No apologies for quitting Teamsters mob probe

Ed Stier was fresh from cleaning up the nation's most corrupt union local -- Teamsters Local 560 in Union City -- when he was approached by the incoming president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

The two men were at a reception honoring the local's new board at the Holiday Inn at Newark International Airport when James P. Hoffa pulled Stier aside.

The son of the corrupt and legendary labor boss Jimmy Hoffa wanted Stier's help in ending 10 years of federal oversight aimed at wiping out mob influence in the Teamsters. Impressed by what Stier said was a "sincere commitment to cleaning up the union," he agreed.

But after five years working for the Teamsters, Stier and his 20-member team of investigators and lawyers quit en masse April 28 after concluding that Hoffa wasn't willing to back them up in rooting out what they say is continued mob influence.

For a time, Stier said in an interview last week at his law office in Skillman, Hoffa "seemed focused on what needed to be done." But after several years, he said, "Hoffa abandoned it. He sort of veered off course. He couldn't take the pressure ... against our continued investigations."

Stier's deputy, former FBI agent Jim Kossler of Westfield, who led the agency's efforts against Local 560, was more succinct. "He had an opportunity to save the family's name," said Kossler of Hoffa. "And he blew it."

Teamsters officials say they are committed to ending federal oversight and had spent $15 million on Stier's efforts. But, they say, Stier and his team made "reckless" accusations about union members, refused to follow directives from Teamsters headquarters and would not answer questions about their sources and investigations.

The union's general counsel, Patrick Szymanski, said last week that Stier and his team would not follow the procedures he laid out. Both men say they clashed repeatedly in recent weeks over a series of investigations on alleged mob infiltration into Chicago-area locals.

"This is a dispute between me and Ed Stier," Szymanski said. "I decided I couldn't trust Ed anymore. He knew what was right. No one else knew what was right."

For the Teamsters, Stier's abrupt departure is sure to hurt the union's negotiations with the U.S. Department of Justice to end the government's oversight. The Teamsters agreed to federal monitoring in 1989 to settle a federal racketeering lawsuit that charged the union was controlled by organized crime.

"We saw the promised land," said G. Robert Blakey, a Stier adviser and professor at Notre Dame University Law School ,who wrote the anti-racketeering law that led to the federal monitoring. "Six months, we could have been out from under (federal oversight). We just didn't make it."

Szymanski acknowledged the resignations are a major setback. "You think the government's going to be anxious to go out right now and ink a deal with us? They're going to be reluctant," he said.

Hoffa declined to comment.

At the outset five years ago, Stier and Kossler were hopeful that with Hoffa's support, they would succeed in cleaning up the notorious union. But they said they made it clear to Hoffa that it would not be easy.

"We told him, 'It's one thing for us to investigate your enemies. You have to be willing to take on your friends as well.'" Kossler said.

Stier and Kossler knew what they were talking about.

Stier, 64, has a long history fighting Teamsters corruption. He spent 12 years as the court-appointed trustee for Local 560. Before that, at age 28, he lead the U.S. Attorney's criminal division in Newark. And from there, he founded New Jersey's Organized Crime and Special Prosecutions Section, forerunner to the state Criminal Justice Division he would later lead.

Kossler, 60, led the FBI's effort to end mob domination of Local 560, once called "a multifaceted orgy of criminal activity" by a federal judge. He was involved in the original probe of Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance and suspected murder. And he was on the FBI team that, in 1987, recommended the federal racketeering lawsuit against the union.

In the beginning, Stier and Kossler said, Hoffa did not waver.

"I want to keep the mob out of this union," Kossler recalled Hoffa saying. "The mob killed my father and I'm going to keep them out."

In the first 3 1/2 years, they said they made significant headway, including:

 

Writing a new code of conduct and enforcement for the union, which has 1.4 million members, including 95,000 in New Jersey.

 

 

Convincing Hoffa to withhold his support for the sale of a trucking company the union sought to organize after discovering the buyers were tied to Thomas Giacomaro, a mob-connected Bergen County businessman now in prison.

 

 

Helping Hoffa drive international Vice President Dan DeSanti of Monroe Township out of the union after accusing him of working with the Genovese crime family. DeSanti denied any mob connections but said he agreed to leave because he was planning to retire anyway.

 

 

Finding evidence that Hoffa's personal assistant was helping a Chicago businessman with mob connections get union work in Las Vegas without the approval of the regional Teamsters council. Kossler said Hoffa later told him the incident "could have been the end of my presidency."

 

Their most publicized achievement was a 700-page report issued in 2002 that laid out the union's corrupt history and warned that some locals were still controlled by organized crime.

Stier and Kossler say things began going sour 18 months ago, when they opened an investigation into Houston's Local 988. Top local officials had been accused of accepting kickbacks from a non-union building contractor to get local construction work.

As the Houston probe progressed through 2002, Stier said Hoffa confided in him that he was "being lobbied" to drop the investigation by people close to local President Chuck Crawley and Secretary-Treasurer Dennis Bankhead, who were accused of taking the kickbacks.

The lobbying led to foot-dragging, Stier said. Hoffa moved to take over the local and suspend the officers only after the union's Independent Review Board found evidence of the kickbacks, he said.

Then, they said, came all-out obstruction in Chicago. Their investigators found evidence of continued underworld infiltration in several area locals. Stier and Kossler declined to reveal specifics, though they have referred their findings to federal authorities.

As investigators began conducting interviews with Chicago Teamsters, Stier and Kossler said, there was "pushback" from the union's top echelon.

Hoffa's personal lawyer in Manhattan, Bruce Maffeo, "told Ed to stop all investigations in Chicago on orders of Jim Hoffa," Kossler said. And then Hoffa's executive assistant, Carlow Scalf, refused to authorize $20,000 in fees to the investigators and transferred Stier's in-house union staffer without telling Stier, according to Stier and Kossler.

Scalf and Maffeo did not respond to requests for comment.

Szymanski, the Teamsters' general counsel, said Stier ignored his request after being told not to conduct interviews without his consent. Stier said he never agreed to that condition.

After weeks of angry phone calls and letters, Stier, Kossler, their team and the 10-member advisory panel that included Blakey quit.

In an April 29 letter to Stier, Hoffa called their resignations a "personal publicity coup." Szymanski said Stier is "making a media circus of this event."

Stier is not surprised by their reactions.

"What they're saying is 'all of a sudden, Ed Stier's a different guy in Chicago than he is anywhere else,'" Stier said. "Somehow you become transformed when you start investigating friends of powerful people. I've been doing this for 40 years. I knew what the risks were. I tried to warn them. The same thing happened when I was in state government. It's fine when you're investigating other people but as soon as you start investigating people who have political influence, you, as the prosecutor, become the bad guy."