The fires are at their worst that your foreign teams will be able to respond Spain's 2nd general election this year has again failed to produce a clear majority for any party with almost all the votes counted the governing socialists led by the acting prime minister Petra such as have won the most seats speaking to cheering supporters Mr Sanchez promised to build a progressive coalition. For a model body armor Stanley our political project is to form a stable government and to do politics for the benefit of the majority of Spaniards because of that I would like to make a call to all the political parties because they need to act with generosity and responsibility in order to unblock the political situation in Spain the rightwing popular party came 2nd the biggest winner in Sunday's poll is the far right Vox which is more than doubled its tally compared with last election in April Well news from the b.b.c. . Israel has expressed regret at Jordan's decision to end a 25 year old agreement that gave Israelis access to 2 Jordanian border enclaves under $994.00 peace treaty Israelis were allowed to farm in the pockets of land King Abdullah of Jordan has formally announced the terminations of the arrangement in was regarded as a reflection of strained relations between the 2 countries. The former u.s. Ambassador to the u.n. Says 2 senior members of the trumpet ministration encouraged her to undermine the president Nikki Haley says she refused requests to ignore his policies from Washington Chris Buckley reports in a new book Nikki Haley claims the former White House chief of staff John Kelly the former u.s. Secretary of state Rex Tillerson Moby tarts a worker on Donald Trump resists some of his demands in what they said was an attempt to save the country the former u.s. Ambassador to the United Nations this seems a potential future presidential candidates admit she did have some disagreements with Mr Trump but she insists they all have no obligation to carry out his wishes because he had been elected president the presidency in Cameroon has announced that parliamentary elections will be held in February they were originally should yield for last year and have twice been perspire and the opposition has given a cautious response with some politicians calling for electoral reform the long serving head of state Paul Bia was reelected last year in a disputed presidential election. And a 15 year old girl who became the youngest ever cricketer to score a half century for India has repeated the feet a day later the record had stood for 3 decades on till Shefali Vama hit 73 runs against the West Indies on Saturday she's now falling she's now followed that up by scoring 69 in another victory over the same opponents b.b.c. News. I'm Christopher this is open source Jimmy Hoffa is a picture an American the thought by now the 2 fisted Teamsters leader who vanished in 1995 in a murder plot that left not a trace of hard evidence still a mystery still mesmerizing is a story that Martin Scorsese can tell one way this fall in yet another big movie called The Irishman and that a Harvard law professor at a hospice extended family very differently Jack Goldsmith is our best source this radio hour in fact he is the stepson of Jimmy Hoffa's the stepson with his own history inside the federal justice machinery that was part of Jimmy Hoffa's downfall Goldsmith's book about his step father Chuckie O'Brien is titled In the office shadow of fathers and sons a love story an mafia power and f.b.i. Proponents in the story and 2nd thoughts on the Kennedy brothers rough righteous war on Huff and the man in this hearing it was Robert did you say. Back to anyone if you make that to the people. I never thought they'd want to. If you make that thank you here in the hearing room after the testimony with Bennett not discern and then party line a lot of who didn't make it I know I may have been discussing some binding the biggest speech but what did you make the think back I know you're a member of parliament back we're going to break thank goodness Peter I don't even know I was prompted by and I know what you're talking about Jimmy Hoffa had his own doctrine on toughness and winning with you well. There's not much about it I don't mind but I fought back the whip and I use whatever means I can be used when I do why don't we get into such a thing that I have to be a winner I'm gonna win Jack Goldsmith admits with chagrin that he changed his name and threw his beloved step by the under the bus to clear his own career path in the law and the Us Department of Justice he got to be George w. Bush's assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel and became a critical in-house voice against surveillance and torture as practiced in the so-called War on Terror jackal to its disenchantment with government policy was heading in about the same time as Rian Chatman with Chuckie O'Brien the stepfather who had been inseparable from Jimmy Hoffa for decades but was also the F.B.I.'s prime suspect at the wheel of the car that delivered Jimmy Hoffa to his assassins Chuckie O'Brien is a very complicated man he came into my life when I was Travers old. And he was really the 1st real father I had and the only real father I had nobody trusted him except for Jimmy Hoffa and Anthony jackal Ernie Jimmy Hoffa this famous outsized hugely consequential Labor leader in the fifty's and sixty's Anthony Jacqueline he's a cop mobster in Detroit can I say even before that it fascinates me that he was a beautifully symmetrically split character his mother was a sit in Mob his father was West Cork Irish mob it sounds like in Kansas City so he had. He had crime of his his own roots but they didn't quite talk because he had an Irish name he couldn't be a real member of the and yet he outfit and yet he was to his courses Cillian his Sicilian commitments were his real identity and he always saw it that way and though as you say he could never be a made man he was he completely absorbed Sicilian values had a very young age largely because his mother whom he revered drilled the men to him and that and he revered the old guys as he put in the old the old mobsters in Kansas City whom he knew growing up so very good advice including don't abolish just tell him what happened and so I can rule don't ask questions don't ask questions or to your told he never ask questions when he was told by Hoffa or Jack Aloni or some senior figure to do something he was taught to do it without asking questions don't embellish just carry out the order he kind of grew up around since he was 18 or 19 he spent almost all of his waking hours with all 4 he he spent weekends with off on the road once Hava became the president of the Teamsters he was with him day and night he woke him up he put him to bed he was in this trial as he was at the McClellan Committee. He wasn't the Robert of all character even though the Robert Duvall character Tom Hagen was based on Chucky according to Mario Puzo that was a mistake by Puzo because as you say he was in a considerably area offering brilliant