[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 33 (Wednesday, February 22, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2955-S2958]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[[Page S2955]]
THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF WALTER SHERIDAN
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, all of us who knew him, respected him,
and loved him were saddened by the death last month of Walter Sheridan.
Walter was the outstanding investigator on the staff of the Senate
Labor and Human Resources Committee for nearly two decades, and before
that, he had been one of Attorney General Robert Kennedy's most trusted
and effective aides in the Department of Justice.
Walter Sheridan lived an extraodinary life, and all of us who worked
with him have many warm memories of his achievements and his
friendship.
I ask unanimous consent that my tribute to Walter last month at Holy
Trinity Church in Georgetown, an earlier tribute I made to Walter on
the occasion of his final hearing at the Labor Committee in 1990, and
other materials may be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the materials were ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Tribute to Walter Sheridan, by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Holy Trinity
Church, Washington, DC, January 17, 1995
``Some men see things as they are and say, `Why?' I dream
things that never were and say `Why not?'''
These words that Robert Kennedy loved were words that
Walter Sheridan lived by. And what a magnificent life he
lived.
Walter and my brother were exact contemporaries, born on
the same day, November 20th, 1925. It took them a little over
thirty years to find each other. But it was inevitable that
they would, and now they have found each other again.
I suspect some grand investigation is under way in heaven,
and that Bobby and Carmine Bellino finally decided last week,
``We need Walter up here on this one.''
My brother loved to tease Walter about his mild demeanor
and quiet manner. But as Bobby wrote in ``The Enemy Within,''
Walter's angelic appearance hid a core of toughness. As any
wrongdoer well knew, the angelic quality also represented the
avenging angel.
All the Kennedys have lost one of the finest friends we
ever knew. Walter Sheridan was an extraordinary investigator
and an extraordinary human being. He had a heart as large as
his ability, and his courage and dedication to justice and
the public interest were unmatched by anyone. Everything he
touched he left better than he found it.
Walter was also family, far and wide. His wife, Nancy, his
daughter Hannah, his sons Walter, John, Joseph, and Donald,
and all their families and all his fourteen grandchildren
know how much Walter loved them and how deeply he cared for
them. The Sheridan home was always warm and welcoming, a
continuously open house and gathering place for the legions
of friends he made across the years.
Everyone Walter worked with loved him too. He lit up every
room he entered, and there was an obvious mutual affection
that made people not only want to work with him, but work
harder because of him. He had a famous and well-deserved
reputation from the Hoffa years for ability, integrity and
loyalty--and he was a legend for his modesty about it.
He lived up to the Sheridan mystique all his life and in
everything he later did. You could sense the power of his
commitment to justice and honesty in public and private life.
You knew he would go to the end of the earth to sustain those
standards against any who tried to undermine them. The
cynical view that everyone has his price met its match and
its defeat in Walter Sheridan.
As Bobby knew, and as those on the other side learned to
their dismay, when the going got tough, Walter Sheridan got
going. His highly principled convictions about the public
trust ensured the criminal convictions of those who violated
that trust. His book about those years is among his lasting
legacies--a call for constant vigilance to protect the public
interest against corruption.
In any fight, my brother said, he would always want Walter
on his side. You wanted Walter with you in any foxhole, and
that is why he always seemed to get the most difficult
assignments. He had been in the service in World War II, and
his exploits reminded me of a famous slogan of those years--
the difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a
little longer.
In the Senate years, each time we settled on the subject of
a new investigation, Walter would do his famous disappearing
act. He'd be away for three or four weeks. ``Walter's gone
fishing,'' we would wink and say, and everyone knew what that
meant. When Walter surfaced with his catch, all the networks
and reporters were there, ready to record it at our hearings.
Walter knew how to follow a paper trail, find the
unfindable document, and make it speak truth to power. Once,
when the mine owners persuaded the federal agency to
drastically weaken protections for health and safety, it was
Walter who uncovered the irrefutable document. The agency had
simply tried to write the mine owners' wish list into law--
complete with the same spelling and grammatical mistakes.
