Playboy Interview: James Hoffa

To judge from outward appearances, James Riddle Hoffa would, seem to be no more or less than a respectable, if somewhat colorless, citizen. Aged 50, height 5'5 1/2", weight 185 pounds, he has lived for 24 years in an unfashionable neighborhood of suburban Detroit in an unpretentious brick home which he originally bought for $6800. Father of two children, a boy and girl, he neither smokes nor drinks and is said to be a devoted family man. His only passion, beyond a modest predilection for playing the horses, would seem to be his job -- as president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the largest and wealthiest labor union in the world, and an organization which Attorney General Robert Kennedy has called "the most powerful institution in this country -- aside from the United States Government itself."

With 1,700,000 truck drivers and warehousemen at his command, Hoffa both literally and figuratively can control the wheels of the nation. "In many major metropolitan areas," wrote Kennedy in "The Enemy Within," "the Teamsters control all transportation. It is a Teamster who drives the mother to the hospital at birth. It is the Teamster who drives the hearse at death. And between birth and burial, the Teamsters drive the trucks that clothe and feed us and provide the vital necessities of life.... Quite literally, your life -- the life of every person in the United States -- is in the hands of Hoffa and his Teamsters. But, though the great majority of Teamster officers and Teamster members are honest, the Teamster Union under Hoffa is often not run as a bona fide union. As Mr. Hoffa operates it, this is a conspiracy of evil."

Though revered by a loyal crony as "one of the sweetest guys God ever created," and esteemed by many members for the wage-and-hour benefits he's won on behalf of the rank and file, Hoffa has also been denounced by the press, and by a succession of witnesses before the Senate's McClellan Committee hearings on labor corruption, as a dictator who arrogantly ignores the will of his own membership. He has been accused of misappropriating union funds for personal profit, using his enormous power to extort pelf and privilege, enforcing his authority with blackmail and brute force, and providing a haven in the union hierarchy for a rogues' gallery of convicted criminals.

Prosecuted periodically for an assortment of Federal charges ranging from mail fraud to wire tapping, Hoffa has so far managed to elude conviction. In the three years since Robert Kennedy's appointment us Attorney General, however, an intensified campaign of Justice Department investigations has led to the conviction of 86 union officials and associates, and to a pair of Federal indictments currently pending against the Teamster boss himself. Despite the resourcefulness of Hoffa's formidable legal staff, Kennedy is convinced that the end of the labor czar's stormy six-year reign is imminent.

In the belief that the public he also claims to serve should be allowed to make its own informed judgment of Hoffa, Playboy asked the Teamster president to submit to a cross-examination on the means and ends of his embattled union empire. Not one to refuse what he regards as a challenge, he readily consented; but three months (and several Federal indictments) passed before the beleaguered labor leader found time to keep the appointment. The interview finally took place in Hoffa's walnut-paneled suite of offices on the third floor of the Teamsters' $4,000,000 Miami-modern headquarters building in Washington, D.C.

Forgoing pleasantries, Hoffa greeted us unsmilingly with a firm handshake, strode behind his immaculate desk, sat down, riveted us with a steely gaze, and announced tersely, "You have half-an-hour. Start talking." We said that we'd been told, to expect at least two hours of his time. "Half-an-hour," he replied with finality. But for what eventually lengthened into two sessions totaling four hours, as he gradually warmed to the subject -- himself -- he riposted and rebutted our questions with imperturbable self-assurance, in a machine-gun staccato sprinkled with grammatical errors and curious references to himself in the third person. Though the atmosphere soon became charged with a kind of courtroom tension, the interview was not intended to place our subject on unofficial trial; Hoffa has parried the interrogations of too many prosecuting attorneys to convict himself in his own office. But we think it does afford insight into the mentality and morality of the man who Life magazine has called America's "Public Enemy Number One."

[Q] Playboy: It's been reported that you work eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, that your absorption in your job excludes virtually all other interests. What makes Jimmy run?

[A] Hoffa: I work hard because I like it -- a very simple answer. I work hard to fight for what I believe is right on behalf of our members, to do what I was elected for, what I stand for, what I really and truly believe in.

[Q] Playboy: And what is that?

[A] Hoffa: What I've been doing all my life: organizing workers, trying to get better wages, hours and conditions, and a better livelihood for the people I represent. During the Depression I worked in a Detroit warehouse for 32 cents an hour, under unbelievable conditions. I witnessed people being thrown out of their homes because they couldn't pay the rent, being forced to live in parks and eat like the Indians did, off of rocks, off of whatever they could scrounge out of garbage cans. Once I held down three jobs at the same time and still couldn't make sufficient money to support my two sisters and my mother. I decided this wasn't going to happen to my own kids, if and when I ever had any. So, in 1932, I and six others got together and convinced a sufficient number of people in a nonunion warehouse of the necessity of joining a union, even though they knew that there was thousands of people that would take their jobs the very minute they quit. We impressed on them the fact that their jobs were such that if they lost them, they weren't losing much anyway. Well, we made a successful strike and returned them to work in the middle of the Depression with a contract. We started off a union simply through convincing people to join, and fighting whatever element that tried to stop us. We still are.

