Where you can pick up one of our monthly event calendars throughout the store with the current listing going to the end of october. Id like to ask you to please silence your cell phones so as not to disrupt the event. What is time for q a id ask you to please stop up to the microphone so we can hear your question as we are audio recording it and cspan is recording for booktv. Following q a will have a signing at this table. If you havent already purchased the book we have plenty of them right up front at the registers. If you can fold up your chairs and leaned them against something solid would be a great help. Without further ado, tonight im very excited to welcome Jack Goldsmith to politics and celebrating his new work in hoffas shadow. There been many theories about the fate jimmy hoffa, longtime president of the International Brotherhood of teamsters sense he disappeared and 75. Many involved Charles Chucky obrien half his age and goldsmith stepfather. The when the perspective he gained for serving as assistant attorney general under george w. Bush goldsmith was moved to uncover the truth about what hoffa, the mob, winning laborers power and the rise of the surveillance state and in hoffas shadow tells the moving story of how goldsmith reunited with the stepfather he disowned and set out to unravel one of the 20th centurys most persistent mysteries in chuckys role in it. Goldsmith is the Henry L Shattuck professor at harvard law school. Senior fellow at the hoover institute. Head of the office of Legal Counsel in the george w. Bush administration which during his tenure challenge the one list wiretapping program and withdrew memos ab is also offered terror to presidency as well as ab please join me in welcoming to politics pros, Jack Goldsmith. [applause] thank you very much to politics pros for hosting this event. Thank you to you all for coming out tonight, even though there is serious competition with the democratic debate and certain Baseball Team that i know there are many fans for. Im grateful you came. My tail begins in june 1975 when i was 12 years old i was living in west memphis arkansas and my mother in june 1975 married what was her third husband. My birth father was not a terribly good father. My stepfather the second marriage was not a great father so i hadnt had a great ab Chucky Obrien shows up on the scene they got married in june 1975 i got married abi immediately glommed onto him. He was amazing father he showed me love and affection i had never had we did everything together and i thought he was the greatest. 12 years old. Six months after my mom married him jimmy hoffa disappeared mysteriously from a parking lot in the suburbs of detroit michigan and Bloomfield Hills outside of the restaurant that was then called the marcus red box. To this day there is no direct evidence of what happened to hoffa, he vanished. Theres a lot of theories but no one knows what happened. He was seen in the parking lot as late as 2 45, his last phone call at 3 30, thats it. Theres a lot of theories about how he was picked up. But we dont know to this day what happened to hoffa, who is jimmy hoffa . Many people in the room may know was in the 50s and 60s one of the most wellknown public figures in the country. He led the Teamsters Union, the most powerful union in the country at a time when unions mattered. He had an outsized personality, and extraordinary labor leader for the teamsters and he was also corrupt in many ways. He had many ties to organized crime. He cut side deals all the time. He used the pension fund to line his own pockets. But he was this huge large figure and he basically went to jail in 1967 for a variety of things. He was out of jail and 71 when Richard Nixon parted him abi should say. He was trying to regain the presidency of the teamsters when he was disappeared. Probably almost certainly at the behest of the mob because basically hoffa was trying to win the Teamsters Union the presidency of the Teamsters Union the mob had taken over control of the Teamsters Union much more than when he was president they didnt want him back. They feared he was going to spill all their secrets because he was threatening to do so. Theres pretty good evidence, circumstantial and otherwise, that it was mob organized. Moderate evidence of that but no evidence of what happened that day. One week after the disappearance Chucky Obrien became the lead suspect. Chucky obrien was also hoffas righthand man from the early 50s basically until he disappeared until the year before he disappeared. He met hoffa when he was nine years old and he was by hoffas aside basically all the time from the early 50s until he went to prison and then after prison until just before he disappeared. Many people thought that chucky was half as legitimate son because they were so close. They were extremely close. They were always together. It was quite an extraordinary thing went six days after the disappearance my stepfather became the lead suspect. For those of you who remember, it was a circus. Half of disappearance was a circus. It was front page news every day it was on the evening news every night for weeks. And it was just an incredible a i was in the middle of it because i was just 12yearold kid who knew stepdad who were he revered as the leading suspect. And during the next fiveyear in my High School Years the formative years of my life as i look back on it, chucky was corrupt, why was he leading suspect, there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that pointed toward him being involved. Including he was in the vicinity at the time of the disappearance. He had a break with hoffa six or eight months earlier. He was driving the car, the car of the sun leading detroit mobster thought to organize a hit. Hoffas hair hair matching hoffa was later found in the car and hoffas sent was found in the car. There were circumstantial evidence pointing toward him. The fbi had every reason to focus in on him. The next five years of my life was basically, two or three things going on, one, chucky and i became like this. I came to revere him, he was an extraordinary father, i came to review the Teamsters Union. I came to revered