Walter was also a hero to workers in the many industries he
investigated. I especially think of his coal mine safety
investigations. Miners and mine safety officials who
testified in our Labor Committee hearings would continue to
call up Walter for many years, eager to tell him about the
new births and marriages and grandchildren in their lives.
They knew Walter never stopped caring about them, and they
loved him for it and made him part of their family too.
For all his warmth and wit, Walter was rightly feared by
certain kinds of industry leaders and government officials--
by anyone misusing their position or abusing their high
office. His mission in many of his Senate investigations was
to see that federal regulators did not become captives of the
industry they regulated.
Once, a mine worker who worshipped Walter told us that an
official of the Mine Safety and Health Administration had
walked into his agency office one day and resigned
immediately--when he saw the pink message slip with the
notation that ``a Mr. Walter Sheridan'' had called.
His unique combination of high intelligence, low-key
manner, and warm personality was an irresistible asset in all
his work, and he loved to tell his war stories. During his
investigation of the pharmaceutical industry, two drug
company executives told him extensive details they never
intended to disclose about their company's operations. They
said Walter just kept asking simple, understated questions
and nodded politely at their responses. As one of the
officials later said, ``It took us about ten minutes after we
walked out of the room to realize that Walter Sheridan had
just picked both our pockets clean.''
He had a flair for the dramatic too. For several years, he
served as a Special Correspondent for NBC and made
documentaries on many issues, including crime and gun
control. He liked to tell of the time he went into a gun
shop, plunked down a couple hundred dollars, and walked out
with an anti-tank weapon. He later loaded and fired it on
camera to demonstrate the shocking laxity of our gun control
laws. He said he couldn't remember what finally happened to
the weapon, but he kept it stored somewhere around the house
for a while and thought Nancy finally threw it out.
Another of his documentaries dealt with organized crime.
Walter persuaded a key informant to speak on camera for the
first time about the activities of one of the crime families.
Later, a few of Walter's friends who had gathered to watch
the broadcast at the Sheridans' home thought the informant on
the screen looked familiar, and he was. He was sitting on the
couch in Walter's living room, watching the program too. He
told Walter it was the first time he felt truly safe, because
no one would dare try to harm him while Walter was on the
case.
Of course, all of us who knew Walter understood something
else as well--that we would never know everything he knew.
Business or pleasure, secrets were safe with Walter. Whether
working on an investigation or planning a surprise party,
nothing ever leaked. On that point we all agreed--Walter
Sheridan kept his mouth shut.
Genius, it is said, is the capacity for taking infinite
pains, and Walter passed that test with flying colors. No one
worked harder or longer or more effectively. But sometimes
even that wasn't enough. One of my brother's and Walter's
favorite stories from the McClellan Committee days was about
the time they were driving home together after working very
late one evening. As they drove past the Teamsters Building,
they saw the light still on in Hoffa's office. So they turned
the car around and went back to work themselves.
It has been said that all men are dust, but some are gold
dust. And that was true of Walter. In those great years with
my brother on the McClellan Committee and in the Justice
Department, he was a regular for touch football at Hickory
Hill. Everyone wanted to be on Walter's team, including
Bobby. To new friends there, he was always ``Walter,'' never
``Mr. Sheridan,'' even though they felt the first name was
somehow disrespectful after reading about Mr. Sheridan in
``The Enemy Within.'' Walter made sure that everyone got to
play, no matter how young or unathletic. He also mastered the
most important rule for those games, which was that there
were no rules.
And in the sad months and years after June of 1968, Walter
continued to be a fixture at Hickory Hill, helping Ethel,
helping all of us, to carry on. We loved you, Walter, as a
brother and as a member of our family.
In a sense, Bobby lived on through Walter. In the nearly 20
years that he worked with me in the Senate, I never met with
Walter or talked with Walter or laughed with Walter that I
didn't think of Bobby. As the poet wrote: ``Think where man's
glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such
friends.'' Our glory is that we had Walter as a friend.
