His Majesty the Wheel

Untangling the knotted skein of corruption that spewed from the power reel of Teamster Boss Dave Beck, the select Senate committee investigating labor racketeering has turned up some devastating evidence. Even so, many a rank-and-file teamster could still tell himself that Good Old Dave had the boys' interests at heart, no matter what he did. Last week, as the hearings took on a new reel. Good Old Dave turned out to be Bad Old Dave for even the toughest teamster. Reason: testimony plainly showed that Dave 1) used the Teamsters, whenever it suited his money-hungry whims, as a useful adjunct to Dave Beck's business enterprises, and 2) cheated the widow of an honored union official in his relentless pursuit of a few easy bucks.

As the week's hearings began, Dave himself sat down in the committee room, rolled out about 30 Fifth Amendment pleas in 32 minutes. But if Dave was not talking, his former business associates were --and what they had to say should have made Dave leap out of his expensive lizard-skin shoes. The talkers:

Irving J. Levine, tight-lipped president of K & L Beverage Co., told how he and Beck sweet-talked St. Louis' Anheuser-Busch into giving Levine's company the sole distributorship of Budweiser in Seattle, and later in other areas of Beck's domain of Washington and Alaska. Then, said Levine, Dave Beck Jr. and a partner each put up $24,500 for a total of 49% interest in K & L, and Dave Jr. became vice president of the company. Two years later, Mrs. Dave Beck Sr. paid Levine $40,000 for a 40% interest in a K & L liquor-distributing organization.

But Dave Sr., continued Levine, tried to run the show. "He asked that his son be appointed president of the company. During the course of the discussion, Mr. Beck got quite angry, and I refused to go along with his demands. [But then] I received a call from my brother [saying that the Teamsters] refused to unload this particular truckload of whisky. So I mentioned it to Mr. Beck. And Mr. Beck says, 'Well, you see what I mean, Levine, you don't get along very good with the members of Local 174, and my family is stockholders in your company. We have got to protect our interest.' "

Since another part of that interest entailed a loan--for which Beck was a guarantor--to Levine's company from Seattle's First National Bank, Levine saw what Dave meant. "I asked Mr. Beck, 'Well, you win, what do you want?' He said, 'I would like to have my son as president of the company and to have him have the complete say-so of drivers and of trucks.' So I agreed. That is what I had to do." Junior promptly became K & L's president, and next day the whisky truck was unloaded. Then there was the time, too, when Dave Sr. decreed that Dave Jr. was to receive 5-c- on every case of "Bud" sold in the Alaska territory, but no less than $1,000 a month. When Levine squawked, Old Dave politely upped the ante to $1,000 minimum, plus 5-c- a case.

John L. Wilson, Anheuser-Busch executive vice president, reluctantly discussed the extent to which his company suffered under Dave Beck's heavy hand for the sake of an assumed guarantee of labor peace implied by Beck control--despite the fact that Anheuser-Busch always retains the power to cancel any of its distributorships without notice. Interoffice memos referred to Dave Jr. as "a spoilt child," to Old Dave as "His Majesty the Wheel." Even so, Old Dave was handy to have around. Wilson admitted that he got Beck to intervene on the brewery's behalf in a union jurisdictional fight over the construction of an Anheuser-Busch Los Angeles plant. Wilson also once consulted with Dave on the subject of the attitude of Anheuser-Busch competitors in California who were about to enter contract negotiations with the Teamsters Union. Finally the brewery got its fill of Dave, advanced Levine $112,500 in credit with which to buy out the Beck family.

Donol Hedlund, a respected and influential Seattle mortgage banker, flushed deeply, swallowed hard, spun the saddest yarn of all. With Joseph McEvoy, the nephew of Beck's wife, and one other associate, Hedlund established the National Mortgage Co., thanks partly to the $35,000 contribution from Uncle Dave to McEvoy. Then Hedlund, Beck and Teamster Lawyer Simon Wampold organized an outfit called the Investment Co., which drew brokerage commissions on Teamster money invested by Beck. Through the mortgage company, Beck put a tidy $9,000,000 in Teamster funds into mortgages, and through this company, Beck's family profited handsomely.

Within this interlocking framework, by Hedlund's painful testimony, Beck pulled his worst on a Teamster's widow. Ray Leheney was a union official and longtime friend of Beck. After Leheney's death, Beck first collected nearly $80,000 in assessments and contributions from union members to form the Ray Leheney Memorial Fund for the benefit of Mrs. Leheney. Then, as the trustee of the Teamster funds, he "loaned" the National Mortgage Co. $71,407, with which he and Hedlund bought contracts at a discount. After some $10,000 in payments had been made on the principal, they "sold" the contracts to Dave Beck, now acting as trustee of the Ray Leheney Memorial Fund, for $71,607; scored an easy profit of more than $11,000 for Hedlund and Beck, and left the widow no wiser.

Fred Loomis, disillusioned Seattle investment counselor, whom Beck hired as an adviser for Teamster investment, explained that little by little he got the wind of Dave's shenanigans, advised him more than once that it was time to straighten out his affairs. At length he fired off a "Dear Dave" letter: "There has been talk of your receiving a kickback [from a building loan in Honolulu with Teamster funds], the plain implication being that this was in accordance with a pattern. I am sure that your fiduciary duty has never been sufficiently impressed upon your mind. Accept my resignation."

Beck, explained Loomis to the committee, "was extremely angry because I had stood up to him and treated him like he was just an ordinary mortal. He might be a big wheel, but as far as I was concerned, he was just a hubcap. He said that nobody was going to tell him [what to do]--that his conscience was going to be his guide."

In the shocked hearing room, Fred Loomis' statement brought an incredulous gasp from Committee Chairman John McClellan. "His conscience?" he asked. Replied Loomis with utter finality: "His conscience."

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