Teamsters Union identity. I came to revered the mobsters that he was close with. You may have heard of Anthony Giacalone and anthony problems anna, tony pro, new jersey mobster, those are both uncle tony to me. I spent a lot of time at their house. I thought they were wonderful gentlemen. I believe my stepfather when he told me that the mob really didnt exist. I bought the whole thing. This is at the same time that i was hanging out with these folks and he was my father and we are very close to hoffa stuff was out of control. The government was all over him. He was basically painted in the press of the guy who did it. To this day its conventional wisdom that chucky was the person who drove hoffa to his death. If you type in Chucky Obrien and jimmy hoffa into google you will find that the person who did it, who picked off up. I go to college in 1980 and over the next six or seven years i start to rethink chucky. When i got to college i read books about and a half a disappearance for the first time. One of which was abthis might seem nacve, it turns out the mafia did actually exist. It turned out my uncles tony were violent guys. It turned out my stepfather was had a criminal past. All things that i kind of either was dimly aware of or didnt focus on when i was in high school. I came to worry that my life would be in danger from hanging out with chucky and being his son. When i used to revel in his Union Identity and i came to revel in making fun of education, my values started changing in college and i came to admire him less. When i started thinking about my career my professional career i was accepted at Yale Law School and i started think, and it wont be such a great thing to be an attorney, especially if i have any ambitious to be in the government which i only barely did commit to have these very close mob ties and be the foster son from the stepson of the leading abto make a long story short, i cut chucky out of my life. It was a slow process about five or six years, gradual process and i concluded basically by the time i finished in law school i needed to go on with my life and have nothing to do with him i convinced myself at the time that he was a bad person that i was a virtuous person and needed to stay in a virtuous path, that he had either wronged me or might wrong me. And basically cut him out of my life. It was brutal. It hurt him quite a lot in ways that i didnt appreciate at the time and i will come back to at the end of his talk. It turned out this was a very good idea from a professional standpoint. The year after i got out of law school and was clerking for jay Harvey Wilkinson the first thing he asked me to do was to work on a case that required me to get classified security clearance, secret clearance. I filled out the forms and as the forms require a put down all my aliases i pointed out that i was my name was jack obrien from the age of 13 to 21, i didnt say jack obrien, the son of the leading suspect in the hoffa disappearance but i filled out the forms properly. About a week later two or three fbi agents come, i thought it was a standard security clearance interview i didnt know what they were at the time. I later found out through diversey act request this set off alarm bells inside the fbi and they thought that they had access to someone who was close to the leading suspect in the hoffa disappearance never did learn something. Basically i spent a day with the fbi who they were basically grilling me for a day, very unexpected to me. I thought i was finished in terms of getting security clearance. About everything i knew about the mob everything i knew about chucky, my attitude toward chucky. I convinced them i didnt have mob values and i convinced them i had separated myself from chucky and got the clearance. Thats kind of a metaphor for the next 20 years in my career i kept getting the clearance as i got fancier and fancier government jobs. I did so basically because i tossed chucky under the bus from up career perspective it was a good move in terms of professional development. Im skipping over a lot of things because i want to get to the writing of the book and what its about. Its about what im telling you now is about how the book opens. Fast forward 15 or 18 years later im working with the Justice Department. Assistant attorney general for the office of Legal Counsel, a job i wouldve never gotten had i not done what i did to chucky 20 years earlier. In working in the Justice Department late one night and working on a program called stellar wind, a wiretapping program in the bushes ministration. To make another long story short, there are all sorts of problems in the program and i was just starting to figure it out. I was in the Justice Department late one night reading Fourth Amendment cases and im reading a case called berger versus new york which some of you might remember, im reading long and theres two citations, however his united states, obrien versus united states. It was kind of shocked. I said can that possibly be my stepfather . Look at the case, turned out it was the case involving Chucky Obrien. When i was in high school chucky had always said how corrupt the government was, they could break every rule in secret, they engage in legal surveillance over time. And they did it to me and i had a famous Supreme Court case he told me. I didnt believe him and i never knew about the case. It turned out that was mostly true. It turned out he was legally surveilled in the early 1960s and it turns out this case did convict eviction as part of basically cleaning up decades of surveillance abuse by the government that finally emerged in the public in the mid 60s and he was the beneficiary of this because the government actually was illegally surveying him and his lawyer and the office of a mob person he was close to. This was shocking to me for many reasons i was and is very stressful position involving the president of the nine states. Another traumatic period bella comes back we just came rushing back to me that the things chucky said about the Justice Department and how they could cut corners. There i was kneedeep in a Surveillance Program that had serious legal problems