Into the Trap

Hatless in the mild Washington night, the chunky man stood in the shadows outside the Dupont Plaza Hotel and reached fast for the onionskin paper held out by his taller, slimmer companion. The little man tucked the paper in his inside coat pocket, shook hands and turned back to the hotel. Smiling to himself, he padded across the thick rug in the lobby and started into an elevator. Then the smile vanished--and squat (5 ft. 5 in., 170 lbs.) James Riddle Hoffa, 44, one of the most powerful leaders of U.S. labor, stood frozen-faced while agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation closed in on him, frisked him like a common footpad, and took from him the onionskin document. The paper had come from the files of the U.S. Senate committee investigating labor racketeering (see below), and Jimmy Hoffa had paid dearly for it. It might, in fact, have cost him his spectacular career.

In 25 years ruthless Jimmy Hoffa had thought and fought his way from a 32-c--an-hour job as a warehouse worker to become a vice president of the mighty International Brotherhood of Teamsters and head of the I.B.T.'s Central Conference, with 500,000 members of about 340 locals in a twelve-state Midwestern empire. Moreover, he was in a position of deadly challenge to the Teamsters' aging (62) International President Dave Beck. Hoffa had run up a list of arrests, e.g., for brawling in a picket line, that he smilingly admitted was "as long as your arm." Even so, nearly everyone in organized labor figured that he was too smart to get into the sort of trouble that would halt his drive for Beck's job. Last week he was in just that sort of trouble.

$18,000 Promise. The new Hoffa story, as speedily laid out to a federal grand jury, began last Lincoln's birthday, when

Wall Street Lawyer John Cye Cheasty (rhymes with hasty), 49, got a long-distance phone call from an acquaintance, Attorney Hyman Fischbach, onetime counsel for a House subcommittee investigating crime in the District of Columbia. At Fischbach's request, Cheasty flew to Washington, where Fischbach explained that Teamster Hoffa needed some "special help" in connection with the McClellan committee's investigation. Hoffa, said Fischbach, wanted to plant an agent on the McClellan committee staff and Jack Cheasty, a former Secret Service agent, Internal Revenue agent, and naval intelligence commander (he retired in 1952 with a $5,500 disability pension after a heart attack), seemed to have the investigating credentials for landing the committee job. Said Cheasty tersely: "I'd rather hear this from the man himself." Almost before he knew it, Cheasty was on a plane, bound for Detroit and an appointment with Jimmy Hoffa.

In his Detroit headquarters Jimmy Hoffa laid his proposition on the line: Cheasty was to wangle a job with the McClellan committee and get his hands on documents having to do with the Teamster investigation. Hoffa would give Cheasty $18,000, with $1,000 as a retainer, and even if Cheasty did not get the job, he could still keep $500. Cheasty took the $1,000, flew back to New York, soon picked up the phone to call a man he knew only by reputation: Robert Kennedy, counsel to the McClellan committee. Said Cheasty: "I have some information that will make your hair curl. Can I see you?" Bob Kennedy's hair was already pretty well-curled with information about the Teamsters, but he replied politely: "Sure, come on down."

$4,500 Job. Cheasty's information more than lived up to its billing. Kennedy swept aside all his other work, rushed into conference with Committee Chairman John McClellan, who called in FBI Director John Edgar Hoover. Cheasty forthwith got a committee job at $4,500 a year--and was assigned to be the human bait in the trap set for Teamster Hoffa. Cheasty turned over to FBI agents $700 of Hoffa's $1,000, kept $300 for expenses, and left for New York, where he was supposed to help with the investigation of New York labor racketeering.

From New York, Cheasty fed FBI-screened information to Hoffa, sometimes through Lawyer Fischbach, sometimes through Hoffa's red-haired secretary, Mrs. Dorothy Dobrescu. Except for Kennedy and McClellan, nobody on the committee knew of Cheasty's true role. At least one of his fellow New York staff members complained bitterly to Kennedy that Cheasty was loafing on his job as committee investigator. Adding to Cheasty's problems, Jimmy Hoffa was getting impatient with the bits and snatches of information that Cheasty was giving him. He wanted Cheasty to swing a transfer to Washington. Cheasty did--and he arrived there just one day after Hoffa, who had coincidentally come to attend a meeting of the Building Trades Unions.

$2,000 Handshake. One afternoon last week Cheasty phoned Hoffa's Detroit office to tell Dorothy Dobrescu that he had some more material for Hoffa. A little later Hoffa called Cheasty from the swank Dupont Plaza Hotel, asked Cheasty to meet him there at 7 p.m.

Cheasty was right on time, and Hoffa, waiting in front of the hotel, jumped nimbly into his taxi. The cab cruised slowly up Connecticut Avenue while Cheasty slipped Hoffa an envelope containing onionskin copies of committee interviews with principals in the Teamster probe. Hoffa told the cab driver to stop, and stepped down. Cheasty followed. The two shook hands, and Hoffa pressed twenty $100 bills into Cheasty's hand. Jimmy

Hoffa, the Teamsters' smart guy, walked away eminently satisfied with himself. But there was something he did not know: the taxi driver, witness to the entire transaction, was an FBI agent.

Actually, the FBI agents in the case had not expected the payoff to start coming so soon, and they decided to move fast. Next afternoon Cheasty called Hoffa's secretary in Detroit again to set up the 11 p.m. Washington rendezvous that was to end with Jimmy Hoffa's arrest and arraignment on bribery charges.

There was still a lot of cockiness in Jimmy as he was hauled off to the U.S. Courthouse. There he got into a boisterous argument with Committee Counsel Kennedy about who could do the most pushups (Hoffa claimed 35, Kennedy more). But no one knew better than little Jimmy Hoffa the extent of his trouble. If convicted of any of several possible counts (and the FBI was keeping Key Witness Cheasty well-guarded pending the trial), Hoffa could be both imprisoned and fined. He could easily afford the fine and, all other things being equal, he was still young enough to take a prison sentence in stride. But Jimmy Hoffa had built his whole reputation on being an awesomely smart guy. And that reputation could hardly survive being caught with the goods while pulling an incredibly stupid stunt.

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