In so many ways, he lived up to the ideals of dedication to
family, country, and service to others. His contributions to
integrity in government and the private sector are immense.
His achievements are proof that each of us can make a
difference--and what a difference Walter Sheridan made.
His life is symbolized in the inspiring words my brother
used: ``Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to
improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice,
he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other
from a million different
[[Page S2956]] centers of energy and daring, those ripples
build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of
oppression and resistance.''
You left us too suddenly and too soon, Walter, and we miss
you all the more.
____
Closing Statement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Hearing on Advertising,
Marketing and Promotional Practices of the Pharmaceutical Industry,
Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Washington, DC, December
12, 1990
The testimony in these hearings raised troubling questions
about the marketing practices of the pharmaceutical industry
and their corrupt relationship with physicians.
Commendably, as the committee investigation began to
uncover these abusive relationships, both the AMA and the PMA
endorsed new guidelines on the eve of the hearings, in order
to correct these problems and ensure the confidence of
patients and the public.
The committee intends to monitor these reforms closely, in
order to determine whether the abuses covered by the
guidelines are truly corrected.
Finally, I want to pay tribute to the person who deserves
the real credit not only for these hearings--but a thousand
other contributions to the Senate, the country, and the
public interest.
In a sense, these hearings are his swan song. But he'll
never really retire. He was also our chief investigator in
the initial committee hearings on this issue in the 1970's.
And I have no doubt he'll come out of retirement in the year
2000, or whenever the industry steps out of line again.
There's a famous saying that there's no limit to what you
can accomplish in this town if you're willing to give someone
else the credit. That may be the secret of how he's been able
to accomplish so much.
We've known each other for over 30 years, and worked
together for nearly 20. Robert Kennedy discovered him in the
1950's in the McClellan Committee investigations. It turned
out they were both born on the same day in the same year.
My brother took him with him to the Justice Department in
the 1960's. He may well have been the best and most tenacious
investigator the Senate or the Department ever had. I
inherited him from my brother, and he's been the same way
ever since.
As Robert Kennedy once said in the 1950 investigations,
``Investigators are the backbone of the hearings. Without
their work, we'd have nothing.'' Those words are still true,
and all these years he has continued to make them true.
We'll have a chance to pay a proper tribute to him at
another time. But I wanted to make at least these few remarks
now.
He's also a beautiful human being. His family and some of
his children and grandchildren are here today, and I think
they know how much we admire him and love him--Walter
Sheridan. We'll miss him.
____
[From the Washington Post, Jan. 14, 1995]
Walter Sheridan Dies; Helped To Investigate Hoffa
(By Martin Weil)
Walter Sheridan, 69, a prominent federal investigator for
many years who played a key role in the epic struggle between
the government and Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa, died
of lung cancer Jan. 13 at his home in Derwood.
He was a staff member of the Senate rackets subcommittee of
which Robert F. Kennedy was chief counsel and on which John
F. Kennedy served as a senator. He was also an associate of
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who lauded him yesterday as
``an extraordinary investigator and an extraordinary human
being.''
By 1960, years of contentious investigation and dramatic,
nationally televised hearings had made celebrities of the
Senate subcommittee's lawyer, Robert kennedy, and Hoffa.
Hoffa had become one of the best-known labor leaders of the
postwar era.
After John Kennedy became president in 1961 and his brother
became attorney general, Robert Kennedy asked Mr. Sheridan to
become his special assistant. In that job, he and a small
group of lawyers were made responsible for prosecuting
federal crimes associated with the Teamsters.
The lawyers in the unit described themselves as the ``Get
Hoffa Squad,'' and Mr. Sheridan, though himself not a lawyer,
was their chief, Arthur A. Sloane wrote in ``Hoffa,'' his
1991 biography of the labor leader. In his 1971 book
``Kennedy Justice,'' Victor Navasky also described Mr.