and chucky basically in the large was right about the 60s and still true in a large when i was there in the early 2000s. So this began a process for me that took about a year. The process in which i went through a lot of soulsearching about my relationship with chucky. It involved a lot of things that involved me realizing i had judged him very harshly and that i had not abi exit exaggerated my own virtue and under appreciated his virtues. That he had never done anything wrong to me. Hed only been a great father to me. When i was in high school. He was ill i appreciated his situation of being charged with something bad that he couldnt really fight because when i left the government i was accused of doing things which i didnt think were fair but i couldnt really fight those charges either so i sympathize with him on that front. And finally, i have two young children. My mom had always told me how badly i hurt chucky when i broke with him but i didnt really appreciate it until i have my own children. When i began to reflect on the vulnerability and the love i have for my children and the pain that would happen to me if what they did to me what i had done chucky. All these reasons came together to lead me to ask for his forgiveness in late 2004. It happened in a very casual way we were sitting watching seinfeld and the Television Room he wasnt well he was sitting in his chair and i turned to him and i said, it was wrong to do what i did to you 20 years ago, i hope youll forgive me. He looked at me and he was surprised. This is the first trip i had really seen him with any amount of time we had a good couple days together like the good old days but he was shocked when i said this. He looked at me and his face was fashioned and his eyes were hollow and he started to tear up and he said, you dont have to apologize, son, i understand why you did what you did. That was it. And that was the end of any discussion of what had happened the previous 20 years. Eva gave me. He let me back in his life, we became very close, we spent a lot of time talking over the next seven years. Head over the course of these conversations i started to doubt whether he was the person who picked up jimmy hoffa, for all but two reasons. I didnt have any evidence and i didnt know anything about the case but the way he talked about it in the way he revered hoffa. I said to him one day about seven or eight years ago. I said, why dont i write a book about this. Im sure whatever i find whatever i discover about what happened in the hoffa case that its got to give you a fair shake that you been given because every book that had been written had him driving hoffa to his death. Thats the conventional wisdom. So he hesitated at first, i thought he would jump at this to have me write a book about his life with hoffa and a book that tried to vindicate him from the charge. Let me just say he was like this with hoffa, hoffa was a father figure to him. He was basically being charged with patricide in this charge that was floated in the 70s and conventional wisdom everywhere it ruined his life for a whole bunch of reasons. It is our him it ruined his life in the Teamsters Union. It just basically destroyed him. He tried to fight back and he could never fight back he didnt have the rhetorical or financial or legal tools to even confront these charges. I told him i would do my best to try and he finally came around and said okay. I said just one condition, i will write this book, i will do my best i will try to clear you and figure out what happened and i will write the best book i can but one condition, you have to tell me the truth. He looked at me with his eyes a this is a major challenge. Because chucky i learned when i read something called the halifaxaball his friends say he is a notorious pathological liar. I knew this. He always shaded the truth about everything. Thats one set of challenges my main witness that im trying to clear is unreliable. Another challenge was there is so much misinformation built up about the hoffa disappearance over the years. Mostly based on the early 1970s theories so many claims and counterclaims that sifting through that to try to get to the truth was extremely difficult. I spent seven years doing it talk to every fbi agent who ever worked the case. Became friends with many of them. I looked at thousands of pages of government documents, many of which had never been discussed in public about the case. Chucky and i developed a rapport. We spent probably thousands of hours, more than a thousand certainly talking about the case. It was this amazing dancewear i was the interrogator and he would sometimes answer me straight, sometimes not answer, usually try to deflect. Over time he told me a lot, not everything but a lot. In the book i do believe that i accomplish my original goal. I accomplish my original goal of clearing him from the charge that he was the person who drove hoffa to his death. I think everyone whos read the book has agreed with that conclusion. Theres lots of reasons i wont go to them, circumstantial case against him was full of holes. Theres lots of evidence that the government didnt talk about or know about early in the case that developed to suggest he didnt or couldnt have done it. The most salient piece of evidence for me was that the fbi started in the 1990s believed chucky was not the person who drove hoffa to his death. This is not known in public. They had all sorts of good reasons for that. And why they came to the conclusion chucky was not involved, part because they developed an alternate theory of the case. The case as is known in the public today is much different from the case of the government understands today. All of us talked about in the book. The book hayes in parts about my journey of atonement to try to clear chucky. Along the way and i think i succeeded in that but along the way fortunately or unfortunately it turned into something much more than that. It turned into a narrative about the rise of labor in the 20th century which hoffa represented and the decline of labor which he also represented. Rise of the mob in the 20th century ad the decline of the mob which was closely connected