[Q] Playboy: Some of your detractors have viewed this dedication as a voracious appetite for personal affluence. What's your own opinion?

[A] Hoffa: Money has no bearing on the question. If I couldn't draw a salary tomorrow morning, I would continue to do what I am doing and remain president of the Teamsters Union. If I had to get a job in the nighttime to carry on, I would do that, too. Money is no big deal in my life.

[Q] Playboy: Be that as it may, you are reported to have amassed a good deal of it in the course of your Teamster career.

[A] Hoffa: Of sorts. I could retire tomorrow morning, and, under the arrangement I have out of the pension program that I have, I wouldn't have to work no more.

[Q] Playboy: Would you care to venture an estimate of your total personal wealth?

[A] Hoffa: No. Uncle Sam's trying to do that right now.

[Q] Playboy: An appetite for power is often the concomitant of a hunger for wealth. In view of your ambition to organize a nationwide Teamsters alliance of 50 unions embracing all workers directly and indirectly involved with transportation, do you think there may be some element of truth in the following assertion, made by the American Mercury in 1959, that "Hoffa is on one of the great power binges of American history"?

[A] Hoffa: Well, we want power to have enough concentrations of powerful union groups so that we can use our combined weight to get what we're seeking from the biggest companies with a minimum loss of time and jobs through strikes. We must be in a position to shut down a sufficient amount of an employer's business so that he will recognize the necessity of coming to an early contractual agreement with our union.

[Q] Playboy: You were quoted as having told a Teamsters convention in 1961 that you intend to organize enough industries "to fill a Sears, Roebuck catalog," and that the aircraft and defense industries were at the top of your list. Is that true?

[A] Hoffa: I didn't make that statement, but I'll go along with it.

[Q] Playboy: Would not the achievement of that ambition place you in a position, as many critics fear, to negotiate with the national security?

[A] Hoffa: No different than General Motors, which just did some $16,000,000,000 worth of business and $1,100,000,000 worth of profit, and has about 57-odd percent, I think, of the automobile business. Or U. S. Steel, which is in a similar position. If either one of those two plants went down, it could disrupt and destroy the economy of this country. But knowing their responsibility as labor understands its responsibility, I think they would be more than cautious never to create that problem, realizing that if they did there could be legislation passed that could destroy the very structure of those corporations the same as our unions could be destroyed.

[Q] Playboy: Are there any circumstances under which you would consider calling a Teamsters strike involving a nationwide work stoppage in the defense or aircraft industries?

[A] Hoffa: I am opposed to industry-wide national strikes. But I am not opposed to a nationwide strike of an employer who is involved in multi-operations that effectively cannot be struck unless it is a total company strike. If it came to the survival of one of our unions, I see no reason why we would not have the right to exercise all the economic power we had -- unless there was a national emergency such as war.

[Q] Playboy: Both you and the Teamsters have earned the disapproval of the public, the condemnation of the press, the alienation of rival unions, and the scrutiny of the Federal Government for the reported ruthlessness with which that power has been amassed, exercised and enforced. In The Enemy Within, his best-selling chronicle of the McClellan Committee's investigations into labor corruption -- in which you and the Teamsters figured prominently -- Robert Kennedy wrote of your avowed progress in combating criminal elements within the union: "In 1957 Hoffa promised to clean up the Teamsters if he became president. In 1958 he said he had not had the time to do a complete job. In 1959 he said the Teamsters were clean. But Hoffa has abandoned any pretense that he will clean up. He has not, and because of the men around him -- the likes of Johnny Dio and Joey Glimco and Babe Triscaro and others who have spent their lives shifting in and out of trouble with the law -- he cannot." Any comment?

[A] Hoffa: Number one, there isn't a thing true about that book. It's all hearsay. It's from degenerates, from crackpots, from people who are in jail ...

[Q] Playboy: Is this how you classify the testimony and findings of Robert Kennedy, Senator McClellan, then-Senator John F. Kennedy, and dozens of reputable attorneys and investigators for the Justice Department and the FBI, among others?

[A] Hoffa: That book is also hearsay from people who have spite. There isn't a single iota of truth in there -- and he knows it -- that would stand up if it was subject to cross-examination on a witness stand in proper legal proceedings. If it was true, we'd all be convicted and in jail already. That's the best evidence that it isn't true. Number two, Bobby Kennedy could not and did not substantiate that statement which you read, despite investigations that went on from 1957 to 1959. Bobby Kennedy submitted 107 names as being directly or indirectl" aligned with the Teamsters Union and involved in some sort of illegal enterprises. I later submitted under oath to McClellan and Kennedy a breakdown of the 107 names, and out of those 107 names there were only 16 people on the payroll of the Teamsters as of the day I testified, who had been involved in incidents of any great consequence in the courts. All of these incidents, by the way, were brought about by the occupation of being a labor leader, and nothing else in the way of problems with the law.