Sheridan as the unit's chief.
In 1962, Hoffa was brought to trial in Nashville. The chief
prosecutor and his assistants, accoring to Sloane's book,
operated ``under the overall direction of . . . Walter
Sheridan . . . who himself was in daily telephone contact
with Attorney General Kennedy.''
In a brief interview last night, Navasky said Mr. Sheridan
``knew the worst things there were'' about Hoffa and
``devoted those years to doing something about that.''
The trial, on a misdemeanor charge, ended in a hung jury.
But that trial led to a second trial on a charge of jury
tampering, based at least in part on evidence gathered and
investigated by Mr. Sheridan, according to Sloane's book. In
1964, Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering and began serving
a prison term three years later.
In 1960, Robert Kennedy published a book called ``The Enemy
Within,'' based on his Senate committee investigations into
labor matters. In it, he described Mr. Sheridan this way: ``A
slight, quiet friendly-faced man'' who ``was one of our best
and most relentless investigators.''
``His almost angelic appearance hides a core of toughness
and he takes great pride in his work,'' Kennedy said.
``In any kind of fight, I would always want him on my
side.''
Mr. Sheridan was born in Utica, N.Y., served in the
Submarine Service during World War II and later graduated
from Fordham University. He was an FBI agent for four years
and spent three years with the National Security Agency.
He was a regional coordinator for John Kennedy in the 1960
presidential campaign and had key roles in the political
campaigns of Robert and Edward Kennedy.
As a Senate investigator in the 1980s, he helped show that
clinical data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration
had been tampered with, which led to new safeguards. He also
led investigations into improper payments to physicians to
influence how they prescribed medicines. His investigations
into mine and on-the-job safety and health and into
exploitation of farm workers also were credited with leading
to new federal protections.
From 1965 to 1970, he was a special correspondent for NBC
and his unit received a Peabody Award for a documentary on
the 1967 Detroit riots.
He was the author of ``The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa.''
In his statement yesterday, Edward Kennedy said Mr.
Sheridan ``had a heart as large as his ability, and his
courage and dedication to justice and the public interest
were unmatched by anyone.''
Survivors include his wife, Nancy; five children, Walter
Sheridan of Gaithersburg, Hannah Shorey of Dallas, John
Sheridan of Germantown, Joseph Sheridan of Lansdale, Pa., and
Donald Sheridan of Harrisburg, Pa.; and 14 grandchildren.
____
[From the New York Times, Jan. 15, 1995]
Walter J. Sheridan Is Dead at 69; Helped Build Case Against Hoffa
(By David Stout)
Walter J. Sheridan, a Federal investigator who was an
associate of the Kennedy family and pursued the teamsters'
union leader James R. Hoffa, died on Friday at his home in
Derwood, Md. He was 69.
The cause was lung cancer, friends said.
Mr. Sheridan worked closely with Robert F. Kennedy in the
1950's when Mr. Kennedy was chief counsel to the Senate
rackets committee and John F. Kennedy was a committee member.
Mr. Sheridan and Robert Kennedy spent much time investigating
labor corruption, especially in the International Brotherhood
of Teamsters.
When Robert Kennedy became Attorney General, he recruited
Mr. Sheridan as a special assistant to investigate Federal
crimes, particularly involving the teamsters.
In March 1964, a Federal Court jury in Chattanooga, Tenn.,
convicted Mr. Hoffa of tampering with a Federal jury two
years earlier, and he went to prison. He was released in 1971
when his sentence was commuted by President Richard M. Nixon.
Mr. Sheridan was the author of a 1972 book, ``The Fall and
Rise of Jimmy Hoffa.'' Mr. Hoffa disappeared in 1975.
Mr. Sheridan was an agent for the Federal Bureau of
Investigation for four years but resigned, he said later,
because J. Edgar Hoover's fierce brand of anti-Communism made
him uneasy. He was also an investigator for the National
Security Agency for three years.
