Cash on the Whang Bang

The five-day ordeal of Frank Brewster, boss of the Teamsters Union's Western Conference, was nearly over. He hunched .. eagerly forward in his chair before the , U.S. Senate's McClellan committee, ready to head for the nearest exit and away from Washington at a moment's notice. : But first, Committee Chairman John MeClellan had a bill to total: the committee's investigation of the Teamsters' West Coast affairs, said Arkansas Democrat McClellan, indicated that $709,420.14 in union funds had been lost, strayed, stolen or was of a "questionable nature." Furthermore, Frank Brewster had signed most ; of the checks.

Under snickersnee-sharp questions from Committee Counsel Robert Kennedy (and duller ones from politically minded committee members, e.g., "Do you really feel that this is within the boundaries of basic Americanism . . .?"), Brewster squirmed about a $99,999 bank roll listed by his own Seattle Local 174 under "Special Fund."

Said Brewster: "That was for political funds." Said Kennedy: "Well, Mr. Brewster, we have checked and found that there is no such fund as a 'Local 174 Special Fund' in the bank. It does not exist."

Q. Can you give the committee any explanation as to how any of that money was spent?

A. I cannot, because I did not handle it.

Q. You were the secretary-treasurer?

A. I was the secretary-treasurer.

Q, You signed the checks?

A. I signed the checks . . .

Q. Was any of that money spent to pay any of your personal bills?

A. No, none of that money was made to pay any of my personal bills.

Q. You are absolutely sure of that?

A. As sure as I can remember.

As sure as Brewster could remember was not sure enough. The committee investigators had been able to trace from beginning to end only one check attributed by Local 174 to its "Special Fund." That check, for $4,000, was signed by Frank Brewster and had been cashed as a part down payment on his Palm Springs house.

The McClellan committee also found that the Teamsters had assigned some $60,000 to an "Unemployment Relief Fund" that did not exist in bank records. But Frank Brewster, who by week's end had admitted that as of Dec. 31, 1956 he owed his union $79,000 and some-odd dollars, was soon being questioned about some of the oddest of those dollars.

In 1949 or 1950, said Brewster, he and Seattle Insurance Man George Newell purchased Los Angeles County property (near the Santa Anita race track) for $6,050 each, soon sold it for $12,500 each and pooled the money to start the Breel Racing Stables. After that, Newell furnished almost everything that was spent for the upkeep of the stables. He also paid Brewster $5,000 a year. Brewster earned the $5,000, as he himself told the story, for getting up at 4:30 a.m. to see "what horses needed to be walked."

When the Brewster-Newell horse partnership broke up in 1955, Newell, who had put in most of the money, emerged with a $40,000 loss. Brewster, who insisted that sometimes he really walked the horses, somehow came out with a $44,000 profit. The Brewster-Newell accounts still have not been finally settled because of an argument about the disposition of a mare named Whang Bang. Asked Committee Chairman John McClellan: "Is this a kind of whang-bang transaction?" Replied Frank Brewster: "She was a whang-bang mare. She won 40,000-some dollars too."

No one, however, argued that Insurance Man Newell had been much whang-banged in his dealings with Brewster. Reason: the Teamsters' Western Conference, under Frank Brewster, had made Newell the broker and consultant for its health and welfare fund. The annual profit to Newell: $300,000.

Throughout the week, the McClellan Committee fricasseed Frank Brewster in the gravy of the Western Teamsters' finances. Items:

P: Brewster admitted that he had signed checks totaling $6,663 to Dimny Lee Walton, a Los Angeles interior decorator, for ornamenting the Seattle home of the late John Sweeney, secretary-treasurer of the Western Conference. Included were such items as an imported crystal chandelier ($174) and foam-rubber padding ($382). Brewster insisted that Sweeney's estate would pay for anything Sweeney had owed the union. How? Out of the $50,000 that the Teamsters' rank and file had since forked over, by special assessment, to Sweeney's widow.

P: Brewster was asked if he ever had his suits tailor-made. He harked back to the days even before he became a leader of the Teamsters' West Coast goon squad and said: "When I drove a team once, I saved up for a whole year and got a tailor-made suit, and I was the happiest man in town." Since then he was made even happier. The committee showed that a $400 Teamsters' check had been made out to a Seattle tailor for a Brewster suit in 1954. Brewster said it was a Christmas gift from grateful unionists. Date of the Christmas gift: June 22.

P: Brewster said that he and Teamsters' International President Dave Beck were partners in a service-station across the street from the union's Seattle headquarters. From 1950 to 1955, according to McClellan committee evidence, Teamsters' units gave the Brewster-Beck service station at least $165.000 worth of business.

P: The West Coast Teamsters paid $94,000 for stock, e.g., in the Campbell Soup Co., for such deserving union officials as Frank Brewster and John Sweeney. Asked Kennedy: "Did the members of the union know that their money had been used to purchase the Campbell Soup stock for the various officials?" Replied Brewster: "I don't think we sent out a bulletin to that effect."

By the time Frank Brewster had thankfully left the hearing room, the McClellan committee was already gearing itself for an even more important Teamster: President Dave Beck, who was scheduled to show up this week (Counsel Kennedy promised to prove that Beck had taken at least $270,000 from the Western Teamsters). But although he would soon be smothered by Beck headlines. Frank Brewster would not soon be forgotten. The meaning of his testimony was perhaps best phrased by Republican Committee Member Karl Mundt of South Dakota. Amid all the big moneymaking of the Teamsters' leaders, asked Mundt, where did "John C. Truck Driver--and the C stands for the cash he pays in dues"--come in?

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