[Q] Playboy: Just for the record, among the "incidents" for which those 16 Teamsters officials have been convicted are: felonious assault, bookmaking, carrying concealed weapons, larceny, forgery, burglary, arson, extortion, perjury, violation of narcotics laws, and unlawful possession of dynamite caps and equipment. Of these 16 convicted Teamsters, how many are still on your payroll?

[A] Hoffa: No more than there was the day I testified: 16.

[Q] Playboy: In the past two-and-a-half years, an all-out Justice Department campaign of investigation into every phase of Teamster activities has reaped an unprecedented harvest: 86 convictions of Teamsters and Teamsters associates for offenses ranging from assault to extortion, 140 indictments, and only 8 acquittals. What is your reaction to this intensified campaign of prosecution -- and its results?

[A] Hoffa: [Refused to comment.]

[Q] Playboy: You've been the target of considerable public outrage for hiring such men at all, let alone for continuing to employ any of them after conviction, as you admit. During the 1958 Senate Rackets Investigation hearings, former New York Teamsters executive Robert Barney Baker -- to cite one name -- made the headlines when he was linked in testimony with such underworld figures as Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, and Bugsy Siegel ...

[A] Hoffa: He was?

[Q] Playboy: He was. It may refresh your memory to recall that you said then in his defense, "Every one of us has some faults." Does this statement reflect your attitude toward Teamster associations with the nation's most notorious gang lords?

[A] Hoffa: I say 100 percent that Baker was not involved with them. He knew these people only because he lived in an environment in New York where these people-lived. But he was never associated with them. He had nothing to do with them.

[Q] Playboy: Police records disagree. But would you knowingly employ a man who did have gangster affiliations, if he also happened to be a capable unionist?

[A] Hoffa: I would take each man on his own. The mere fact that he happened to know somebody would not necessarily stop me from hiring him even though the people he knew were so-called, alleged gangsters.

[Q] Playboy: Does this broad-minded employment policy apply to Joey Glimco, the recently defeated head of Chicago Teamsters cab drivers' local, who is a reputed onetime associate of crime czar Al Capone, a suspected kingpin in Chicago's jukebox racket, and reportedly one of your closest personal friends?

[A] Hoffa: I've saw too many alleged gangsters who, when you checked on the actual persons alleged to be gangsters, had no more to do with being a gangster than you are a gangster.

[Q] Playboy: Aren't you overlooking the fact that Glimco has been arrested 36 times for crimes which include murder, and has been charged with misappropriating several thousand dollars of union funds for such social expenses as the entertainment of girlfriends?

[A] Hoffa: In the first place, Joey Glimco was indicted for murder and placed on trial three times, but each time the jury found him innocent, and the case was dismissed. In the second place, Joey Glimco denied having spent money on his secretary for other than union business. It is not unusual or improper for you or anybody else to take your secretary to conventions or other places that you need secretarial help. And nobody disproved to the contrary this statement.

[Q] Playboy: Ohio Teamsters lieutenant Babe Triscaro has been accused of an offense which few would deny is both unusual and improper: He was charged with attempting to sell four Government-surplus planes bought with union funds to Fidel Castro; and several of his associates were seized on charges of conspiracy to sell arms illegally to the Dominican Republic. Is either charge true?

[A] Hoffa: Positively not. He had as much to do with that airplane operation as you had with stealing a motorboat. And the union had nothing to do with the airplanes either. Do you think for one minute that if he was involved with people smuggling arms that Bobby Kennedy would not have indicted him and put him into jail? How ridiculous these people-get. I can't figure it out.

[Q] Playboy: Among your non-Teamster colleagues have been Glenn Smith, a convicted burglar; Antonio Corallo, a reputed narcotics-racket boss: Sam Feldman, a convicted burglar and larcenist: Sam Goldstein, a suspected extortionist; and Harry Bridges, boss of the Communist-dominated West Coast Longshoremen's Union. How do you justify your association with such men?

[A] Hoffa: Newspapers and magazines across the country have parlayed rumor and hear-say into sensational headlines and ruined the reputations of many men. The people you mention were elected by their rank-and-file memberships, and I accept them in that capacity.

[Q] Playboy: Labor racketeer Johnny Dio, who is currently serving a 15-to-30-year prison sentence for extortion and conspiracy, is said to be another friend of yours. Is he?

[A] Hoffa: Yeah, Johnny Dio is a friend of mine.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel that it befits your position as president of the nation's largest labor union to maintain a friendship with a convicted labor racketeer?

[A] Hoffa: I became acquainted with Johnny Dio when he was an organizer for the AFL. I grew to know him not as an organizer but as a father, a father who was raising two adopted children, living with his wife in a clean, wholesome surrounding. The only association I had with Dio was those associations, and I found him to be a good father, a good provider, and whatever else he may have did, if he did anything, had nothing to do with my relationship with Johnny Dio.

[Q] Playboy: If he were paroled tomorrow, would you put him to work for you in the Teamsters?

[A] Hoffa: No. Even though I have the authority to hire him, I would not hire Johnny Dio.

[Q] Playboy: Why not, if he's such a close friend and father of two adopted children?

