsters union. Teamsters President Dave Beck fled the country for a month to avoid its subpoenas before returning in March 1957. The Select Committee had a difficult time investigating the Teamsters. Four of the paper locals were dissolved to avoid committee scrutiny, several Teamster staffers provided verbal testimony which differed substantially from their prior written statements (the Select Committee eventually charged six of them with contempt of Congress), and union records were lost or destroyed (allegedly on purpose). But, working with the FBI, the Select Committee electrified the nation when on February 22, 1957, wiretaps were played in public before a national television audience in which Dio and Hoffa discussed the creation of even more paper locals, including the establishment of a paper local to organize New York City's 30,000 taxi cab drivers and use the charter as a means of extorting money from a wide variety of employers. The 1957 hearings opened with a focus on corruption in Portland, Oregon, and featured the testimony of Portland crime boss Jim Elkins. With the support of 70 hours of taped conversations, Elkins described being approached by two Seattle gangsters about working with the Teamsters to take over Portland vice operations. The colorful testimony brought the committee's investigations national media attention from the outset. As 1.2 million viewers watched on live television, evidence was unearthed over the next few weeks of a mob-sponsored plot in which Oregon Teamsters unions would seize control of the state legislature, state police, and state attorney general's office through bribery, extortion and blackmail. On March 14, 1957, Jimmy Hoffa was arrested for allegedly trying to bribe an aide to the Select Committee. Hoffa denied the charges (and was later acquitted), but the arrest trigged additional investigations and more arrests and indictments over the following weeks. Less than a week later, Beck admitted to receiving an interest-free $300,000 loan from the Teamsters which he had never repaid, and Select Committee investigators claimed that loans to Beck and other union officials (and their businesses) had cost the Teamsters more than $700,000. Beck appeared before the Select Committee for the first time on March 25, 1957, and notoriously invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 117 times. Beck was called before the McClellan Committee again in May 1957, and additional interest-free loans and other potentially illegal and unethical financial transactions exposed. Based on these revelations, Beck was indicted for tax evasion on May 2, 1957.
The Beck and Hoffa hearings generated strong criticisms of Robert Kennedy. Many liberal critics said he was a brow-beater, badgerer, insolent, overbearing, intolerant, and even vicious. Hoffa and other witnesses often were able to anger Kennedy to the point where he lost control, and would shout and insult them. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, one of Robert Kennedy's mentors and a close friend, criticized Kennedy for presuming the guilt of anyone who exercised his Fifth Amendment rights. Noted attorney Edward Bennett Williams accused the Select Committee of bringing witnesses into executive session, ascertaining that they would exercise their Fifth Amendment rights, and then force them to return in public and refuse to answer questions—merely to generate media attention. The Chicago American newspaper so strongly criticized Robert Kennedy for his overbearing, zealous behavior during the hearings that a worried Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. rushed to Washington, D.C. to see for himself if Robert Kennedy was endangering John Kennedy's political future.
During much of the summer and fall of 1957, the Select Committee investigated corruption in the Bakery Workers Union, United Textile Workers, Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union, and Transport Workers Union. In the late fall, the committee focused its attention on union-busting, and examined the behavior of companies such as Morton Packing Company, Continental Baking Company, and Sears, Roebuck and Company.
While continuing to investigate and hold hearings on other unions and corporations, the McClellan Committee also began to examine the behavior of Jimmy Hoffa and other Teamsters officials. Senator McClellan accused Hoffa of attempting to gain control of the nation's economy and set himself up as a sort of private government. The Select Committee also accused Hoffa of instigating the creation of the paper locals, and of arranging for a $400,000 loan to the graft-ridden International Longshoremen's Association in a bid to take over that union and gain Teamsters control of the waterfront as well as warehouses. Johnny Dio, who by late summer 1957 was in prison serving time on bribery and conspiracy charges, was paroled by a federal court in order to testify at the Select Committee's hearings. But in a two-hour appearance before the Select Committee, Dio invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 140 times, and refused to answer any of the committee's questions. But despite the problems encountered in interrogating Dio, the Select Committee developed additional testimony and evidence alleging widespread corruption in Hoffa-controlled Teamster units was presented in public in August 1957. The worsening corruption scandal led the AFL-CIO to eject the Teamsters on December 6, 1957.