wise advice he would carry out any message or any order that Hava gave him he says that you quote unquote virgin in the book that anything he asked me to do I would have done no questions asked and that for a man I Jimmy Hoffa if this was someone that he trusted completely he knew his given half was very close which are his mother he knew since he was a boy he just trusted Chucky completely that he said he would walk through a wall for Hoffa and if I asked him to do that he would but Tukey was also a failure in the union he was not great at labor organizing everybody except Chucky recognized this recognized right but kept him close not because he was any good at labor organizing but because he was good at these other tasks he was a truth stretcher to put it nicely he was always making mistakes he had terrible judgment when he ever he exercised judgment he had terrible luck his whole life and nothing ever worked out for him always and always in that he could never this was true when I was a teenager he was constantly broke he was spending money he didn't have giving away money he didn't have promising things he couldn't deliver so in sort of object really speaking he was not a terribly responsible person but to me he was a great father and a half and tackle only he was as very loyal aide that's a paradox I'm just saying Jack you've told persuade me that he didn't have anything to do with killing off and wouldn't have anything to do you would kill himself rather than how he would have taken a boat Fava at the same time he's such a sketchy character as daughter Barbara thought. Human Chuckie was a moral I had no sense of right and wrong and it's almost possible he did all sorts of things he couldn't account for who wouldn't want to account for unreliable people best friends so he was sort of a pathological liar Department made things up but as a wonderful level of complexity of the story that this genuinely loving man incredibly loving man was also out of his own control somehow and I hate to say this but he was a failure and just about everything else I mean he was basically did 2 things while he was great at expressing love and he always wanted that's really all he wanted to do is to love and be loved and he was always looking to love and be loved often being disappointed and that he succeeded with me and my family but he often did not succeed in that and the other thing he was very good at was carrying out these messages in a very thought here and to wash off and Jacqueline he wanted basically everything else in this life professionally and personally didn't go well he didn't do well with his 1st with his the children from his 1st wife that 1st bears and go Well he beat up the wrong guy when he was trying to beat up that man he thought was having an affair with his 1st wife and you say he was always in debt you know he had a sketchy life and he often scared of the truth and scared of the law and couldn't really count for himself as you say come back to your project since 2012 Jack Goldsmith to write this story many mode is partly to defend a man you loved to get him out of the shadow also to get a piece of history written and also to I don't know rehabilitate himself in his own head I thought when I started the project or 7 years ago my main goal was to figure out what Chucky knew about the disappearance or whether he was involved in it because I suspected that he wasn't involved. And that narrow goal in I think clearing him from the charge that he picked up off and drove him to his death when Hoffa disappeared mysteriously from a parking lot in suburban Detroit I believe that I I think I demonstrate that Jackie did not do what he's been accused of in which every book and public f.b.i. Report an article and movie ever done on this disappearance has Chuckie driving it to his death so that my narrow goal in demonstrating that he did not do that I think I succeeded on my other goal was kind of a demagogue old but important goal was to make up to Chucky for the 20 years that previous which in which I had basically blown him off during the kind of formative years of my professional life I distance myself from him in a way that hurt him enormously in a way I did not appreciate at the time in a way to change your name from his to my name I recently had an Irish will name is Jack Goldsmith he adopted me Chucky did when I was 13 when I graduated from college I changed back to Jack Goldsmith that hurt him quite a lot and then I didn't talk to him again basically for 20 years and that hurt him it just devastated him and I didn't appreciate this at all frankly I didn't care and I was just looking out for myself and I had justified it to myself that this was the right thing for me to do and that it was justified. I had a complete rethinking of that 20 years later for a whole bunch of reasons and I asked for his forgiveness which he immediately gave me. And then I thought this guy who's had every bad turn against him taken against him in terms of disappearance his career just everything gone wrong form I thought that if I wrote a book that was more credible and the tried to tell the truth that it would settle the account with him in some way because hopefully he would see that the work I did to exonerate him I hope he would appreciate it and hope that he would see it as an act of love to try to make up for what I did to him I think it's news to most people of my generation that there is no specific evidence at all about what happened Jimmy Hoffa on that day kind of astonishing it's a complete mystery and it's really it's just completely astonishing I mean I got became very good friends with the 4 original f.b.i. Agents on the case from the seventy's and they've been obsessed with it for 45 years and we would meeting after meeting and we would always come back to this point the closer you get to what actually happened that afternoon there is 0 evidence nothing no evidence we know that Hoffa called someone at 3 30 pm we know that Hava called someone at 2 15 pm we know that some people saw fit to 45 pm. That's all we know there's literally no other evidence about what happened this is incredible Well they found a hair of Hoffa's in a car the truck he was driving and that was the main piece of evidence against him the main piece of evidence against you know it wasn't really evidence this hair was found it wasn't really terribly probative in court the car the truck he was driving a pickup 9 days after the disappearance we don't know what happened in those 9 days there was a hair found that was later fought to be hot as it was later shown by a d.n.a. Test to almost certainly be Hoffa's the question is was that hair there because Hoffa was in the car there was all sorts of other reasons and they examined the cart of the coffee wasn't the fingerprints weren't there for example Chuckie's work but the f.b.i. Came later to believe that as you suggested that this hair was transferred because we know that Anthony jackal only this big mobster who was probably the mastermind at least involved in the