to hoffas rise and fall. And the steps that the government took to diminish labor and try to diminish the mob. Along the way i also learned a lot about law enforcement. In the fbi. I became very close with some of the early fbi agents the four original fbi agents on the case. In the early 30s, the man who originally accused chucky of doing this we became friends. We spent 12 sessions together, hours and hours and hours talking about the case going over the evidence. Theyd never stop obsessing about it. No one is ever worked on this case has never stopped obsessing about it. None of the fbi agents have stopped assessing about it. They still talk about it, there still involved in trying to solve the mystery. I also learned about a pretty extraordinary lawenforcement abuses. The government did not treat chucky well. Chucky was a man who was not an angel. Definitely not an angel. There were good reasons i say for the government to spectrum. It turns out the public narrative and didnt match up at all with what the government knew inside. They were constantly exaggerating in the press through leaks. The evidence they had against him to try to get him to talk they were constantly portraying him as a person who did it to try to get them to talk to try to pressure him into talking in the hopes either that he would be feel pressured by that or feel pressured by the mob. They were constantly telling him the mob would come after him if he didnt pass up. After the government figured out he wasnt the person who did it, the government never corrected the record. There is a mechanism for leaking allegations and putting it out there and for 45, 44 years hes been accused in the public eye of this. There was a mechanism for that. There is no mechanism for putting that genie back in the bottle. There is no incentive in it for the government to do that once its out there. Theres every incentive for them not to. Most extraordinarily in 2013 the government approached chucky, i approached them they approached chucky and they offered to actually send them an exonerating letter to confirm they didnt believe he was a target or suspect in the case. All he had to do was come in for an interview, tell the truth and he would get this letter. Chucky was a very old man we went to detroit went to the interview and the u. S. Attorneys office he spent four hours with them he was actually hilarious interview had everybody in stitches. He told the truth. About everything. They agreed that he told the truth about everything. And they promised the letter and two or three weeks later they said the letter was coming that it was a month and two months and four months and six months in the letter never came. Letter never came because the political people at the top the u. S. Attorney the head of the fbi all people who had worked the case for decades were convinced, for a whole bunch of reasons, that he didnt do it but they didnt give him the letter. I tell the story of that. Its a story, poor chucky, every turn, he said bad luck most of his life. The book also said in the introduction its also a history because this intersected with hoffas life in my life a history of american surveillance state i spent a lot of time going through extraordinary transcripts of illegal bugs of the mob. Its a story a familiar story a story of the fbi engaging in a legal bugging with what chucky referred to as backup. I. E. , the Justice Department wrote memoranda in secret saying its okay. They were extremely unconvincing opinions. They were terrible. This practice went on for decades and reached its height in the early 60s. I finally leaked out there is reform cant tell the story about the most extraordinarily that story tub background of government access and surveillance tied up in lots of ways i dont have time to tell you with my experience in the government ab the book has many themes. I will talk about two more and stop. One is that there are lots of historical ironies i talk about most of the book is about the mob and labor and their relationship over the course of the 20 century. There are a lot of interesting historical ironies that took place. Bobby kennedy who they went after hoffa very aggressively crossing several lines in my opinion and the opinion of many, he thought that he was going to get rid of hoffa and save the American Labor movement and save the teamsters members from this horrible person at the top of the union. I can assure you that the member of the Teamsters Union doing great under hoffa trusted the working class hoffa much more than the preppy millionaire who never did a real day work in his life. The irony was that in his super aggressive attacks on hoffa ab he painted with a broad brush stained all of labor and the meme about labor corruption got going in the 50s and 60s. Thats one historical irony. Another is that kennedy was convinced if he could get rid of hoffa, decapitate hoffa from the top of the Teachers Union that will get rid of the mob and the Teachers Union. Exactly the opposite happened. Hoffa did dealings with the mob it also kept them at bay. He was in charge. Especially with regards to the pension fund. When he went away, his very weak successor franks Vince Fitzsimmons let the mob take over. Actually decapitating hoffa led to greater mob infiltration of the Teamsters Union then had happened before. Something that also kennedy did not expect. The third irony the mob had taken over the teamsters, hoffa was trying to get back and it was really the mobs decision to knock off jimmy hoffa in 1975 that finally, i tell the story as well, finally led the government with tools congress had given in late 60s early 70s to get its act together and have resources and discover when they put massive resources in the hoffa case and in the course about these amazing memos internal Justice Department mellows when i talk about weve uncovered labor racketeering and mob connections between the mob and the teamsters as if the Committee Never existed. Its much worse than we realize. This is the Time Starting with the hoffa disappearance that led the government to get together the resources and tools to really aggressively go after labor