As a principal aide for the Senate Judiciary and Labor and
Human Resources Committees in the 1970's and 80's, Mr.
Sheridan led investigations into drug companies that tampered
with data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration,
working conditions in mines and exploitation of farm workers.
Mr. Sheridan was a regional coordinator for John F.
Kennedy's 1960 Presidential campaign. He also worked in the
senatorial and Presidential campaigns of Robert and Edward M.
Kennedy.
From 1965 to 1970, he was a special correspondent for NBC,
producing documentaries on crime, gun control and other
issues.
He is survived by his wife, Nancy; four sons, Walter, of
Gaithersburg, Md., John, of Germantown, Md., Joseph, of
Lansdale, Pa., and Donald, of Harrisburg, Pa.; a daughter,
Hannah Shorey of Dallas, and 14 grandchildren.
____
[From the Utica Observer-Dispatch, Jan. 14, 1995]
Sheridan, Former FBI Agent Dies at 69
Utica native Walter Sheridan--once listed among possible
successors to J. Edgar Hoover to head the FBI and a close
friend of the Kennedy family--died yesterday. He was 69.
Sheridan worked side by side with the late Sen. Robert
Kennedy to fight racketeering, particularly to bring James R.
Hoffa to justice. His career as an investigator included four
years as a special agent with the FBI, three years each with
the National Security Agency and the Senate Rackets
Committee.
Sheridan died at his home in Derwood, Md., of lung cancer.
He was born in Utica, Nov. 20, 1925.
``He was one of the finest men I ever met in my life. He
was sincere, honest, upright,''
[[Page S2957]] said Michael McGuirl of Ballantyne Brae,
Utica.
``I can't tell you the grief I feel'' over his death, said
McGuirl, who has maintained a friendship with Sheridan's
family.
Through his career--which included working five years as a
special correspondent for NBC and publishing a book on
Hoffa--Sheridan kept his links to Utica.
McGuirl, who worked 14 years as commissioner for Oneida
County Social Services, said Sheridan helped the county
receive the country's first Work Experience Program, which
helped put people in jobs.
Sheridan returned to Utica to speak at his class reunion in
1973 and the the Knights of Columbus in 1977.
``He was a fine assistant to Robert Kennedy and a very
intelligent and capable individual,'' said Vincent J. Rossi,
Sr., a Utica lawyer who worked with Sheridan on Democratic
politics in Utica.
In response to his death, Sen. Edward Kennedy said
yesterday ``all the Kennedys have lost one of the finest
friends we ever had. Walter Sheridan was an extraordinary
investigator and an extra-ordinary human being. He had a
heart as large as his ability and his courage and dedication
to justice and to the public interest were unmatched by
anyone.''
Sheridan graduated from Utica Free Academy in 1943, was
president of the senior class and a quarterback on the
football team.
Sheridan is survived by his wife, Nancy, and five children,
Walter, of Gaithersburg, Md., Hannah Shorey of Dallas, Texas,
John, of Germantown, Md., Joseph of Lansdale, Pa., and
Donald, of Harrisburg, Pa. and 14 grandchildren.
____
From ``The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa'' (1972)
(By Walter Sheridan and Introduction by Budd Schulberg)
A specter is haunting America. No, it is not communism.
Despite Wallace, Goldwater and the right-wing doomsday
criers, it is not even creeping socialism. It is, as readers
of this book will find alarmingly documented, an altogether
different sort of creeping disease. Creeping, hell, it's now
boldly up on two feet and running. Toward what goal? More.
More houses? More schools? More daycare centers? Forget it.
More money. More power. Power to do what? Enjoy life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness? Not as Jefferson and our
eighteenth-century idealists imagined it in those simpler
times. today it is the high life, the deal that brings
liberty in the form of ``commutation'' from the federal pen
and the pursuit of the easy buck--be it at the gangster
Xanadus of Las Vegas, or at millionaire retreats built with
Teamster money like Moe Dalitz's La Costa Country Club, or at
the various White Houses, Dicknixon style. There the Big
Money, that unholy alliance of over-and-under-the-table, has
enjoyed the friendship of the man who grasped early in his
checkered career the sharp-edged triangle of money, power and
politics.