disappearance. He was at Hoffa's house just before the disappearance of laying a rug that was half as athletic Raji move the rug from one room to another he got in his hands and knees he laid it down hundreds of hairs would have gotten on his body and he was in the car soon thereafter so and the f.b.i. Didn't figure this out to later when I came across this independently when I came across I was reading an f.b.i. Report by Josephine Hoffa who was office wife talking about how Jack alone he laid the rug down I mean I thought maybe that's how the hair got there and then I later learned that that's what the f.b.i. Believes as well. But that's the only piece of evidence there's and that wasn't really probative evidence what happened that afternoon and there's literally nothing else. Coming up. As a story teller in the hof a case without evidence to back it up. This is open source. I'm David Latulippe Monday on explorations the streets were filled with music and costumes people in his dressing gown she ran through the crowded streets crowds of people on either side of the bridge pointed at him and watched as he climbed over the rail and threw himself in the freezing river. On exploration. During the Vietnam War roughly one in 5 G.I.'s actively opposed the conflict one cite minute to myself that the people I had killed I'd killed for nothing unjust cause I had to become politically active people were still dying in Vietnam veterans worked closely with civilian peace activists to stop the war in Vietnam soldiers for peace a new documentary from a.p.m. Reports tomorrow night at 7. I'm Christopher Ludden this is open source Jack Goldsmith's prism un Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance is colored by law and badly with lessons and meetings but no fresh clues in almost 45 years according to his family former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa is missing family made the missing persons reports this morning after helping the country's home team through Hills Michigan last night I want to cut to the main question of your project and sort of reverse engineer it your stepfather Chuckie keeps telling you. On the sidin Kota side of we don't we don't say anything but those are the kinds of thing he actually never use that word puts on a dog Yeah I mean clearly what it was he talked about it he he not a right that kind of Yeah exactly I don't you know just I'm not going to talk to you about it Jack Don't ask me to I can't do it and I'm just not going to and that and he talked to me about how he was taught this is a young man and it was really at the center of his brain the detective in me wants to reverse engineer this whole story and what was he not saying what could he not say what was the secret. That would disgraced himself though he had many hundreds probably thousands of secret sorry go ahead but on the big question who killed Jenny and who done it my theory is that he had nothing more to tell you you knew the whole story we all know the whole story you're not going to get it from his lips but the answer was obvious and you had it right well couple of things on that one I figured out a lot of things he struggled hard. If he said to me I love you and I want to help you out a good book and he struggled hard to tell me things right up to the margins of where he wasn't supposed to talk and you know trying to get me to figure it out so I learned a lot of things about the disappearance that he kind of later confirmed especially about the run up to the disappearance I'm 100 percent convinced that he has no idea what happened that afternoon I believe this for all the reasons that you know about why didn't he was involved and I also know that that even though he knew the conspirators a knew them well they never would have told him what happened they knew he was talking to the f.b.i. To try to clear his name Chuck e. Although he was very loyal to them he wasn't the brightest guy he might have slipped up they never in a 1000000 years would have told him anything about what happened that afternoon he told me that he said he didn't want to know any never learned right and they do things in whispers and grunts and get it done or whatever in any event but to me the story is very very clear that out of prison by by an agreement he had made with the Nixon White House from seeking even local office in the Teamsters again was going crazy for nothing to do being out of power came to hate Fitzsimmons who succeeded him all that sort of thing and he's just champing at the bit dying to get some action and basically going crazy and Chucky tried to warn him Jim you're out of line everybody did Jimmy and he started blabbing and started talking about the things I could tell you about the mob in this union and the obvious thing like no this is not allowed to send a message. But Tony Pro in New Jersey who's on the teams to board tell Tony Giacalone in Detroit talk to Jenny I think it wasn't just 24 I think it was even higher than that exactly but the point is the commission and they're like the General Motors border and other we got a problem in Detroit God's going to bring everything down speak to him and then if not he's gone and he was gone but obviously the national board of the outfit decided Tony Pro in New Jersey agreed he told his men in Detroit watch out something's coming down and your man Chucky tried to tell Jimmy Jimmy shut up go away but Hoffa didn't yes he did so this is the story that's the story so who said what to whom. They say Is details yes I agree but the question is that we know what happens at the level of the conspiracy I mean I think that and I think that I fill in a lot of the tales in that in the book we would have everyone interesting we know what happened at the level of the conspiracy all the way down to Anthony jackal Ernie in Detroit I believe and I think his brother as well Vito jackal Ernie what we don't know is who showed up. At that parking lot that afternoon and what happened in that parking lot that afternoon now the theory said 75 and I think this is what led the government astray completely they and basically the early investigators told me we latched on to the wrong theory and that theory involved Chuckie and Chuckie was actually a useful do for the mob because the government was so focused on him and this was based largely on an informant in the East who turned out not to be credible but the government was they were desperate for leads that have any and they were overwhelmed with informant information that they couldn't sort out the early theory was people from the east came in and did this province on us guys came in and did this and that Chuckie was involved in picking them up or at least delivering Hoffa to these guys and that's the theory that they focused on and that is not what happened what the f.b.i. Thinks currently happened is and this makes so much more sense about the way the mob of think about it was the orders came from the east and it was a local operation carried out by Detroit guys and so the theory that the world knows for 44 