Word: hoffa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
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...
...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...
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...
...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...