As the Hoffa hearings occurred in August 1957, the Select Committee met in executive session to restructure its organizations and set its agenda for the future. The Select Committee had succeeded in securing the removal of Beck as Teamsters president and seemed on the verge of sending Jimmy Hoffa to jail as well, but the Committee had also been strongly criticized for its handling of witnesses and its apparent one-sidedness in exposing union but not management corruption. To guide the Select Committee's investigations in the future, McClellan established a set of 11 areas of investigation for the committee, nine of which involved labor misdeeds and only one of which involved management misbehavior (preventing workers from organizing unions). The management-oriented area came last on the committee's list of priorities, and there were no staff assigned to investigate the issue.
Under the new guidelines, the Select Committee's schedule of hearings slowed. In January 1958, Chairman McClellan asked for and received permission from the Senate to extend the deadline for completing the committee's work for another year. For a short time early in the year, the Select Committee investigated the International Union of Operating Engineers, and uncovered a limited financial scandal at the top of the union. But the main focus of the committee for the first half of the year was the United Auto Workers. Republicans on the Select Committee, notably Barry Goldwater, had for several months in late 1957 accused Robert Kennedy of covering up extensive corruption in the UAW. The Republicans pointed to a lengthy, ongoing, and sometimes violent strike which the UAW was conducting against the Kohler plumbing fixtures company in Wisconsin. Walter Reuther, President of the Auto Workers, told Select Committee investigators that the Kohler Company was committing numerous unfair labor practices against the union and that the union's books were in order. Despite no evidence of any mismanagement or organized crime infiltration, Kennedy and McClellan went ahead with hearings on the UAW in February 1958. The five-week series of hearings produced no evidence of corruption. A second set of hearings into the UAW in September 1959 lasted just six days, and once more uncovered no evidence of UAW malfeasance. The September 1959 hearings were the last public hearings the embarrassed committee ever held.
As the UAW hearings were winding down, the Select Committee issued its first Interim Report on March 24, 1958. The report roundly condemned Jimmy Hoffa (by now President of the Teamsters) and accused the Teamsters of gathering enough power to destroy the national economy. Refocusing its attention back on the Teamsters, the Select Committee held a short set of hearings in August 1958 intended to expose corruption by the Hoffa regime. But a number of witnesses recanted their written testimony and the hearings led nowhere.
In February 1959, the Select Committee's attention turned to an investigation of organized crime. McClellan had won yet another one-year extension of the Select Committee's existence in January, giving it additional time for more investigations. This new focus was a natural outgrowth of the committee's previous investigations, but it also reflected the committee's frustration at uncovering no additional scandals like the one which had rocked the Teamsters. Through much of the spring and summer of 1959, the committee held a series of public hearings which brought a number of organized crime figures to the public's attention, including Anthony Corrallo, Vito Genovese, Anthony Provenzano, Joey Glimco, Sam Giancana, and Carlos Marcello. Although more muted and less frequent, criticisms of the Select Committee and Robert Kennedy continued. Kennedy's moralism about labor racketeering, several high-profile critics concluded, even endangered the Constitution. Although McClellan wanted to further investigate organized crime, the Select Committee had reached the limits of its jurisdiction and no further investigations were made.
By September 1959, it was clear that the Select Committee was not developing additional information to justify continued operation. A second interim report was released in August 1959 once again denouncing the Teamsters and Jimmy Hoffa. Robert F. Kennedy resigned as the Select Committee's chief counsel on September 11, 1959, and joined Senator John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign as campaign manager. Committee members became more involved in passing legislation to deal with the abuses uncovered.
Read more about this topic: United States Senate Select Committee On Improper Activities In Labor And Management