years which is based on 1986 memos that leaked and then books that repeated that story for 44 years including the Brandt book the that's the basis for the movie Scorsese more this course is a movie that is just not the theory that the f.b.i. Currently believes they have completely independent reasons one of the other reasons they don't like Chuckie that is because they think these other guys these local Detroit guys that give the mob credit maybe for knowing how to pull off a perfect crime there will be no witnesses will be no remains will be no nothing I completely agree that it was a perfect crime I thought about this as much as anyone and I said about it and bought about it and thought about it. I think there are a lot of things that happened that afternoon if we knew what happened that weren't supposed to happen so much of the timeline doesn't make sense I think it was luck Jimmy Hoffa waited for an hour and a half in that parking lot amazing Jimmy Hoffa himself the biggest man in Detroit standing out in a restaurant on the hottest day of the year Yup for now and I have nightmares where is Tony where Tony waiting for the why he would never wait for 5 minutes of someone's life so that was a hugely important meeting and Chucky told me this that if Hoffa was writing there if he was even to go there in public to have a meeting like that he must have thought this was hugely consequential form but then the killers don't show up they don't show up for either least an hour in probably an hour and a half which is an amazing screw up if they're trying to commit the murder of the century then they show up we have we don't know if Hoffa was hit on the head or shot and put in a car or if he voluntarily got in a car the f.b.i. Always thought he voluntarily got in a car but only because they thought that it would have been seen if he were hit or something like that but we literally don't know at all what happened I just think that it yes it was it turned out to be the perfect crime but there's a lot about that afternoon that doesn't make sense another thing that doesn't make sense Anthony Jacquelin he was the person that Hoffa was supposed to meet Jackson only had an alibi that day but why would jackal only put himself as the bull's eye target that everyone would have immediately focus suspicion on if he was the guy that was the mastermind of the crime they could have knocked off Hoffa any number of ways they could have gone down to the lake they could have done a drive by shooting this was a very elaborate and somewhat dangerous way to make Hoffa go as you say they pulled it off but I think that there are all sorts of screw ups I think they got lucky that happens you know Ok 2nd question in a sort of reverse engineering of this whole story why I cannot this story be resolved why is it not to this day like the Kennedy assassination does it not have a satisfactory answer leaving the Kennedy question aside it seems to me the reason this will never ever be told is that. We love pretty stories about great Americans to sions and this is the unpretty a story of labor of justice of personal relations of the Kennedys of the free press it's mob rule and capital and mob rule in the country in the fifty's and sixty's it's also surveillance I mean Edward Snowden's worst nightmare was daily performance of the Kennedy Justice Department we know of his surveillance of Martin Luther King we didn't know that the whole half a family including it seems cousins and aunts and everybody was under a blanket bugging all the time we didn't know we didn't see the obsessive vengeful narrow piece of the body Kennedy pursuit of Hoffa we know he got hot in the end it had nothing to do with his teams to work or his labor stuff and yet we can proclaim Hoth a hero either because he was feisty interesting complex driven a vailable his workers as he was the perfect romance of a labor leader he was a thug lived by the thug rules every day of his life it's a story that cannot be told about a self respect in free society right here I'm saying I know exactly what you think that the lesson I learned in kind of summing up or extending what he just said and writing this book. You know Bobby Kennedy the liberal icon on the in the angel there is a center he had a lot of flaws and he was the center Jimmy Hoffa of the well known thuggish mobbed up Center had an gel equalities. Chuckie O'Brien and he did have angelic he was is why is that unbelievably spotlighting book that but thank you but it also had with me in Chucky and I read this is I just this is something I learned from writing this book when I was 21 years old. 2233 Yeah law school doing really well. I was convinced of my virtue and my career and that I was the good guy moving forward and that Chuckie was the bad guy. The guy who was this mobbed up guy who had associated with criminals his whole life I kind of forgotten what a wonderful father he was and then 20 years later when I'm in the Justice Department up to my neck in illegal surveillance I'm not so virtuous anymore certainly people in the outside world treated me as not very virtuous at all and it turns out that the things Chuckie had told me Turkey the ignoramus that had told me about what was going on in the Justice Department turned out absolutely right so for me he had a lesson the bigger lesson here is that we're all sinners and all have good qualities and very bad qualities and I think that's a for me and a very important lesson from this book give us a piece of Chucky uncensored on. Those guys yeah yeah when they do Dia and the way they can ruin you in the print without ever getting near an indictment that kind of thing yes he the press was in bed with with the government which was Bobby Kennedy and the press were going to listen to them anyway we've seen it here in the in the Whitey Bulger story the f.b.i. Could leak absolutely anything they could make a saint out of Whitey Bulger right but most of the money in the box kind of thing when they liked him and then he can make you can be the embodiment of kind of nuclear evil when they change their mind and nobody has a check on it no it's chicken and I say one of the many I will use the word shocking things to me was to read the government leaks about Turkey over the years of the government was confident it had and it was going to do this to him and we're going to indict him and had this evidence that these are the leaks in the papers and then to read the internal documents that just exactly the opposite we have no evidence we can't prosecute this guy the evidence isn't holding up and it was just all the lies to try to pressure him into talking or pressure the mob into pressuring him maybe but threatening to kill him causing him to talk. So that having a lot the one thing you've asked me about Chuck e. Cheese color colorful takes on the government the phrase he used that really stuck in my mind to use this as a teenager I didn't understand it it was before I was a lawyer he didn't even fully understand what he meant but he had the basic intuition he said the