[A] Hoffa: Not that he wouldn't be a capable-organizer, but because it would be unfair to him and unfair to the Teamsters by having every newspaper and every columnist and every commentator in America immediately heap upon him the worst vilification and suspicion that it would make it impossible for him to do a job.

[Q] Playboy: How do you reconcile this view with the McClellan Committee accusation that you attempted to install him as boss of New York's 30,000-member cab drivers' union?

[A] Hoffa: I testified I did not, and I say now I did not, and nobody proved to the contrary.

[Q] Playboy: Still, the record shows that Teamster benevolence toward ex-convicts is not entirely unknown. Upon his release from prison, a convicted robber and suspected union strong arm named Frank Kierdorf was rewarded by you with a job as "business agent" for Teamsters Local 332 in Flint, Michigan. Why?

[A] Hoffa: Frank Kierdorf was an experienced organizer, and I believed that he was not a habitual criminal and was entitled to a chance at rehabilitation, so I gave it to him.

[Q] Playboy: Was it only coincidence, in your opinion, that his appointment was immediately followed by a wave of fires, beatings and dynamitings directed against small nonunion businessmen?

[A] Hoffa: Nobody ever proved Kierdorf was responsible for any dynamitings, any fires or any violence of any nature. Just because he was later burned to death in a supposed explosion which nobody ever proved how it went off, doesn't mean you can lay to his door, if you believe in democracy and the system of our courts, that lie was guilty of any crime.

[Q] Playboy: Perhaps not, but this sort of violence -- which has punctuated the six years of your administration as Teamsters president -- has earned for your brother-hood a nationwide reputation for ruthless brute-force tactics. Several years ago. to cite another case, the re-election of Harold Gibbons, then head of your St. Louis joint council, now the Teamsters executive vice-president, was strenuously opposed by an outspoken unionist named James Ford, who was subsequently found with a broken nose, a split cheek, three fractured ribs, no lower teeth and a punctured lung. Was this just another case of coincidence?

[A] Hoffa: It was never -- and the police department checked it out -- it was never, never proved that the union had anything to do with it.

[Q] Playboy: What reason would anyone else have for having him so brutally beaten?

[A] Hoffa: You have to know Ford; all you have to do is know him.

[Q] Playboy: While most of the violence with which the Teamsters have been charged has been attributed to union "goons," you personally have not been immune from accusations of resorting to strong-arm methods. On May 17, 1962, Teamsters official Sam Baron -- since fired from the union -- filed against you a criminal complaint of assault in which the 59-year-old unionist charged you with an unprovoked attack on him in your Washington office. Do you have anything to add to the counteraccusation you made then that Baron was drunk at 10 A.M. on a working day and had thrown the first punch?

[A] Hoffa: What really happened was this: Sam Baron came into my office and I told him, "If you get drunk anymore on assignments out on the road you are fired. And if you don't do a job and quit spending money foolishly on the road, you are fired. Now get out of here. Either you straighten up or you're fired." He left my office, walked across to a large conference room, and his face was flushed and he was mumbling and didn't make any sense. When I walked into the conference room, Baron walked from behind the door and made some remarks and then took a punch at me. Now I know Baron is an old man, so I simply pushed him away from me, and he stumbled over a chair and went down.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that he got a cut over his right eye, a blackened left eye, and bruises on his face and legs simply by stumbling" over a chair?

[A] Hoffa: Yes, I am, because that's what happened. Then Baron got up and swung at me again and I pushed him down again without hitting him. And four of the fellas who were there grabbed him and said, "What's the matter with you? Are you crazy? Or drunk?" And they put him out in the hallway and he went about his business.

[Q] Playboy: If what you say is true, what did Baron hope to gain by filing charges against you?

[A] Hoffa: Do you, by any chance, think that we're naive enough not to know that this was premeditated? Do you think that we haven't checked how this all happened? We have now a documentary statement that if it ever goes to trial we will prove how this was plotted and planned and instigated.

[Q] Playboy: By whom?

[A] Hoffa: We know who directed him to go to the prosecutor. We'll name him at the right time. But it's a Governmental official that had a voice in it.

[Q] Playboy: How do you explain the subsequent offers of "cushy jobs" which Baron said he received from various Teamsters officials?

[A] Hoffa: We didn't offer him nothing. But many people called interceding for him and I told them to mind their own business. He was out, fired, and that was it, and don't talk about it.

[Q] Playboy: If your version of the incident is true, why is it that none of the witnesses present in your office at the time would consent to corroborate your story by taking lie-detector tests?

[A] Hoffa: We are not exactly naive as to lie-detector tests. I can take a lie-detector test with an expert polygraph operator and have him make that chart go any way he wants with questions to you. It is inconclusive, not permissible in court; and if it isn't permissible in court, why should we take it? Why didn't they accept our offer to have our polygraph operator ask the questions they wanted without any tricks? And why did the Government dismiss the charges? If they had such an ironclad case, why didn't they prosecute?