Throughout our history Big Money has been decried, by
Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, both the Roosevelts.
. . . There are periodic appeals to our idealism, compassion
and sense of community. Reform movements rise and fall like
the tides. Today our children's crusade turns its back on the
sources of wealth and power and wanders into the desert to
smoke its pot and live the good life to the music of Led
Zeppelin, James Taylor and Joe Cocker. They have chosen to
abandon the system rather than reshape it. The old system,
their gypsy life-style is telling us, is a rat-race is a
money-game is a war-machine conceived in materialism
and dedicated to the proposition that the race is to the
swift and the poker pot to the swift at hand.
Left behind to fight the network of graft-organized greed
that has infected our profit system are the Walter Sheridans
of this land, unlikely Don Quixotes who tilt not at windmills
but at syndicates and are willing to take on single-handed an
army of hoodlums, fixers, purchasable politicos and business
opportunists, to go it alone if their leaders are shot down
and a Mitchellized Justice Department moves to deliver them
and their witnesses to the enemy.
I first came to know Walter Sheridan in the early sixties
when I went to Washington to discuss with the then Attorney
General, Robert Kennedy, the possibility of adapting his
book, The Enemy Within, as a motion picture. Our
irrepressible producer, the late Jerry Wald, had called me in
Mexico to say that Kennedy had chosen me from a list of film
writers Wald had submitted. Kennedy had been impressed with
On the Waterfront and The Harder They Fall and felt that I
would be particularly responsive to the job of dramatizing
corruptive power in America.
It is true that the subject had fascinated me from my high
school days. And The Enemy Within, a hard-hitting account of
Kennedy's experiences as chief counsel for the Senate Rackets
Committee, would give me the chance to write not merely a
sequel to Waterfront but a significant extension of that film
on a national scale. Kennedy's book presented startling
evidence of the collusion between Jimmy Hoffa (plus other
crooked union leaders), Mafia racketeers and their
``respectable'' allies in the world of business.
At Kennedy's home in McLean, Virginia, it took time to
break the ice, but gradually we established good rapport.
Then, characteristically, young Kennedy asked me when I could
begin and how soon my screenplay would be ready. I told him
that I had researched the New York waterfront for more than a
year before I had begun that script; I would not feel ready
to plunge into the writing of Enemy until I had fully
absorbed this even more complicated material. ``But it's all
in the book,'' Kennedy said with an author's pride. I told
him I would like to read the entire hearings of the Senate
Committee. ``That's fifty-nine volumes,'' Kennedy warned.
``Millions of words.'' When I held out, he passed me on to
his lieutenant in charge of the Hoffa investigation, Walter
Sheridan.
Sheridan turned out to be the most unlikely of G-men.
Television and movie fans accustomed to Lee Marvin or Rod
Steiger and Efrem Zimbalist as their gangbuster heroes would
be badly let down by Mr. Sheridan. So quiet-spoken you
literally have to lean forward to hear him, on the surface a
diffident, even shy and eminently gentle man.
But Kennedy's book had indicated the tiger that lurked
within the deceptively bland exterior, praising Walter as
tireless and unbendable, committed to the principle of
integrity in government and labor-management. Outraged by the
labor racketeering encouraged by political and business
connivance, he would work around the clock day after day to
stitch together a collar of evidence to fit even the thick,
tough necks of the Jimmy Hoffas.
Until the Kennedy investigations, the robber barons of the
labor movement had carved up their million dollar pies with
impunity. It is one thing merely to dream the impossible
dream, quite another to gather together for a convincing
indictment all the little jigsaw facts buried by professional
deceivers. How Walter Sheridan persevered in this quest,
despite bribes, threats and government roadblocks, provides
an encouraging lining for an essentially discouraging story.