government's got back up I know that were you going to unfold back up was Chucky's word what Jackie meant by that was he experienced let's just posit that Chuckie was a serial criminal law breaker like Hoffa I mean he was by law in the law all the time Chuckie in Chucky's mind his self-justification was what the government's doing it to avert a war and that's the way the world works he said that the government has back up by which he meant that the government when they're pursuing us and going after us to enforce the law they're cutting corners and breaking the law and inter-breeding things away so that they can do whatever they want to us. He called it back up I learned in the course of my time in the government and in writing this book that there is such a thing as backup and it is a persistent feature of. You know Justice Department operations just how that works in the present day for example well I'll give you 2 examples one surveillance is the best context you know we heard a lot in the last 15 years about secret law and this is the idea Secret Law The idea is that the Justice Department does secret legal interpretations that allow them to do things that the public would not approve of and would not think is a sound interpretation of the law this was going on in the fifty's and sixty's before and during the Kennedy administration when they were doing all the illegal surveillance you talked about the most unconvincing legal opinions from the Justice Department just conclusory poor weak analysis distinguishing Supreme Court cases that clearly said you can't break end to bug people clearly said that and they continued to do it because the attorney general signed off on it on an unconvincing opinion that the world never saw until the Church Committee 10 or 15 years later and something like that was going on again after 911 that with all of the aggressive interpretations. That the government gave to allow it to go after the newest enemy with them which was by that point the terrorists so you know this is something that Jackie taught me and something that I learned and conceptualize when I was in the government due to his driving this into my head when I was a teenager the present example is your own experience of surveillance in the Bush administration that you blew us off I would say I blew a whistle that I was charged with reproving this very highly classified very important surveillance program Stellar Wind was the name of the program that's a phrase that I was highly classified time I never thought I would be able to utter it but here we are in 2019 and I'm wondering it probably because of Everson and. The problem the program was just screwed up from top to bottom it was missed described the legal analysis was weak. I was supposed to approve this thing and every 6 weeks I heard of the job that was supposed to approve this thing and I found all these problems it was a completely on present situation in the sense that no one ever rethinks a legal authorization in the middle of the program in the middle of a war you just continue it once it's been decided I did rethink it I ended up basically disapproving or not approving half of it I approve the other half and that approval of the other half of the program that was I wouldn't call it a stretch but that was I had to push myself to prove that part of it and in that sense I was doing the same kind of opportunistic interpretation that Chucky was complaining about I was offering back up the main point as I ran ecclesia not even strong enough or was in the Justice Department involved in legal interpretations of surveillance doing the very things that were happening as a basis to illegally surveil Chucky 50 years earlier and Chucky's criticisms that his denunciations of Bobby Kennedy were kind of ringing in my ears as I was doing this this is at a time when I hadn't talked to him and 20 years and it was the beginning of my rethinking of him. One question that strikes a lot of readers I think in your book is is the power of that mob the connectedness and the same names that come up in the j.f.k. Assassination you suddenly think we decided they had the people the motives the means to have done that crime I always thought if the mob had killed Kennedy they wouldn't found out and they wouldn't punish for it what do you think don't ask which is Chuckie think is right where the Kennedy assassination right so many mobsters in Detroit yelling Jack Ruby the such a fast an overlap of names here here's what I concluded so they original Warren Commission they didn't look at the mob angle enough and it was part of the great conspiracy about the Warren Commission that they kind of neglected the mob angle compared to what they should have because there was a lot of circumstantial evidence going to Ruby was related to Chicago mob figures he was known by Hoffa and everybody else in the short Chucky knew Jack Ruby the better job was done by the House Committee in the eighty's they did a complete redo of the Kennedy assassination and they focus especially on Hoffa and the mob and they basically concluded what you just said they had the motive they had the means but there just wasn't evidence to show that they were involved now they didn't rule it out but they they looked at it as thoroughly as anyone could ever make they didn't rule it out Chucky said and I believe him on this he said Tough I was involved in some things related to the Kennedys especially the Bay of Pigs invasion and helping indirectly to supply some of the really planes and equipment but he said how if I had to his knowledge and Chuckie would have known had nothing to do with that I just found not a single piece of evidence to suggest a feasible. And Chucky said that he actually. Coming up lasting largely unintended effects of those awful wars on a mobbed up America. This is open source. Stars day Miers was concerned the French keep their Riviera all she wanted was to be back in Bayonne New Jersey. Where she belongs. A lonely white this week on selected shorts from p.r.i. Public Radio International. Selected shorts begins our story time every Sunday here on k l w That's at 5 and at 6 it's the Moth Radio Hour true stories told live on stage no scripts no notes no nothing at all ahead here on 91.7. Stay with us. I'm Christopher Lyden this is open source the Huffy years unfolded in what seems now a different country in Jack Goldsmith's informed version of events mafia power was entrenched and widely tolerated for example the mostly an mmog union movement had real power then and illegal surveillance was standard government practice real life was more like a David Mamet script as in the movie with Jack Nicholson from 1902 Forget about disappearing the one time you cannot do is square off at the white square off of the White House then they don't square off with me you follow me don't tell me who I can swear off with don't use words with me chuckles with you bring so much alive that was that we all sort of knew Edward Bennett Williams as hard as lawyer bringing Joe Lewis the late great everyway