[Q] Playboy: Baron wrote in Life magazine that he finally withdrew the charges in order to end a wave of threats and harassment directed against him and his family, and in the realization "that one man cannot successfully fight both thuggery and perjury" -- all of which you have denied. But this is not the first time either you or the Teamsters have been accused of intimidation by threat. In 1959, a Cleveland labor-relations counselor named George Maxwell testified to the McClellan Committee that you once warned him to keep Negro truck drivers out of the Detroit area or they "might get hurt." Do you deny saying this?

[A] Hoffa: George Maxwell was contacted immediately after the McClellan statement, and he denied to me that the allegation was true, and has repeatedly denied it to everybody who asks him about it.

[Q] Playboy: Then let's consider another case. Also appearing as a witness before Senator McClellan's Rackets Committee, Sol Lippmann, general counsel for the Retail Clerks International Association, testified that when he was attempting to place a Teamsters local under the trusteeship of his own union, you said to him in your office, "I won't let you get away with this. Don't you know I could have you killed? Don't you know I could have you pushed out of this window? I got friends who would shoot you in your tracks while you are just walking down the street." Do you deny saying this?

[A] Hoffa: I said under oath it was a lie and I say right now it is a lie. I never made such a statement, and it would be ridiculous to make such a statement. Sol Lippmann made this charge to justify his position of taking over a 12,000-member local union in Detroit that I organized for the retail clerks. And anyway, since then he admits he doesn't know why he made those statements.

[Q] Playboy: Whether or not such a threat was ever made, the Justice Department and the press have accused you of having crime-syndicate associations capable of performing just such--

[A] Hoffa: I don't even know a syndicate exists, and I don't believe you do either. I don't know of a single person in any policing work anywhere in the United States, or a department in the FBI, who really, truly believes that there's any mysterious force in this country that combines together all of the so-called racketeering elements in the United States. I read an article J. Edgar Hoover wrote recently, and he certainly is not convinced of it, and I don't know anybody else convinced of it.

[Q] Playboy: It was with the collaboration of the FBI and other investigative agencies, that the Justice Department obtained testimony from New York mobster Joseph Valachi -- recently revealed in the Saturday Evening Post -- which not only affirms the existence of a crime syndicate but outlines its organization and operations, and identifies its reputed ringleaders. In view of these revelations, do you still question its existence?

[A] Hoffa: Let's don't be naive. If somebody knew tomorrow morning that I stole five dollars, I'd be in jail. If they can name all the people that they name, and they can pile all the ties they have together, why can't they prove in any court what they keep saying? After all this malarkey about a Mafia, what have they really got? A new name for it: the Cosa Nostra.

[Q] Playboy: If there is no Cosa Nostra. as you seem to believe, why does the Justice Department report that more than a dozen cases against its members and associates are currently in the final phases of investigation preparatory to the filing of formal charges?

[A] Hoffa: Propaganda and appropriations. How else could they get appropriations of SI56,000,000, which is what Kennedy got the other day? Unless they can go out and say -- without ever actually presenting the evidence -- that there's some kind of mysterious force that may destroy or control this country. Another thing Kennedy wants is to get a wire-tap bill through Congress. He wants to eliminate the safeguards against search and seizure, wants to eliminate the constitutional rights of a fair trial.

[Q] Playboy: Inasmuch as it is his sworn duty as Attorney General to uphold and enforce these very rights and safeguards, most people would disagree with you. In any case, far from being deprived of your constitutional recourse to fair trial, you have been repeatedly accused of using the courts -- aided by the largest permanent legal staff of any private organization in America, sometimes called "the Teamsters Bar Association" -- to circumvent the due process of law and thus escape conviction for an assortment of Federal crimes. These include collusion with employers, conflict of interest, underworld affiliations, rigging of union elections, misuse of union dues and welfare funds, and suppression of union members' rights by force. Any comment?

[A] Hoffa: Well, I'll ask you a question. If all of that were true and it could be verified as factual, why haven't there been indictments and trials on each of them?

[Q] Playboy: There have been a number of indictments and trials resulting from these charges. In one of the most celebrated cases against you, for example, you were indicted by a Federal grand jury and tried on charges of hiring a lawyer named Cye Cheasty to spy for the Teamsters as a member of the McClellan Committee. In collaboration with the FBI, Cheasty was reported to have led you into a trap wherein you were photographed purportedly passing $2000 to him in exchange for such information. Despite evidence which the Justice Department considered airtight, however, you were acquitted when your attorney allegedly engineered the impaneling of eight Negroes on the jury, then arranged for several "spontaneous" visits to the courtroom by boxing champion Joe Louis, who publicly embraced you and addressed you as "my good friend, Jimmy." Did the warmth of this timely public demonstration of affection from a popular Negro public figure have anything to do with the fact that Louis was hired at a large retainer immediately after the trial as a public-relations consultant for the union?

[A] Hoffa: First of all, I knew Joe Louis from Detroit, where he came from, before he became a fighter, when he sold newspapers there. And secondly, he was not hired as a public-relations consultant.

[Q] Playboy: Whatever his services, Justice Department records state that he received a sizable emolument from the union subsequent to your acquittal. In your support, it has been claimed that Teamster methods may be rough-and-tumble and occasionally extralegal, but that Jimmy Hoffa is paternally devoted to the welfare of his members. Attorney General Kennedy has written, however, that "the Teamsters membership has been be trayed; democratic processes have been stifled; money, including pension and welfare funds, has been misused. Hoffa and some of the men around him have gotten fat off of enterprises they promoted with union backing." Do you deny these allegations?