racketeering and fairly successfully diminish it significantly. The mob miscalculated. And jimmy hoffa were still on the street there be a lot more mobsters still on the street. Finally, and briefly, i will just say that the book is about, this is the hardest topic to summarize i will disclose here, its about fathers and sons. And treachery between fathers and sons. Sons and fathers. Loyalty and forgiveness. Jimmy hoffa lost his father when he was seven years old. Chucky lost his father when he was seven years old. My father left me with seven years old. We were all little boys in search of fidelity. Hoffa never had a real father figure. He did it on his own. Chuckys father figures were jimmy hoffa and Anthony Giacalone, senior mob leader in detroit, who themselves were very close and chucky lived and reviewed both men. Jack alone he was the person that was behind at least involved in the hoffa disappearance and chucky was caught in that device. To make matters worse, he was seen as treacherous because he was seen as a person who killed his father or had his father killed, which abfinally, about my relationship with chucky, the book is basically about in addition to Everything Else about my changing views about chucky over the different stages in my life and how he looked when i was 20 and how i looked when i was 20 and my perspective. And how it looked differently after i had been through the incredible fire of my job in the Justice Department and how it looked even more different after 10 to 12 years. He got very old and near death and im getting pretty old too in the book is about that and some convocations are related. Im very happy to take your questions. [applause] i really enjoyed your book. It was a good read. My question is can you talk a lot about how chucky had, i forgot the name of it but he had this idea of not talking about abdo you think if he wouldve told everything he knew that it wouldve gotten that letter . He entered every single questions the government asked him. They were asking him questions about his involvement in the disappearance. They wanted to clear him because they hope that they cleared him some of this was their theory to me and him, that he would cooperate in telling them what he knew about the disappearance. He answered all their questions completely fully and satisfied every condition the every question they had. He told me a lot of things. A big part of the book chucky was half sicilian half irish but he was raised with what he calls sicilian values. This is the most important principle in his life and kept beating up against his desire to help writing this truthful book that he knew i needed to write. A lot about the book was a struggle to work through his commitment to abof the struggle to the end as i talk about in the book. Thank you for being here and putting stuff about fathers and sons of the books which didnt have to be in their, you could the told the story without it. Its mostly a great thing. I have one quick question and one long question. You live in arkansas when your mom Chucky Obrien how did that happen . And the second part is, i paint houses i think the name is, where the guy who come he didnt write it but he told the reporter says basically he was the one who killed hoffa. Do you think, hes dead now producing that was truthful . I will answer those two questions what i want to comment on the first thing it said. The book is about fathers and sons and its really about a lot of things about fathers and sons but its also about forgiveness. And the power forgiveness. Thats the most surprising reaction to the book is that people appreciated and that were helped by it. On your question but west memphis, my chucky was living in detroit and my mom was living in florida but with she has the boys and i was the oldest but my grandmother lived in west memphisy i was raised. We happened to be there that summer. He met chucky through chucksunder mother, an amazing woman in labor and mob circles and basically chucky was in detroit, brenda in west memphis. They got married and moved to florida. Theres a movie coming out by mart kin scorsese but a an irishman called i hear you paint houses and he back is based on the story of frank sheeren, a teamster official or hit man or a serious criminal, and sheeren gave a confession that turn into the basisthis book which is being made interest a motion picture, and the confession is to use the technical term, rubbish. I wrote a long essay and theres more to say but theres absolutely zero evidence to support it. No evidence at all to sport the confession, and a lot of reasons to think its false. Every person i talk to the fbi give me lots of good reasons theres no way sheeren did but its a cleverry written book and a picture. The book is based on the early 1970s theory of the case that Everybody Knows put and has chuck i arrest seen the movie yet but he has chucky picking up hoffa. Theft what the commission wisdom was, he inserts himself into. That im sure the move i suspect the movie has chucky driving him to his death, and i suspect that the scorsese movie will be mow innewspaper shall than my account and what the fbi thinks which is unfortunate. Thank you so much. I cant help but wonder how this grenade landing in the middle of your family, of the hoffa events affected the other members like your brothers and your mother. Thank you. So my brothers and i were very young, and i was 12, my brothers were seven and eight and five. They were very young it and was traumatic for all of us and we all dealt in different ways but the person who was most deviled was my mom. She had Mental Health problems before the event, and they got significantly worse as a result of the investigation, the publicity, the charges, the constant reporters this he stress, being called before the grand jury, which she didnt have to taken because of her Mental Health problems and it had a devastating effect on her. As for me, this steams strength and implausible. Was a wild time but the main thing remember about the five years, this seems impossible was happiness because of my relationship with chucky. We were extremely close and i had a pretty good experience in