champion just to come by say hello to the jury when he had half on trial for the all black jury in Washington d.c. And the case was over I remember. Story that's not in your book about Jimmy Hoffa challenging Bobby Hannity to push up the contest right here and now that's gone and they did it and they did like 30 or 50 push ups that they were in many ways alike they were childish about sports they were kind of on better than you are and I'm smarter than you are and I'm stronger than you are and you know that they had these amazing similarities they both were White Sox were their suits they both had to Korea personalities they were both moralistic they were amazingly alike except for the fact that they were completely different. Speak of. How he did it he assembled after all the biggest union in the country over 2000000 members at the max I think started from 299 local to 99 in Detroit which becomes song live that whole city but what was his secret he was an organizer and you say he would tell guys on the street you got a problem on your contract here's my number call me right and they did He spent all of his waking hours practically with the men and women of the Union every single weekend even when he was president he would travel around the country to local unions this is something I don't know if he did it instinctively or instrumentally But this is where his power was and he spent time with the members of the Union often he was telling them hard news like you're going to have to go slow on this contract here so we can get up there you have to trust me he did a lot of that he was explaining what was going on and then he was living with them hanging out with them and he gave his number away he was their hero so he had this base of support despite all the criticisms of the government he had this base of support Why do you have this basis a sport and addition to spending too much time with them and caring about them so much he was bringing home the bacon he was brilliant at figuring out how to use transportation routes and trucking and warehouse control over transportation routes to bring economic leverage against both trucking companies and employers to basically raise way. Wages and benefits for the Teamsters enormously he had complete mastery over the trucking companies because as Chucky taught me he knew their business better than they did he knew trucking economics and routes better than they did and he knew all of their foibles their personal foibles who they were screwing around with who was going to get tired of the negotiation who was going to get drunk who was going to get out and 3rd he had this vision and it was an autocratic vision the Teamsters were a decentralized unit and one of the things that held them back was they couldn't bargain at a national level which would have given them much more leverage so hard over a couple of decades basically clamped down on the local barons and asserted power in himself in the big it basically became an autocrat or dictator of the Union which he used to a sort enormous economic power against the trucking companies to get these amazing deals and so famously in 1964 he got a National Trucking compact of the famous labor agreement just before he went on trial to go to jail right that even after Bobby had beat him up for months here in the hearings here 50 years Bobby had been going after him since $57.00 and it was relentless and brutal Bobby at the time was the chief investigator something called the McClellan Committee Senator McClellan from Arkansas it was a joint Senate committee designed to look into labor racketeering it was Bobby's idea Bobbie let it. And Bobbie Adl And the key fob are hearings model and because body thought key fire arose to national prominence by doing that in the early fifty's I can do the same thing for myself and my brother Jack Jack was on the McCollum committee like breaking up the bill and I am in awe that it Bell is not a right banking union but to bail you out of that document I know that the money you get at that unknown your complete investment the fact of numerous. People who are responsible but they can be your union I mean the audit committee and take the 5th Amendment because a lot of that like that to incriminate them your complete and I think make good sense he and Hoffa went after it in really an amazing way just toto everybody almost everybody took the 5th Amendment Hof advise everybody take the 5th Amendment ever been it well you mean advice Hoffa to take the 5th Amendment but half a was not going to get up there and he would never admit wrongdoing he was going to get up there and go toe to toe with Kennedy and he did any essentially one night Kennedy painted a picture of Hoffa as corrupt. Was corrupt in every conventional sense and he allowed that picture to you know basically linger he couldn't defeat it although he tried meantime if he's a bit of a prude he's faithful he doesn't drink he doesn't know why people go to Las Vegas although he'd built Las Vegas right with with his you know union funds one of my favorite scenes if I could just say as you're going out for the opening of one of his casinos and he goes to this fancy debauch celebration and everybody around him is drunk and carousing and carrying on and there are scantily clad waiters and waitresses and half was bored to death but when he does that is who that is happiest was when the day before he was on his hands and knees with the workers scurrying in you know electrical outlets and things like that I mean he really believed in the union work and he didn't go in for any of that other kind of stuff the time according to Chucky afterward complained about the time in the mob got Why did he have to kiss each other what's all this you know. How has the reputation is this mobbed up guy he was he wasn't well he was mobbed up in 2 senses one he did business with them at arm's length when they controlled some of his unions before he got there and he did all lot of business with them on the pension fund to his enormous benefit he had no compunction about doing business with them for the same reason he had no compunction about paying off judges and politicians he viewed the legal system from his early days on picket lines where he's getting his head beaten and in the 1930 s. As completely corrupt he thought it was rigged against the union and his basic view was anything I can do to increase my power to help my members I don't care what it is I quote Jackie is saying as hard as saying I would do business with Hitler if I thought it would help my union people forgotten a period in this country when the mob was everywhere and got a kind of lot of if not respect. One of the many things I learned is the extent to which from the twenty's but especially after Prohibition until about the seventy's . The mob was this extraordinarily powerful force in this country not very well known the mob had just amazing control of the underground economy and were making literally billions of dollars and they were controlling unions all over the place and they