Gone with the Trash

Frank Brewster, boss of the Western Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, shook his massive head at photographers and demanded that they refrain from taking pictures of him "with my finger in my nose." Then, jaw outthrust, Brewster turned to the Senate's McClellan committee and began reading a 40-minute statement elaborating upon the virtues of himself and his teamsters. "We," said Brewster, "support the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts and the Green Cross Safety Organization." By week's end it was clear that the Teamsters' Western charities went even further than that. The union's rank and file had, for example, also helped support Frank Brewster's racehorse stable.

Under close questioning by Committee Counsel Robert Kennedy, Brewster admitted that on occasion he had helped himself to union funds to pay for personal expenses, specifically for the transportation, and "possibly" for the lodging, of a jockey and a trainer employed by his stables (Brewster's colt, Alderman, won Hollywood Park's $50,000 Sunset Handicap in 1951). But, Brewster insisted, he intended all the while to pay the union back--still does. The trouble is that he does not really know how much he owes, since--Brewster said--a janitor had mistaken the Western Conference's pre-1954 records for trash (Brewster and the Teamsters' International President Dave Beck being under income-tax investigation at the time) and thrown them away.

With that testimony for a starter, the McClellan committee planned some new lines of questioning for Brewster this week.

Among others testifying as the committee began winding up its old lines:

P: Portland's Democratic Mayor Terry Schrunk, elected with Teamster help, had agreed to take a lie-detector test to help him refute testimony that he had, as sheriff of Multnomah County, taken a $500 bribe from a gambler. But when he went to take the test, Schrunk objected to six questions (e.g., "While sheriff, did you receive any payoffs from any gamblers?"), stalked out. Later he told the committee: "Apparently they were aimed at trying to make me flunk the test."

P: Multnomah County's Teamster-sponsored District Attorney William Langley, 40, under indictment at home on malfeasance charges, repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer the committee's questions. Then Langley sat pasty-faced while the committee played tape recordings (taken by Star Witness James Elkins, a Portland racketeer) identified as Langley's conversations with Gamblers Tom Maloney and Joe McLaughlin. A Langley sample: "So the prostitution is out. And now it's no good, and we don't want it anyway, and it's too dangerous ... So the only way you're going to do any good is cards, high dice. Like I told you all along, cards and book, and then if you get into the pinballs and punchboards, that's all right. That bootleg joint, if it'll--if it will go if you can make anything. That's all right. I don't see any reason to close that down now."

P: Reginald Mikesell, secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters' joint council in Portland, told how most of his unit's records since 1954 (the Portland period in which the committee was generally interested) had been destroyed to save storage space. This, said Mikesell, was "taking the path of least resistance." Questioned about a $5,000 check he had made out to Bill Langley's attorney, Mikesell said he had no idea what it was for. When the committee expressed astonishment at his lapse of memory, Mikesell commented blandly: "It does seem a little silly, doesn't it?"

After it finishes with Brewster, the McClellan committee plans to gear itself for Teamsters' President Dave Beck. Last week, at home in Seattle, Beck said he would decide whether or not to turn over his financial records to the committee after consulting with his newly retained lawyer: Pennsylvania's ex-Republican Senator James Duff.* But Committee Chairman John McClellan was having none of that. Beck, he said, must give the committee his records by this week or have them subpoenaed.

*And told a TV audience that he had borrowed between $300,000 and $400,000 from the Teamsters' Western Conference over the past 10 years, paid no interest, but repaid "every cent."

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