[A] Hoffa: Insofar as the investment of pension and welfare funds growing out of a recent Chicago grand jury hearing, all of the information they have sought has been submitted to them, and witnesses have testified, but so far nobody has proved that there is anything wrong with our use of that fund.

[Q] Playboy: In another of the charges filed against you for misuse of Teamster funds, it was alleged that you spent between $5000 and $7000 of union money on a search for your brother's runaway wife, and later for his hotel bills while he was eluding the police on an armed-robbery charge. Is this true?

[A] Hoffa: By no stretch of the imagination is it true. I denied it in front of the McClellan Committee under oath, and if there-was any evidence that I had made a mistake, I would have been indicted for perjury.

[Q] Playboy: In December 1959, Glenn Smith, then president of your Chattanooga local, is reported to have testified in a Federal court that the use of union funds for the bribery of a public official does not violate the Teamsters Union constitution or bylaws. Do you share this belief?

[A] Hoffa: I don't think he testified to that. What Glenn Smith said was that he had made a political contribution to a certain judge, and that this did not violate the international constitution. And it does not violate it.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever used union funds for any such "political contributions"?

[A] Hoffa: Positively, many times.

[Q] Playboy: With the expectation that the recipients would be helpful to you or the Teamsters in some way?

[A] Hoffa: Helpful to labor. I'm not supporting anybody that's not helpful to labor.

[Q] Playboy: Have you always publicized these contributions?

[A] Hoffa: Absolutely. If they don't want our money publicly, they don't get it privately.

[Q] Playboy: Then will you tell us the names of some of those you've supported?

[A] Hoffa: No, I will not. They know who they are. We know who they are. I'm not going to hamper their ability to vote their own conscience just because they happened to receive contributions from us for a campaign.

[Q] Playboy: The McClellan Committee has accused you of arranging under-the-table "sweetheart" deals and sub rosa side agreements with employers which were advantageous to management. Is there any foundation for these charges?

[A] Hoffa: I answered then, under oath, that it was a lie, and it's a lie now. What I did in many instances was a temporary situation that allowed a company to stay in business and maintain union jobs where our Teamsters would have lost their jobs otherwise. The Committee checked out my answers, tried to disprove it. But they found out my answers were right, and they had to drop the charges.

[Q] Playboy: In the course of your labor career, you have been accused of hundreds of crimes, arrested 17 times and indicted on a variety of charges. But your police record shows only three convictions: for assault and battery, attempted extortion, and conspiracy to create a wastepaper-shipment monopoly -- the last of which took place in 1947. You are currently under indictment, however, on two charges for which the Justice Department is confident -- after six years of acquittals, mistrials and hung juries -- you will finally be convicted. In one case, you are accused of tampering with a jury which failed to reach a verdict last year at an earlier trial in which you were charged with accepting more than $1,000,000 in illegal payments from a trucking firm. The other indictment concerns what is said to be the most serious and best documented charge ever filed against you: conspiracy to defraud the Central States Teamsters Pension Fund of some S20,000,000 belonging to the union. If convicted on all 28 counts, you could be levied $37,000 in fines and sentenced to prison for a total of 140 years. Do you claim innocence of both charges? Do you feel there's any possibility that you'll be found guilty in either case?

[A] Hoffa: [Refused to comment.]

[Q] Playboy: The nation's press has been tireless in its chronicling of your career -- and almost unanimous in its condemnation of your Teamster leadership. What do you think of the competence and integrity of the press in reporting about you?

[A] Hoffa: You talk about gangsters! Reporters are gangsters with a pencil instead of a gun. They distort, deceive, tell half-truths and complete lies. How do they sell newspapers except when there's something sensational on the front page? Did you ever read a headline that said there was a happily married couple that celebrated their anniversary last week? I am not naive enough and will not accept that there is such a thing as a free press in America. There is very few labor reporters in the United States that are free to write the truth about the Teamsters Union. Most of them are controlled by the antilabor policies of their papers.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel that television has been more objective than the press in reporting about you and the Teamsters?

[A] Hoffa: If you will take any average week's TV and look at all the channels, you will find many shows trying to lead the American people to believe there is something wrong with American labor unions, and that they need antitrust laws applied to them. This is not by accident. I have in my possession the confidential minutes of a recent meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers held in New York, which outlines exactly how they are planning to sell the antitrust labor laws to the public like they would sell a bar of soap. But this is all part of a grand conspiracy against the American labor movement.

[Q] Playboy: Masterminded by the N.A.M.?

[A] Hoffa: Yes, and by the powers that be in the Attorney General's office and certain other branches of the Government, such as the National Labor Relations Board.

[Q] Playboy: With what purpose?