were controlling employers all over the place usually in the lower reaches of course they had legitimate businesses on the side and the like but they were this huge force and by the way I've been hard on Bobby the Bobby figured this out Bobby was one of the 1st people to realize what a very powerful and corrosive force the combination of the mob and the unions could be in the country and he painted with too broad a brush and he damned all of labor but he was right was gradually understood in the fifty's and sixty's it wasn't until and again and there were reports about this in the sixty's and the government was getting more legal tools but they didn't really go after them to the didn't really understand it they didn't understand how it worked they had some intelligence through these illegal bugs one of the many other things I learned in writing this book was it was the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa which what gave the f.b.i. An opportunity indeed forced them to throw massive resources in trying to figure out what happened and the Course is trying to figure out what happened a half are they on covered this massive conspiracy an organization between Labor and the mob one of the memos a secret memos I quote in the book said you know in 1975 we've uncovered these incredible relationships these relationships just deepened and deepened and deep into the sixty's talk about irony is the removal of Harper from the Teamsters and handing it to Frank it's him it seems to have given the model really the upper hand he did which he didn't have the right body didn't really understand the Mahdi didn't understand how his relationship to it it's not surprising that he didn't while Hoffa had all these relations with the mob he had the upper hand especially on the pension fund turned him down on loans often turn them down then on check he said he had to get $50000.00 upfront just to be considered and you didn't get the money back if he said no and he often. Said no and prophet pocketed that and edition to the points he got what he did give the line and have often said no and he said no because he just made a business judgment about whether he thought it was a good or bad idea and the mob lived with that and they were on the whole happy about it these illegal recordings that I uncovered from the early sixty's have these mobs are saying how can we get these loans from Harvard and they were really dependent on these loans to get these big casinos they couldn't get ownership of these containers you couldn't build the casinos or the bank line and these casinos were cash cows and Hoffa was financing them the cash piece of this story is incredible it is clearing the moment when Nixon wants to get hot out of jail but not back into business with a right have a conditional pardon sort of speech right but oh by the way we need a 1000000 bucks in cash right to there's always been rumors about a payoff and they have a lot of people have said there's a payoff a lot of people taking credit for a payoff I believe Chucky story Nixon had been putting off letting Harvey out of prison how it was going crazy Nixon kept raising the price of speak cough was desperate to get out he was literally going mad in prison part of the final deal buzz a $1000000.00 payment and the payment came out of from Hoffa's funds and a half I had according to Jackie tens of millions in cash I believe in because of all they have all the Las Vegas scams all the side payments of the loans however had deals all over the place in cash and he had rafters full of cash so a $1000000.00 of Hoffa's money was part of the deal to get half out of jail. Chucky gets a call from Fitzsimmons who is the president a teenager the time saying come to Washington he goes to fit some of his office and he goes he's going to get out and is going to cost us this much any raise a single finger Chucky didn't fully know that meant but the next day he gets a call from that same as a secretary saying that you left your briefcase here please come pick it up he wouldn't pick up his briefcase she handed him a note for the Madison Hotel the room number on it that he waited for 15 minutes in his hotel he actually opened the bag he said it's the 1st time in his life that he didn't carry out the task no questions asked as he was afraid he was being set up because he didn't trust it's him as of the time saw the cash in the bag took it to the Madison Hotel to whatever floor he doesn't remember what floor and dropped off the bag and Hoffa was relieved the door was opened he almost dark dermis dark a hand came out he gave him the bag and that was it and how it was released 2 weeks later we don't know for sure what happened that 1000000 dollars they think when Nixon was later saying in that famous exchange with Dean in the White House I know where I can get a $1000000.00 I now think they're referring back to this payment that money may well have gone to pay off Watergate people but it probably went to the Nixon reelection campaign because the Watergate money the payoffs and Watergate were all accounted for come back to the cash but the guy who didn't gamble building that's Vegas they built Las Vegas and it literally Jimmy Hoffa built Las Vegas it was the night before he died Hoffa calls more Shanker and he was very agitated more Shanker was a lawyer from St Louis who was a facilitator for some of these loans he ended up running one of the casinos in Las Vegas. And Hoffa was agitated and something was on his mind and he told Shankar I'm coming out to Vegas in a couple of weeks can you get me a reservation checker was shocked when he said this he goes Jimmy are you kidding me you built Los Vegas you can come in this town and stay in tiny room you want he literally literally financed the building the fifty's expansion of Vegas there are all sorts of scams coming off that going to mob and mobbed up labor unions and of Jimmy Hoffa it was a huge huge cash cow what was going on in Jimmy Hoffa's head in that last period he's out of jail but going nuts at the lake for nothing to do it sounds like a man coming apart in retirement so to speak forced retirement but was that more could have been prevented I don't think so I actually think that according to Chuckie Hoffa went slightly mad if not mad in jail I mean this is a guy who was the. Champion of the universe who suddenly found himself for 5 and a half years in a 5 by 7 cell spending all day stuffing mattresses with no control and no way out. And so he said he just slowly went crazy and Jay surely must have commanded respect in prison he did and he was taking care of for the most part by the monsters their busy day Zz 8 or 9 hours a day was in a little room beating a mattress and his cell was as titles I'll you know just 5 by 7 cell is nothing so most of his day was in confinement with nothing to do no control no power watching his union out there being run away he didn't appreciate it then he gets out after this giant payoff there is his condition placed on his commutation there is going to stay out of stead of the