Teamster probe can't survive union demands

By Stephen Franklin, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporters David Jackson and Ray Gibson contributed to this report

May 10, 2004

After months of resistance and clashes, investigators knew their internal probe of the Teamsters was doomed when union officials in Washington demanded their confidential files and witness names.

"We couldn't do that. We'd give it to law enforcement and nobody else," said Jim Kossler, a former FBI agent who had been chief investigator of the Teamsters' 4 1/2-year-old internal anti-corruption arm.

The union said it wanted the files for a lawyer it had hired to sift through the investigators' work.

But it was the final blow in the troubled relationship between the Teamsters and the investigators they hired to show that the union was reforming. Kossler, along with the head of the probe, other investigators and an advisory board, resigned in April, casting a shadow over the union's attempts to end federal supervision of its day-to-day operations.

Interviews with investigators and others involved in the probe show how the $15 million effort to clean up the Teamsters collapsed as the union's hired investigators clashed with leaders.

Kossler and others involved in the inquiry say their effort crashed because it raised allegations of corruption in Chicago and Teamsters President James P. Hoffa would not do what he needed to do to show that the union is clean: He would not turn on his Chicago allies.

The investigators' allegations include Teamsters officials pocketing union money; union officials dealing with mobsters; shady deals with union locals' benefits and trust funds; and mob-related firms placing low-wage and non-union workers in jobs once held by Teamsters.

The probe, according to records obtained by the Tribune, included allegations that organized-crime figures and their relatives had ties to companies involved in the movie business, conventions and trade shows, trucking firms and temporary labor outfits--all industries that use Teamsters.

As the probe heated up, the investigators allegedly were told about Chicago Teamsters trying to kill it at the behest of "racketeers" in Chicago and a high-ranking Teamsters official in Washington, who tried to "shut down" the investigation.

Teamsters officials in Chicago and Washington say the investigation went out of control, feeding off wild allegations and digging into old rumors. And they scoff at the idea that Hoffa was protecting allies when union officials raised complaints about the way the investigation was being carried out.

"Nobody has shoved it under the carpet," said Patrick Szymanski, the union's chief counsel.

Union says it's cooperating

The union has turned over much of the investigators' findings to the federal officials and the government monitors for the union, he said. Nor, he added, were any of the Teamsters named in the investigation "particularly close to Hoffa. They are Teamsters like everybody else."

The investigation, headed by Ed Stier, a former federal prosecutor and New Jersey law-enforcement official, had looked into issues beyond its authority, such as locals' trust funds, and, overall, had turned up "wild statements," he said. "I just think Ed Stier got too close to this and he lost some perspective."

Similarly, John Coli, head of the Chicago-area Joint Teamsters Council, issued a statement last week saying his organization had not tried to halt the investigation. That was true, he said, despite "overzealous investigative tactics" that had stirred local members' complaints.

For a union long tainted by corruption, the self-policing effort was going to be a new beginning. To avoid a government takeover, the union had agreed in 1989 to let federal monitors clean up its ranks and oversee it operations.

Government prosecutors had laid out the case that the union was in the hands of mobsters and afflicted by long-term wrongdoing. At the time of the deal, four of the Teamsters' five previous presidents had been indicted on racketeering charges, and one former leader, Roy Williams, had testified that he got his job from the mob.

Stier was hired to head the union's anti-corruption effort. And two years ago, he turned out a 639-page document that largely was a clean bill of health for the union.

Attention on Chicago

After the report, Stier's investigators began to focus on Chicago, because, as he explained, there appeared to be more problems here than elsewhere. Working with veteran Chicago-based investigators, the effort was turning up serious allegations, he said.

"As we got deeper into matters in Chicago, we got more and more resistance. That was not surprising. It was the reaction of leadership that made our position untenable," said Howard T. Anderson, an attorney and partner with Stier.

"Some of the people who wanted to talk with us were being pressured not to," Anderson said. "If someone with influence is able to pick up a phone and slow you down, once you get to that point, you are on shaky ground, and you can't run a credible self-policing operation if you believe you are subject to political control."

Starting over a year ago, the union began to hold up paychecks for the investigators, Kossler said.

"We started to say, `What's going on here?' and there was no explanation. When we brought it to Hoffa's attention, he made them pay," he said.

Pressure between union officials and investigators grew until January, when union officials "made us stop completely," Kossler said.

To make the case for the investigators' work in Chicago, Stier then put together a report on its findings in Chicago. That report has not been made public.

That set off a round of blistering letters between Stier and Szymanski. With the Chicago probe still up in the air, the union recently hired Edward A. McDonald, a former federal prosecutor, to weigh the allegations in Stier's report, among them that an official in Hoffa's office had tried to kill the probe.

To guarantee McDonald's independence, the union last week said that three of its board members would deal with him, not Hoffa.

Last week Stier said he had turned over his files to the government and would not give the confidential files to McDonald.

The only reason the union wants the files, he suggested, would be to "learn the identities of our sources so they could be retaliated against."

Like other Chicago Teamsters, Anthony Pinelli, a lawyer for Teamsters Local 786, questions the investigators' work. His is one of at least three Chicago locals that reportedly were targeted.

Names and records sought

The investigators asked about workers for the local related to former Local 786 officials who had left because of wrongdoing, he said.

"They seemed to think that if you are a relative of somebody who did something illegal, you don't have a chance," Pinelli said.

They had also sought records for various trusts operated by the local. But the trusts' officials turned them down, saying that the U.S. Labor Department had responsibility for the trusts, not the union's self-policing arm, Pinelli said.

"I think they wanted to find something regardless of the evidence," he said.