[A] Hoffa: They have a design to victimize the Teamsters Union with a double standard of law enforcement on unions which they hope will be able to destroy one James R. Hoffa. Don't get the impression that I feel like I'm being picked on. Hoffa can take care of Hoffa. But they have repeatedly said that if Hoffa, Gibbons, O'Rourke and O'Brien would leave the Teamsters, it would be as good a union, as clean a union as anywhere in the United States, and it should then be back in the AFL-CIO.

[Q] Playboy: If this alleged Government conspiracy is directed against the American labor movement, as you assert, why have the Teamsters hierarchy been singled out for attack and James R. Hoffa for destruction?

[A] Hoffa: Because they recognize that as long as Hoffa and the other individuals they named are on the executive board of this union, we will not become subservient to Bobby Kennedy or to anybody else who desires to change the structure of the Teamsters. But we're practically the only ones who are fighting back.

[Q] Playboy: Are you implying that such powerful labor leaders as George Meany of the AFL-CIO, Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers and James B. Carey of the International Union of Electrical Workers are subservient to the Attorney General?

[A] Hoffa: Well, I'll ask you -- if they're not, why aren't they on TV and radio like Hoffa talking about the antilabor legislation that is being introduced, and telling their members about it?

[Q] Playboy: What autilabor legislation?

[A] Hoffa: The Martin bill would destroy labor unions. The Goldwater bill would destroy labor unions. The McClellan bill would destroy labor unions. And the other bills, such as Dirksen's bill, would automatically destroy labor unions in America by breaking them down into fragmented organizations so small that they could make no response to an employer if he decided to refuse to bargain with those unions.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that Carey, Reuther and Meant would remain silent if they honestly believed that this proposed labor-reform legislation was antilabor?

[A] Hoffa: I think they're all interested in themselves politically, and for some reason I don't understand, are having a collective understanding not to make certain people look bad -- certain people in the present Administration and on Capitol Hill -- even though in the process they are destroying the effective economic power of organized labor. That's my belief.

[Q] Playboy: In effect, aren't you accusing them of being in collusion with the Government against the interests of their own unions?

[A] Hoffa: In the case of George Meany, yes; that's my personal opinion.

[Q] Playboy: Meany has said that he regards you as "unfit to head a trade union." In view of the opinion you've just expressed about him, do you feel he's fit to remain in charge of the AFL-CIO?

[A] Hoffa: He's the last person in the world who should judge who should be the head of a union. He ought to get a great big mirror and stand in front of it and look and see whether or not he can stand the scrutiny that Hoffa can stand. But he answered better than anybody as to his qualifications for to be a leader. He proudly told the National Association of Manufacturers that he never negotiated an agreement, never called a strike and never organized a worker. Now if that's the qualifications for being a labor leader, then I don't qualify -- because I have negotiated agreements by the thousands, I have signed up members by the thousands, and I've called hundreds of strikes. And even though he talks about it, show me one constructive thing he did or one constructive bill he's introduced that takes care of unemployment or automation.

[Q] Playboy: When Meany retires, who do you thing ought to take his place?

[A] Hoffa: Meany will never retire as long as he has a breath of life in him, because Meany knows full well that he can't serve the interests that he serves other than by maintaining himself in office and keeping labor unions disorganized. When he retires, it'll be in a box. But when that happens, in my opinion the one fella who could lead the AFL-CIO would be Reuther. I don't always agree with what Reuther is doing or how he operates, but I recognize the fact that he runs a successful union, that he's a hard worker, a smart fella, he knows his business, he's currently up-to-date on the problems of this country, and he's trying to do something about them, and that's more than I can say for most people.

[Q] Playboy: Inasmuch as Reuther was one of the key figures instrumental in ousting the Teamsters from the AFL-CIO for racketeer corruption, why do you hold him in such high regard?

[A] Hoffa: I don't have to like a guy to say what's true. But I think Reuther realizes that this was the biggest mistake the AFL-CIO ever made in their life. I think he realizes he was stampeded into voting for the expulsion of the Teamsters because of the bad publicity we had at that time.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel that the Teamsters ought to be readmitted to the AFL-CIO?

[A] Hoffa: We're entitled to be back in, and we want in.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you'd be welcomed back?

[A] Hoffa: Sure -- but only if Meany could dictate who should be president of the Teamsters and the officers of the union.

[Q] Playboy: If a vote were taken today by the AFL-CIO on the question of readmitting the Teamsters, how do you think it would go?

[A] Hoffa: With Meany there, of course, we would lose -- and 24 hours later, whoever voted for us would be under subpoena from the McClellan Committee or from the Attorney General.

[Q] Playboy: While he was still chief counsel for the McClellan Committee, you were said to have referred to Robert Kennedy as "that little nut," among other things. Have you changed your appraisal of him since his appointment as Attorney General?

[A] Hoffa: Yes. Now I regard Bobby Kennedy as a spoiled brat. He never had to work, wouldn't know how to work, wouldn't know how to make a living. He's just a brat that believes that everybody is supposed to surrender and give in to whatever he wants, right or wrong. In my opinion he prostitutes his oath of office, and he's violated the Constitution of the United States and is subject to go to jail for what he recently did on a yacht that the Government was paying the bill for him.