For months, after Walter sent me the Rackets Committee
material, I immersed myself in the testimony of thousands of
witnesses who talked (or balked) about pension funds looted
of millions of dollars, with a majority of those six- and
seven-figure loans going to notorious Mafiosi, of
``sweetheart'' contracts arranged between greedy company
executives and union officials on the take (including, as
this book makes clear, President Hoffa himself), of once
respectable industries and unions infiltrated by a blatant
army of extortionists and enforcers, terrorizing the would-be
honest into silence or connivance. It was material, I
realized, that made waterfront crime-evil as that was--seem
like very small potatoes.
Now I understood more clearly the conclusion Bob Kennedy
had reached in his book--that the real enemy within was the
increasingly effective alliance of big money, labor
racketeers, the mob, and dishonest prosecutors, judges and
government officials, without whom billions could not be
stolen from our economy--and that this nationwide conspiracy
was poisoning the wellspring of the nation. From my talks
with Bob Kennedy, Walter Sheridan and their colleagues in the
Justice Department, I was convinced of
their passionate devotion to this theme--and to the
conviction that we could never defeat an external enemy
unless we first cut from our body politic the growing
cancer of corruption that would finally destroy our
society as Rome was eaten away from within two thousand
years ago.
When I returned to Washington with all fifty-nine volumes
of testimony buzzing in my head, I outlined a possible story
line to Bob Kennedy and his staff. But now I felt a further
step in research was necessary: to move on from the
transcripts to the people behind the transcripts, those who
had endured the pressure of belonging to a union whose
dictatorship they despised and whose goon-squad violence they
feared.
When I discussed this request with Kennedy he again passed
me on to Walter, who, in his calm, cautious way, put me in
touch with a fascinating union leader, a highly placed
officer who had been secretly cooperating with the Kennedy
investigation because he had lived his life as an honest
trade unionist and had become disgusted with the wholesale
looting of union funds, the terrorizing of union members who
protested, the Mafia leaders allowed to pass themselves off
as union leaders. The roster of Teamster vice presidents read
like a Who's Who in American Crime, and ``Max,'' as we shall
call our inside contact, had had a bellyfull.
Here, through Walter's sensitive liaison, I was to get a
one-on-one insight into the ongoing drama--the tension that
runs through so much of Walter's book--a man's conscience
struggling to keep afloat in a sea of fear. For the next few
months I was to meet Max under conditions that reminded me of
my World War II days in the O.S.S. We met in Los Angeles, in
a small town in Florida, and in Mexico--using pseudonyms and
even taking the precaution of meeting in a third, neutral
room in case we were being followed or bugged. His nerves
were shot and he was drinking himself through the day,
terrified of Hoffa and his henchmen, yet driven by the gut-
conviction that mobsters like Johnny Dio and Red Dorfman and
Joey Glimco and Tony Provenzano and all the rest of the tribe
were poison to the labor movement to which he had dedicated
his life. Through Max, I met other Teamster dissidents, all
hating Hoffa's guts and all afraid to face his wrath.
Thanks to Max, I was able to personify in my script a
reluctant, tormented thorn in the tough hide of the composite
labor boss I
[[Page S2958]] call Pete Bonner. Alas, the film for reasons
that bring me very
close to the spirit of this uncompromising book, has never
reached the screen. Jerry Wald, who alone had had the
courage to produce it, died suddenly, at a time when 20th
Century-Fox was fighting for survival after its
spendthrift Cleopatra. A labor tough walked right into the
office of the new head of the studio to warn him that if
the picture was ever made drivers would refuse to deliver
the prints to the theaters. And, if they got there by any
other means, stink bombs would drive out the audiences.