real work he spent the next 5 years desperately trying to get round this condition he tried to pay people off to eliminate it to get a pardon he brought a lawsuit to try to get rid of the condition he started violating the condition any almost went back to jail because he was violating the condition it became clear to him by sometime in 1904 that it just wasn't going to happen he just lost it because he desperately wanted his union back he built this thing is whole life is all identity everything was in this union is being run by this guy he hated it who double crossed him he had paid a 1000000 dollars and losses 1000000 dollars It had this condition and he basically decided at some point you know techie says he got crazy he got nuts he decided at some point it was irrational because it couldn't help him get his union back that he was going to bring Fitzsimons down and the mob down and everything down so he starts blabbing and increasingly raising the temperature 1st about Fitzsimons and then about that Simmons relationship of the mob This went on for much longer than people realize it wasn't just an overnight thing that the mob decides they have to get rid of him they knew they had a problem for 6810 months and they tried and tried and tried to calm him down and assuage him and they couldn't and he kept turning up the heat. And that's partly what got him killed and frankly it was completely predictable that he was going to be killed and one of the mysteries is was half a suicidal did he think he was immune from this Chucky when I asked him this question some time said he was just so angry at that Simmons he was irrational other times check he says he just thought that he was above it all they wouldn't dare do anything to him. Chuckle So it's an amazing yarn and it gave me a kind of fever of excitement about. What we don't know about our own country in the net unions like Jim has Teamsters are history so is the mob maybe yeah oh we better off today I do think we are better off for the mob basically being decimated the mob still exists but it's a shadow of its former self and it's a shadow of its former self because the government developed the tools and got extremely aggressive basically broke the back of America people started talking because they had long jail cells because they could go off into witness protection the later generations one is disciplined and how about unions not depending what you think about unions my views about unions have changed over the course of my life and I just see it as an imam bigger slee bad for the country what the decimation of labor unions represent because basically it's gone from a 3335 percent of workers were needed to something like in the private sector 7 or 8 percent and unions are so much weaker than they used to be so much more consequential one of the juxtapositions of trained hard as well in today's world is unions were huge then labor union leaders were in the news every day Hava was a national figure you can't name a national labor figure today they're just not consequential unions aren't I was surprised to find out the James p. Hoffa Sanad yeah is it head of the teams Yeah I couldn't get Yeah because it's just not a consequential force anymore the decline of unions is obviously one sign of the massive inequality in this country and one sign of relative worker weakness. Chuckles not the kind of mire you or this book enough it's a sensational read I want to keep you in our circle thank you thank you very very much of a great conversation I appreciate Jack Goldsmith book is called in papa's shadow you can hear more of our conversation with Jack Goldsmith about surveillance the f.b.i. And the Justice Department in our own 2900 political moment on our Web site radio opensource dot org Our show this week was produced by Qana Gillies Adam Coleman and the artist Susan point George Hicks is our engineer Nerima guys I mobster I'm Christopher Lyden join us next time an open source. Next on a it's of space a tribute to the great cathedral of nature Dom and Paris which burned this year with music reference composer shop on t. Cooper are for a. Sad song in a scene and no Stephen a tribute to Notre Dame depending on the next 2 nights of space. Slow music for Fast Times Music from the hearts of space every Sunday evening from 10 to midnight here on. Prior to that 2 hours of new and classical music live here in the studios with your host Sarah Cahill for revolutions per minute I'm David Latulippe happy to have you with us here at k w No 510152025 dollars a month may seem small but it all adds up to make a big impact each month. 2000 sustaining members make it possible for us to shorten our membership drives and to plan for the future go to calle w dot org to become a sustainer or give a call to our membership department this week at 415-841-4121 extension 1 thank you so much. During the Vietnam War roughly one in 5 actively opposed the conflict one minute to myself that the people. I had become political people were. Vietnam veterans worked closely with civilian peace activists to stop the war in Vietnam soldiers for peace a new documentary from reports you'll hear that tomorrow evening at 7 for Veterans Day and in place of city visions tomorrow soldiers for peace Monday evening at 7 here on 91.7 San Francisco where our story begins with a select. Hollywood bar. Dark. Black. Box. Cash Register greeted Mary Lou by name. And those accent was more English than American there wasn't anything French about it. They sat down and. Looked around. With American sailors right across the aisle there were 4 of them. And a couple of very young kids crowded at the bar there were hardly any other women. Content to just sit there quietly but felt like she had to make conversation to keep from staring around. Nervously and feeling came over her that was strangely familiar tight in the chest. Then she remembered it was exactly the way she used. Years ago when she and her girlfriends used to stop in their. Voices. And you're listening to selected shorts from p.r.i. The program that brings you great short fiction read live on stage at Symphony Space in New York City. The characters in the 2 stories on this program are trying to escape from the world they live in but the alternatives are risky Richard Yates a story evening on the coat designer was selected by the novelist and screenwriter Richard Price for an evening he hosted at Symphony Space the Riviera holds no magic for a lonely wife and mother who longs to be home in Bayonne with the Riviera does offer temptation evening on the court does or has performed. When she had packed up the remains of the picnic lunch got the twins settled in their carriage very Meyers looked around for Bobby her 5 year old squinting against the sun she finally saw him he was way up the beach playing with some French kids Bobby she yelled he pretended not to hear she started off to get him slow with weariness feeling the alien stares of men and girls who lay all butt naked on the sand. When Bobby saw her coming he took off she had to run.