[Q] Playboy: You must be referring to the recent series of cocktail-party cruises on the Potomac aboard the President's Government-owned yacht, the Patrick J., on which the Attorney General entertained Congressmen for the purpose of discussing the civil-rights situation.

[A] Hoffa: I am. He used Government funds while he was out campaigning for passage of legislation -- which is a violation of law.

[Q] Playboy: What legislation is that? And what law?

[A] Hoffa: I don't have it right in front of me. I'm not a legal department. But I'll prove what I say.

[Q] Playboy: Your charge echoes that of several Republican Congressmen who claimed that these gatherings -- at which the refreshments were personally paid for by Mr. Kennedy -- involved the use of Federal funds for fuel and crew, and therefore constituted a violation of the Lobbying Act. But the legality of these informal meetings has since been officially confirmed.

[A] Hoffa: I still say if this was anybody else, he would be in jail.

[Q] Playboy: If there had been sufficient grounds for prosecution, it seems likely that the accusing G.O.P. legislators would have pursued the matter further. As of this date, however, they have not done so. The many charges for which the Attorney General has been striving to prosecute your, on the other hand, are being assiduously pursued -- among them a statement from The Enemy Within in which he characterizes your chosen associates as "convicted killers, robbers, extortionists, perjurers, blackmailers, safe-crackers, dope peddlers, white slavers and sodomists." How would you characterize his, chosen associates?

[A] Hoffa: I question whether or not he has a single friend, and I question whether or not his associates are other than people that have to associate with him, and who are involved in a question of their position, or in line for some favor that he may be able to give because of his job or his wealth. As far as his associations are concerned, Bobby Kennedy should look in a mirror and find out whether or not he could stand an investigation like Hoffa has on his own personal life -- and I say personal.

[Q] Playboy: What are you implying?

[A] Hoffa: Only he can answer what the answer to that is, which many people know, including myself. I'm just suggesting that he wouldn't want to have his personal life publicized in front of a Senatorial committee or a Congressional committee. Let him answer it. If he won't answer it, I'll answer it -- and I'll prove it.

[Q] Playboy: What will you prove?

[A] Hoffa: I know what I'll prove and I'll do it if I have to.

[Q] Playboy: It's been suggested that you and the Attorney General are well-matched antagonists, in the sense that you are both regarded as intelligent, shrewd, capable, energetic, dedicated, gifted organizers, etc. Do you see any validity in the comparison?

[A] Hoffa: I would hope not. I would hope I was not that narrow-minded. I would hope I was not that much of an egotist that I believed everybody had to think and act the way I did or I would destroy him. But I was reading a story about Bobby Kennedy which talked about the fact that Bobby was born to the silk and I was born to the burlap, and the author wondered what the difference would have been if I had been born to the silk and Kennedy the burlap. Well, you can't change life very easily and you can't go back, but I would venture to say that, knowing what I have did to get where I am at now and what it took me to be part of building this union, that Bobby Kennedy would have found out that it is one thing to make people do things and another thing to get people to do things without making them. He would have found out that you do not always have a choice of who you deal with, who you associate with or what you do and the way you do it to be able to get a project completed successfully.

[Q] Playboy: Does that statement, in your opinion, bespeak a responsible standard of public morality?

[A] Hoffa: Well, I'll tell you about a public standard of morality. In my humble opinion, there is none in the United States. Individuals are individuals, and each one grows up with the standards of the household that he was born in and the society that he's permitted to live in, based upon his economic position of life.

[Q] Playboy: You are reported to have said once to Clark Mollenhoff, a Washington newspaperman: "Every man has his price. What's yours?" Does this statement reflect your view of individual morality?

[A] Hoffa: Well, I didn't say it, but I would say this: When you talk about price, it's not a question of price involving money; it's a question of every individual that I know of, somewhere or some way, if you're right, you can reach him and get your problem straightened out. Nobody lives alone; let's put it that way. I don't care whether it's you or anybody else; there's a way of getting to you. I told Clark Mollenhoff that he would do anything to get a front-page story.

[Q] Playboy: What would you do anything for?

[A] Hoffa: I have thought about this many, many times. But I would have to determine what I would do when the occasion arose, same as you would. For me to sit here and make a statement for this tape that I would know what I will do the rest of my life, based upon some standard I will put on paper, would make me a liar -- because circumstances and conditions create standards, and nobody can say what they would do until those circumstances and conditions arise. I don't think anybody has a standard that is rigidly adhered to and lived by all their life.

[Q] Playboy: As you look back over your life, can you recall anything you're sorry for, anything you wish you hadn't done?

[A] Hoffa: Anybody that tells you that if he could relive his life, he wouldn't live it somewhat different than he did, must be a fool. If I made mistakes -- and I'm not saying that I didn't -- I would probably make the same mistakes if I had it to do over, being human, under the same circumstances. But I'm not ashamed of a single, solitary thing I ever did. Nothing.

[Q] Playboy: If you were asked to single out the most important accomplishment in the turbulent career of James R. Hoffa, what would it be?

[A] Hoffa: Possibly that he's still alive despite lots of people.