With Bob Kennedy's encouragement, I tried to produce the
film myself. One film star phoned to say he loved the script,
then came to my house drunk to tell me he was afraid he might
be killed if he did it. There have been ever-increasing ties
between the mob and some of the film studios and, of course,
those studios rejected it out of hand. Finally, I had firm
interest from Columbia, the company that had released On the
Waterfront. On the eve of the meeting with Columbia
executives to which I had been invited, every one of the
people who was to attend that conference received a letter
from William Bufalino, whose activities on behalf of Hoffa
are a matter of record (as Sheridan's book confirms).
Bufalino is, among other things, a lawyer, but this letter
was disturbingly extra-legal. It stated flatly that 20th
Century-Fox had wisely abandoned the project as soon as all
the possible eventualities had been pointed out to them, and
he felt confident that Columbia would be smart enough to do
likewise. On the morning of the meeting, a studio secretary
called to tell me that it had been canceled, indefinitely.
Apparently Hoffa and Bufalino had decided what the American
people could and could not see. And the Hollywood ``front
office''--notorious for its vincibility--had meekly complied.
But that was only a taste of the frustration that Walter
Sheridan had suffered over the years as he battled against
the invisible empire. The jury tampering in Nashville reads
like Police Gazette fiction, but it's all too true. The
Chicago trial, in which Jimmy Hoffa was finally convicted of
stealing more than a million dollars from his Teamsters
Pension Fund, is the stuff of high social drama. And the
trials and tribulations of Ed Partin, the big and tough
Teamster from Baton Rouge who turned on Hoffa, helped to
convict him, and then was offered a million dollars if he
would perjure himself and retract his testimony--or be
destroyed if he refused; all of this must be read, and then
reread and digested, to be believed.
And remembered. The incredible cast of those working to gain
a pardon for Hoffa, and a buy-off or conviction of Partin,
includes governors, federal judges, Louisiana Mafiosi,
Chicago gangsters, Pension Fund lawyer-grafters, senators,
congressmen, administration officials, con-men, sleazy go-
betweens. Even Audie Murphy and George Murphy get into the
act, not to mention gun-totin' William Loeb and his
infamous Teamsters-financed Manchester Union Leader.
Here is the enemy within, in all its star-spangled unglory.
The enemy walks among us, not as an underworld fugitive but
as an adornment of cafe society, enjoying the best tables in
New York and Miami, Las Vegas, Hollywood and Acapulco. You'll
find him chumming with the celebrities at Le Club or ``21''
or the Sands, or in the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills
Hotel. Instead of fearing government pressure, he'll boast of
his in with the White House. And the ``cream'' of our society
don't shun him, they invite him to their parties. And they
hope he will return the favor.
In this painstaking book, Sheridan faces up to the reality
that, after all the convictions and sensational disclosures,
corruption flows on. George Jackson rotted in jail for nearly
a decade for heisting $70. Jimmy Hoffa cops a million, bribes
juries, runs with the most dangerous gangsters in America
and, thanks to the intervention of his good friend Dick
Nixon, does an easy five. This, after the parole board had
rejected Hoffa's appeal three times in a row. This, in an
election year when Nixon has become anathema to the
legitimate labor movement and the Teamsters wind up as his
only big-labor support.
The Nixon-Hoffa friendship, beginning when Nixon was Vice
President, was emphasized again by his recent attendance at
the executive board meeting of the Teamsters. And his
Secretary of Labor gave fulsome praise to that gang-ridden
union at its most recent convention. ``A strange love
affair,'' The New York Times has described it. One might call
it something even stranger. Sheridan doesn't go in much for
adjectives. He's fact man and his step-by-step account of the
Hoffa-Nixon romance will make you want to weep for an America
that is now challenged--as Bob Kennedy had begun to challenge
her--to reach deep down and rediscover her soul.
Will the dry rot of moral decay leave the field to the
Hoffas, the J.T.T. and the Syndicate? The enemy within seems
to grow stronger every day. Whether or not a Jack Anderson, a
Ralph Nader, a Walter Sheridan can arouse our people from
their complacency is the question on which the future course
of America may depend.
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