The Mouthpiece

Files and folders tucked in his arm, Detroit Labor Lawyer George S. (for Stephen) Fitzgerald, 56, strolled into the McClellan committee's high-ceilinged hearing room last week, as he has most days since the committee began to grill Teamster President James Riddle Hoffa and half a dozen Fitzgerald-represented Hoffa lieutenants. But this time the beet-faced, bulge-bellied barrister plopped himself not in the customary attorney's seat but in the red-leathered witness chair. For two days Witness Fitzgerald (without counsel) angrily denied that he had been furtive or unethical in carrying out sometimes strange assignments for which the Teamsters paid him $270,000 in five years.

Lawyer Fitzgerald was worth questioning in his own right, but he was also on the spot because the McClellan committee has grown more and more curious about the small army of legal eagles who defend, protect, advise and counsel the Teamsters. In all they total 120--so many that they even have an organization of their own: the National Conference of Teamster Lawyers, which meets periodically, discusses such items as the legal ramifications of hot cargoes, NLRB decisions, right-to-work laws and at its latest session last month in California a timely new topic: "Hints to the union attorney relating to legislative investigations of the labor union and its officers."

Handymen to the Hungry. Conference members work hard for their pay, are topnotch labor-relations experts and, for the most part, community pillars. Conference Chairman Clarence Beck of Salt Lake City, no kin to deposed Teamster Boss Dave Beck of Seattle, is a Mayflower descendant and Son of the American Revolution. But an important few serve as Teamster policymakers and handy men to power-hungry bosses. Examples:

P:Milwaukee's David Previant, 47, framed Teamster constitutions that sapped power from local unions and centralized it in conferences and national officers. CJ Seattle's Sam Bassett, 61, a quarter-century Beck intimate, arranged secret Teamster loans to truckers, joined Teamster officials in borrowing union funds to make a killing on Campbell Soup stock.

P: Wichita's Payne Ratner, 61, onetime Republican Governor of Kansas now in trouble with the McClellan committee (TIME, Aug. 25), used his political contacts with considerable skill to head off a House Labor Subcommittee investigation of Jimmy Hoffa in 1953.

Watch the Watchers. No lawyer has done more yeoman service for Hoffa than George Fitzgerald, a onetime Wayne County (Detroit) crime-busting prosecutor, onetime Michigan Democratic national committeeman, onetime defeated candidate for lieutenant governor (who got a $43,000 Teamster donation to his campaign chest). When the Internal Revenue Service bird-dogged Hoffa's tax returns, Fitzgerald suggested that Jimmy's accountant "get rid of" Hoffa's net-worth statement. When a Washington jury panel was called for Hoffa's bribery trial (TIME, July 29, 1957), Fitzgerald hired an investigator to investigate the jurors. Similarly, while the McClellan committee checked on Hoffa, Fitzgerald hired a private eye to ogle three committee investigators. Finally, when a federal judge was rumored ready to freeze assets of two Teamster locals, Fitzgerald had $25,000 withdrawn from each local's bank account and held in ready cash "to operate, and pay any attorney's fees."

Then there was the $1,000,000 loan he arranged from the Michigan Conference of Teamsters Welfare Fund to a real-estate company developing 1,270 acres in Flint. Fitzgerald, according to earlier testimony, pocketed a $15,750 "finder's fee" for arranging the loan. A title and guarantee officer supervising the funds in escrow said Fitzgerald rearranged the escrow agreement to allow some of the money to be used for curious purposes, e.g., the purchase of a bull and nine cows to give the Flint development a rural atmosphere.

Fitzgerald angrily insisted his $15,750 was a legal fee, said he had worked hard for it, but admitted that he neglected to notice when the loan was made that the real-estate firm had more liabilities than assets. Informed that the shaky company has stopped building houses on the property, and the Teamsters are foreclosing their loan, John McClellan did rapid arithmetic, reckoned the welfare fund was out $700,000. Seemingly unconcerned, George Fitzgerald rosily predicted the land would make a handsome profit, despite the fact that the State Health Department refuses to approve its water facilities. The hearing over, he climbed from the witness chair to prepare for a return appearance this week in his old role as counsel. Fitzgerald's client of the week: Old Pal James Riddle Hoffa, who once informed his buddy: "You're only my mouthpiece. I'll tell you when to talk."

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