Quotes from Charles Brandt

Brennan. Brennan was president of his own Detroit Teamsters local and had an arrest record for violence that included four incidents of bombing company trucks and buildings. Brennan referred to Jimmy as his "brains." Hoffa

Yet during a twenty-year period there wasn't an American alive who wouldn't have recognized Jimmy Hoffa immediately, the way Tony Soprano is recognized today. The vast majority of Americans would have known him by the sound of his voice alone. From 1955 until 1965 Jimmy Hoffa was as famous as Elvis. From 1965 until 1975 Jimmy Hoffa was as famous as the Beatles. Jimmy

Born on St. Valentine's Day in 1913, Jimmy Hoffa was seven years older than Frank Sheeran. Yet both grew to manhood in the same Great Depression, a time when management normally held the upper hand and people struggled just to put food on the table. Jimmy Hoffa's father, a coal miner, died when he was seven. His mother worked in an auto plant to support her children. Jimmy Hoffa quit school at age fourteen to go to work to help his mother. Hoffa

Hoffa and his Strawberry Boys' victory in 1932 was a rare labor victory in those days. In that same year a group of World War I veterans and their plight came to symbolize the powerlessness of the working man in the Depression. In 1932 thousands of veterans, tired of broken promises, marched on Washington and refused to leave the Mall until their promised bonuses, not due until 1945, were granted by Congress now when they needed them most.

In that same year, Provenzano "buried his differences" with popular reform-minded Local 560 member Anthony "Three Fingers" Castellito by having him strangled to death and buried on a farm in upstate New York by K.O. Konigsberg, Salvatore Sinno, and Salvatore "Sally Bugs" Briguglio. Ten

As Hoffa put it, "Nobody can describe the sit-down strikes, the riots, the fights that took place in the state of Michigan, particularly here in Detroit, unless they were a part of it." And on another occasion he said, "My scalp was laid open sufficiently wide to require stitches no less than six times during the first year I was business agent of Local 299. I was beaten up by cops or strikebreakers at least two dozen times that year." And

Ten days after Hoffa took the oath of office in 1957, the AFL-CIO kicked out the Teamsters, saying that they could get back in only if they got rid of "this corrupt control" of the union by Jimmy Hoffa and his racketeer union officials. On

And on the other side of the ledger, unions like the Teamsters often employed their own muscle, their own reigns of terror, including bombings, arsons, beatings, and murders. The warfare and violence were not just between labor and management. It was often between rival unions vying for the same membership. Sadly, it was often violence directed at rank-and-file union members who urged democratic reform of their unions. The

I went to work for the union around the time all this was going on, right after Jimmy got the president's job. After the wiretap trial everybody was saying they didn't make a parachute big enough to save Bobby Kennedy's ass when he jumped off the Capitol.

Riesel had been crusading against the criminal element in labor unions. The night of the radio broadcast, Riesel stepped out of the famous Lindy's restaurant on Broadway near Times Square and was approached on the sidewalk by a goon who threw a cup of acid in his face. Riesel was blinded by the acid's effect on his eyes. It soon became obvious that the attack had been ordered by Hoffa ally and labor racketeer John Dioguardi, aka Johnny Dio.

I flew to Detroit and reported to Local 299 on Trumbull Avenue. That was Jimmy's home local. It was down the street from Tiger Stadium.

Future presidential candidates Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona and Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts were members of the committee. The committee's chief counsel and principal interrogator was the future president's younger brother and the nation's future attorney general, Bobby Kennedy. As a result of his aggressive work on the committee, Bobby Kennedy was to become Jimmy Hoffa's mortal enemy. Johnny

At one point Hoffa told Bobby Kennedy regarding the tapes, "To the best of my recollection, I must recall on my memory, I cannot remember." There

Bobby Kennedy called Jimmy Hoffa "the most powerful man in the country next to the president." Part

As Hoffa told Johnny Dio in one of those wiretapped conversations that he couldn't remember: "… treat them right and you don't have to worry." Although others may have shared his zeal to improve the lives of American working men and women and their families, Jimmy Hoffa had the power to do something about it.

There were only two things that mattered in his life: the union and his family. Believe it or not, as strong as he was for the union, his wife and his daughter and his son came first to him.

In Detroit I was assigned to Bill Isabel and Sam Portwine. They worked as a team, doing public relations, but actually Sam looked to Bill as boss of the team. Bill was about 5?8? and was known for his ability with candy, not the kind you eat, the kind you use to blow things up with — dynamite. Bill was proficient in bombing, and he always packed. Bill was born in Ireland, but he sounded American. He came up through the ranks as a trucker.

On the other hand, in his book, The Enemy Within, Bobby Kennedy wrote about his experiences and observations as chief counsel for the McClellan Committee hearings on organized crime and labor unions, saying: "We saw and questioned some of the nation's most notorious gangsters and racketeers. But there was no group that better fits the prototype of the old Al Capone syndicate than Jimmy Hoffa and some of his chief lieutenants in and out of the union." Twentieth

You didn't know who to trust, but you kept taking cabbies aside and persuading them to sign a card. For some reason there were a lot of lesbians who were working as cabbies at that time in Detroit. They liked to be treated like men, and you had to respect that or you wouldn't get a signature. If

A union is only as strong as its weakest member. Once there is dissension the employer senses it and takes advantage of it. Once you allow dissension and rebel factions to exist you are on the way to losing your union. You can have only one boss. You can have helpers, but you can't have nine guys trying to run a local. If you did, the employer would make side deals and split the union.

A couple of weeks later Russell told me that Joey Glimco was Giuseppe Primavera. He had been with Al Capone and was very big with the Chicago outfit. He had a big record, a couple of murder arrests. He took the Fifth on every question during the McClellan Committee hearings, including whether he knew Jimmy Hoffa.

they wanted the guy left right there on the sidewalk as a message to those who needed to know the guy did not get away with whatever it was he had done. Anytime you read in the paper about a masked gunman, rest assured the gunman had no mask on.

They supplied me the piece and they had one guy right there to take it from me after the thing and get in one car with it and drive away. His only job was to break the piece down and destroy it.

One afternoon a bunch of us went downtown to sell our blood for $10 a pint to get some more money to keep drinking shots and beer. On the way back we saw a sign for a carnival. It said that if you could last three rounds with a kangaroo you'd win $100. That was a better deal than the blood money we had just made. So off we went to the carnival. They