Home for Christmas

By Lauarence I. Barrett

THE FALL AND RISE OF JIMMY HOFFA

by WALTER SHERIDAN 544 pages. Saturday Review Press.

$10.95.

Americans have a penchant for forgiving crooks once punishment has been inflicted. Customarily, applicants for such generosity have stolen on a grand scale, or possess a fascinating personality. Willie Sutton comes to mind. Now there is James Riddle Hoffa. The former head of the Teamsters Union was released from prison by presidential clemency on Dec. 23, 1971. Since then he has been invited to appear on network television, asked his political preferences, interviewed sympathetically by newspaper reporters and given a respectful hearing by a Senate subcommittee. By the time' he makes his move to take over the Teamsters again, he will doubtless come on as some sort of humanitarian labor statesman.

Walter Sheridan wants to stop the alchemy. He wants us to lock our doors now that Hoffa is loose, not only because of the corruption that Hoffa spread through the countryside years ago but because of the stench he is still able to cause. Exhibit A: the dubious process that eventually freed him.

Centurion. Just as it is Hoffa's destiny to claw toward power once again, it is Sheridan's fate to oppose him. The author was one of Robert Kennedy's principal aides while Kennedy was chief counsel to the Senate Rackets Committee that investigated Teamster wrongdoing. When Kennedy became Attorney General, Sheridan enlisted as a senior centurion in the Justice Department legion that finally brought Hoffa to justice. Later, as an investigative reporter, Sheridan managed to stay in touch with the case.

His proudest moment probably came eight years ago, when Hoffa was convicted in federal court of jury tampering (there was subsequent conviction for fraud). Sheridan wants the nation to remember the judge's pronouncement at that time: Hoffa, the court declared, was guilty of "having tampered, really, with the very soul of the nation." Yet The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa is not at all a polemic. Rather it is a bulging catalogue of fact and insight that is altogether persuasive.

More than half the book is a recapitulation of Teamster corruption just before and during Hoffa's tenure as international president. This is a familiar witch's brew of paper locals, hanky-panky with the enormous pension funds, involvement with a Mafia Who's Who, intimidation of the few labor leaders who protested the corruption of their union. Far fresher--and perhaps even more significant at this stage--is Sheridan's detailed reconstruction of the efforts, after Hoffa's convictions, to keep him out of jail and, those failing, to get him an early release. Hoffa and his associates started with the premise that Richard Nixon owed them one. In 1960 Eisenhower's Attorney General, William Rogers, was about to have Hoffa indicted in a crooked real estate deal. The Teamster boss had already begun to criticize the candidacy of John Kennedy, an attack he stepped up when Kennedy won the Democratic nomination to run against Nixon. Hoffa meanwhile had a conversation with Allan Oakley Hunter, a former Republican Congressman. As Sheridan tells it, the discussion touched on Hoffa's troubles with the Government, as well as Teamster political activities. Hoffa inferred that the indictment would be quashed. The proceeding against him was then abruptly suspended. But immediately after the election Rogers reinstated the action, and Hoffa was indicted. Though ultimately acquitted on that charge, Hoffa felt somewhat abused.

Lurid Story. When Hoffa was twice convicted in 1964 and sentenced to a total of 13 years, the Democrats were in power. He could hardly look to the Democratic Administration for help. While his lawyers tried a variety of legal tactics to have the verdicts overturned, other allies tried different gambits. Those who had testified against him were alternately offered bribes and issued threats to change their stories. In an effort to discredit the jurors in one trial, four bellhops at the hotel where the jurors had stayed were induced to tell a lurid story about the guests' behavior. When the tale was disproved and the bellhops fired, they were hired by a hotel on which the Teamsters held the mortgage. Later, several prostitutes came forward with similar revelations. One finally recanted; another was convicted of perjury.

The target of the most intense pressure was Edward Grady Partin, the Baton Rouge Teamster official who had provided the most damning testimony at the jury-tampering trial. Partin had been having his own troubles with the law and seemed vulnerable. He was variously approached with offers of money and protection if he would help Hoffa and threats of further prosecution if he would not. Until Richard Nixon took office in 1968, Partin was relatively safe. But old and rather dubious criminal charges against him were revived when the Republicans took over the Justice Department. By then Hoffa's appeals had run out, and he was languishing in Lewisburg Penitentiary. One hope for a full pardon lay in discrediting the original prosecution against him--by establishing, for instance, that there had been illegal wiretapping. Partin would not yield.

Tainted Union. Meanwhile, a campaign for clemency was organized. Assorted allies called on White House aides and the Justice Department. Political support was recruited, petitions signed. There were three requests for parole, and three times the board unanimously voted no. Then President Nixon commuted Hoffa's sentence, and the famous convict was home for Christmas. As the election year began. White House relations with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters flourished as never before.

Fall and Rise is a sad book. Sheridan admits that despite Robert Kennedy's crusade, the Teamsters have changed little. Despite the law-and-order banner, the Administration seems happy to play footsie with this tainted union. Despite the restriction imposed in the commutation of Hoffa's sentence -- he is barred from an active leader ship role in the union until 1980 -- ways around that problem can be found, or the terms can be amended. Before the next election, say.

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