high school. He went to all my Sports Events we did everything together. I dont remember it as a terrible time in my life. I remember it as an improvement in my life and as a stable and happy tame in my love. Not good for my mom, though. Terrible for her. Thank you for your interesting story. Thank you. Its a small point i guess but i was wondering, how is that chucky was able to get information information that turned out to be truthful about the government surveillance of himself and of others . Something you were skeptical of at one point and then came to realize was true. Right. But you had inside information to learn it was true. He didnt. No, thats not accurate. Im sorry if i misled you. There was during the late 50s when hoover, finally became convinced for a whole bunch of reasons he had to take organized crime seriously, his first line of attack was to use mostly bugs, sometimes wire surveillance, to gather intelligence on mob figures and this started in the late 50s and went through 1965 or so. Not known at the time, it was secret but all came out in the 60s and the reason chucky knew is because the government when the government revealed all of this illegal activity, the Supreme Court ordered them basically to say, what are you going to do . They had to confess air cores to the court. Thurgood marshall is the inspector general. They said theyd stop doing these things, presented a plan to the court in which they pledged to the court they would reveal eave nice which there was even close to an illegal surveillance and confess error. Chuckys case is one of those. He got lucky because of the leaks about this in the 60s. So he he learn then and that was the basis for his conviction being vacated. More generally, one of the main thing is learn in writing the book was, we live in an era of surveillance paranoia and every reason to be paranoid, not just because of what the government is doing but mostly because everybody is watching all the time. Sensors on everything. There was dramatic paranoia in the early 60s. Story after story are story but the new fangled recording devices that were around every corner and that were watching us and storing the data. It up sos very much like what we talk but today. And hoffa had lots of ropes to believe he wasnting surveilled. He was never able to prove immigrant. Illegal surveillance came out in the sixes in. The reason i know about the extent of it is because this is a long story that ill make short. All of these transcripts from al of a lot of these illegal recordings from the early 60s are available in public now as part of, believe it or not, the 1980s investigation interest the assassination john f. Kennedy and the documents were in the public record. Chucky learn about it in the 60s. I can still remember watching bobby kennedy, an extremely tiny person. Do youve have any sense or general comment youd like to say about whether the teamsters are a force for good or ill in the history of the country. Today of the history of the country. A little bit maybe. I can talk more about the 50s and 60s and 40s. And 70s than i can about today. Thats the period i studied for the book and talked about. Its a story of tragedy, i think. Its hard to exaggerate how powerful the team steers union was in the 50s and 60s and were powerful because hoffa basically expanded the bargaining unit to the National Level and that meant he could, by closing down transportation routes and failing to deliver or failing deliveries to happen at crucial strategic points he could put economic leverage on anybody, and this is before the government tried to clamp down on this through labor laws that the teamsters had extraordinary power. Hoffa was extremely successful in growing the power of the teamsters, extremely successful at bringing many hundreds of thousands of workers, out of poverty and into the middle class. Very successful at bringing holm the bacon for his union and considered narrowly he was good for labor. Us matily, however and there was this promise. Dont think it was if a ever a searout problem but hoffa was on the outs of of earthed labor. Because he was corrupt. And in a counterfactual world hoffa might have led if he didnt have this conventional corruption, in a counterfactual world he would have led labor in a different direction. Ultimately he did great dam to Labor Movement pause basically his performance at the mcclelland committee was one of basically indifference to the corruption and criminality around him, and his indifference to those things really just had an effect far beyond in the tellsters in terms of tarring the whole Labor Movement. So its hard to make very sweeping generalities but on the hold, hoffa, though brilliant and very Effective Labor leader, on the whole has to be seen as negative on balance. A real contrast between he and dave beck. Dave beck was his predecessor, and he was they both beck was his the predecessor to hoffa and beck had similar tactics he. He used a similar bargaining techniqued that hoffa perfected. He wasnt the charismatic leader hoffa would and had different corruption. Hoffas corruption always making side deals and always amassing cash. According to chucky, tens of millions of dollars. There was cash everywhere and i believe it. Confirmed by a whole lot of thing i found in my research. But hoffa was not spending it on him. He did not have a fancy life. He was spending it to enhance his power to buy people off to buy politics off to buy judges off to buy off nip who would help him, and he identified his power, the steam terse power and that was more or less true. Beck was more conventionally corrupt in terms of lining his pockets for his benefit. Yes. Thank you. I havent read all of your book, just a portion of it but you said that while chucky didnt get the letter to exonerate him, you said the fbi did know who did it and who do they say i can so, over the course of many spending a lot of time with government officials in detroit, i kind of triangulated and figure out what their current theory is, and their current theory of the case, which is based on surveillance evidence, conversations to be overheard and informant evidence, is