Word: teamsters
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...week wore on, both the police and the Hoffa family were ready to try almost anything to find the former Teamster boss who had so suddenly vanished on July 30. At week's end an FBI laboratory technician was analyzing some stains found in a car belonging to the family of reported Mafia Leader Anthony ("Tony Jack") Giacalone; there was some fear that the spots might be Hoffa's blood. Other efforts included the hypnotizing of people who had talked to Hoffa shortly before he disappeared, in the hope of coaxing some leads from their memories...
...does. Hoffa may have been kidnaped or have simply disappeared for dark reasons of his own, but TIME has learned that federal authorities believe the cocky, stubby union leader has been murdered. The suspected reason: to prevent him from disrupting the lucrative deals between the Mafia and the Teamsters that had developed since 1967, when Hoffa was imprisoned for jury tampering, fraud and conspiracy. Under the benign leadership of Frank Fitzsimmons, Hoffa's hand-picked successor as president, powerful local Teamster chiefs allowed the Mob to wheel and deal with the union's $1.3 billion pension fund. Gangsters...
Released from prison in 1970, Provenzano became a firm ally of Frank Fitzsimmons in his plan to keep the union presidency. Fitzsimmons was reportedly planning to set up Tony Pro as the boss of the Teamsters Joint Council in New York, a job that would make the two Provenzano brothers the czars of all the Teamsters in the East. Daniel Sullivan, a former Teamster official and reformer, remembers ominously that on May 5, 1974, Hoffa told him: "Tony Pro threatened to pull my guts out or kidnap my grandchildren if I continued to attempt to return to the presidency...
When Hoffa's sentence was commuted in 1971 by President Richard Nixon, the terms of his release from prison prohibited him from taking part in Teamster affairs until 1980. But Hoffa was fighting that ban in court, while month by month he was gaining more influence in the union. Earlier this summer, Provenzano and Giacalone tried to lure him to "sitdowns" to discuss an armistice in his war against Fitzsimmons. Although Hoffa rejected the initial feelers from Giacalone, he agreed early in July to consider getting together with Provenzano...
...Local 299, old friends of both Hoffa and Fitzsimmons tried to smooth things over last year by putting together a coalition. David Johnson, a longtime Hoffa ally, was allowed to continue as president of the 17,500-member local, and the vice presidency went to Richard Fitzsimmons, 45, the Teamster president...