that the the think that veto, who was the son, the brother of anthony jack lone any who was my ung kell tony was the person who picked hoffa up and they have reasons to think that and they can im not going to mention the named but the think they in the who the person was who actually killed hoffa. They caught him on tape bragging bicycle in a way that was corroborated be otherrings. In is was the basis for the 2013 dig, toe look for for ha. The think the know the two people this person who was a very low level member of the detroit crime family, quickly rose in the ranks. Didnt mention his name the book because for a couple of reasons and im not sure where i should have drawn the line. Didnt mention his name in the become because i dont what the fbis evidence is. They have had many theories and seem very confident but this theory. Mentioned vito because he has been mentioned as a suspect. My publisher wanted me to mention the other name but i didnt because it found it very frustrating that chucky was just mentioned as a suspect based on what the fbi thought, and that turn out of not to be true, and this gentleman is dead, he died, but i just thought i shouldnt do what i didnt appreciate others doing to chucky so i didnt mention his name the book but they think they know. I believe based on conversations with anymore detroit and the government, that they are going to release this information at some point in the near future. Thank you. Thank you. I love the book and im a victim of starting with the yours and steve brill and everybody else. At the end of the book i loved the book and everybody should read it. Thank you. Your stepfather tips his hand and indicates tony was likely involved in it. Is it appropriate to ask you how you think it connects up to the new jersey mob . Well, chucky tried hard not to tell me things he wasnt supposed to tell me, but he did tell me in things he wasnt supposed to tell me. One thing he told me is that tony, who was a member of the general vase si family and teamsters, was, as has been widely suspected since 1975, involved in the organization of the plot. And he didnt give any details but he told me this in an extremely credible way that was corroborated by a few things, and, again, its not surprising that tony uncle tony when i was growing up not surprising uncle tony was involved but chuckys corroboration is an important point. Seems pretty clear to me based on what i learn from chucky and others that the hoffa hit was approved by the commission, the new york commission. This was a decision that affected the whole nation. Everybody. Because hoffa was threatening to take everyone down and there would be consequences for everyone, so the decision made there. Tony prov for a variety of reasons on the outs with hoffa and was the intermediary between the commission this is my speculation, but informed speculation, and detroit especially anthony jakaloni, a lot of metadata, information which has not been fully explored in public showing communications between anthony and provansen no because of the intensity and dates and other calls looks very much like pro was work with jackaloni. Thats this basics of the Conspiracy Theory at the 40,000foot level. Any other questions . Professor goldsmith, thank you for coming and thank you for this wonderful book, and to follow on the last question, i have just one question remaining after reading your book carefully. What happened to the pool table. Thats a great question. He was called the most uncontrollably violent man i met in my life and had some other descriptions as well, and he was thats not the tony pro i knew. The tony pro i knew was a guy in his bathing suit in a home where we would hang out at his pool and have barbecues play on his gorgeous pool table. A gorgeous wooden pool table. And i was 13 or 14 then. Really into pool and i loved the pool table and i asked him where he get it and where i could get one. And one day toneuncle tony called up chucky and said come over and get this goddamn pool table give it to your children, which chucky did and we had this beautiful pool table in our garage which i adored throughout my High School Years and i dont know what happened to the pool table. If i had understood the signaturans of the pool table when i was 17, i would give anything to have the pool table out in but i dont know what happened to it. I think about tony pro every time i play pool. Anybody else . Let me echo e real estates menz, amazing book. Thank you. The question i had kind of goes to the conversation you had with chucky, i think applebees or one of those seasons 52. Where he revealed more than he is supposed to but it sounded unlike most other conversations you had with him. Tried to retract a another love that. Toward the end of the book you talk about your internal struggle how much of that to publish. I guess well never know exactly how much of that you did publish because we dont know what you didnt publish, but i guess the question is, kind of talk through it talks in the book a little inconclusive and laid out the case for both sides sidd then never resolved it, kind of like a lawyer. Exactly. Which i am. Let me explain what was just asked so everyone can understand. So, i learned a lot from chucky over our many, many, men hundreds of hours of conversations, and even when he was always torn, always had his mothers advicage in the back of his head every time he got close to telling me sol, he said my mom is looking at me and i cant say that. He wanted to tell me things but kept hoping back. I didnt push him because i came to respect seems bizarre but i came to admire this important principle for him because it was basically all he had left and had lot of Everything Else. But he still told me a lot, even though not confessing everything. Then one day my mom had a heart air talk scheme eher and chucky was in the hospital and he was in much worse shape. I my mom was okay but chucky was distraught. My mom said take him to lunch at seasons 52 and the food will call him down calm him down. I decide he he wouldnt him anymore. We sit down at seasons 52 and i just reflexively hit the recorder on my iphone because in all of my conversation it just hit the recorder. Had no expectation of having any conversation and i just did it without even thinking. And so we were talking along, and we werent even talking put my childhood old days when i was jack obryan and the fun things we did, and then somehow our trip to detroit the Previous Year for this interview with the government came up, and i just said, without even just to be talking said those guys think that tony pro was involved, and i know you dont think that but the think theyre pretty clear he and anthony were involved. And chucky said, tony pro had a lot to do with it. And i was stunned. I was stunned. He never, ever talked about said in a way that was very credible and had never talked about tony pros involve in the disappearance and always gave me exteriors which i didnt believe how he wasnt involved and looked dune in this soup and proceeded to tell me a whole bunch of things. And i learn a lot in that conversation. A lot of what is new the book about the hoffa disappearance i learn from that conversation. It was in that conversation i realized chucky the moment hoffa disappeared chucky was in this vice. He was not involve. But he knew a lot about the backdrop, the teamsters relationships with me mob. Knew all the players involved and immediately knew what happened and why. The mob was worriedded that chucky would break and flip so he had to be very careful what he said, yet he had permission for every time he talked to the government. I seem to understand the incredible pressure he was under it and he talked but the background i dont believe he knows what happened that afternoon. The told me they didnt tell him and hes glad and doesnt want to know what happened. But he told me a lot of things he one of the many reasons that i found it credible and came to find it credible because he immediately re greeted telling me what he told me. He told me this pause he was distraught about my mom and exhausted and just downloaded, and i at that point a very important honest in at the writing of the book. I had a huge tillema, i just learn a lot of things that go to at the truth of a lot of thing about he hoffa disappears that is not known, and its credible and i cant write this book if i cant include this information. Its Crystal Clear to me. But then chucky a couple of weeks later had a meltup and said you cant put that stuff in the back. It wasnt because he feared for his life, it became clear. Because he would violate his honor. He told me something he wasnt supposed to and made this very clear to me. Struggled with what to do, and my plan was because i basically said to my publisher, i can either not write the book, i cant write the book without this information, or wait until chucky passes away, and that was my plan. I because yet i wanted to exonerate him or show the world he didnt do this terrible thing, but i didnt want to stain his honor in the process. So my the way i had done it, i wasnt going to publish the book until he passed everybody, because of the scorsese movie chucky was very anxious for me to publish the book because he wanted the world to know he didnt in fact drive hoffa to his death despite the movie. I decided time was running short. I said, okay,ll let him decide and i showed hmm the manuscript which included these things he told me not every single detail but much of what he told me which i found to be material. And i was going to let him decide. Let hick make the tradeoff what he valued most. Go to boca raton, florida, gave. He the manuscript on monday, said i needed it back by friday, my publisher has to know that day whether were going forward. Over the course of that tenth week i was sure he would say you cant publish this. I saw him look at the manuscript hitch was wisping, asked me to take other few thing out, completely nonmaterial, student take that out because of respect for Barbara Hoffa but the meat of the things he told me that he might regret was at the end of the book and i saw him flipping through and seeing what happened. Friday comes around and i said i have to know, push the book or not . Your call. And he hand me the manuscript with a terribly sad face and he said, i read every word. You wrote a great book, congratulations, son. And i thought, what the hell does that mean . Because i dont think he read the book. Dont think he read to the end. And i dont know why. I dont know if it was because it was too painful or didnt want the responsibility for it, if he decided to suck up his honor so i could publish this book, which i thought was important, or dont know if he decide clearly my name is more important than this, and he gave the thumbs up. And i reflect at the end of the book in a way i cant reproduce here but i reflect at the end of the book, was i thinking but chucky, me, the right call, did die the right thing . And it was very, very, very tough decision. I can report now that he is not well. He is near the opened of his life, i fear. But he is very pleased with the book. A very candid book and i talk but my words and his and other peoples. Tried to write an hospital book an honest book. The week it was published he had basically not talked to me about it. Very concern topping me because i wrote the book for him, and feared if he hated it can ive failed. And base cliff he called me up a couple of days after the book was published. I gave him a copy. He was in tears, which he doesnt often do. And he basically said ive read the book three times and really read it this time. You wrote on amazing book. Dont know how you did it, figured all that stuff out. Got it exactly right. Im terribly sorry i was such a pain in the ass and that for me made it worth writing the become because i do think that i cleared his name from this. A very difficult call about what to put in. I still dont know if i made the right but that judgment by him for me made it all company. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you all very much. Hell have a sign at the table and there are books available in the book and if you could fold up your chairs, that would be fantastic. [inaudible discussion]
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