This week is my 50th anniversary as an independent investigative journalist
The birth of a cautionary tale
The CAC
On July 19, 1974—two months after I lost my bid for a seat in the Ohio State Legislature—I met with the new executive director of the Portage County Community Action Council (CAC) in Ravenna, Ohio. He mentioned that his agency had an opportunity to receive federal money and asked me to write a proposal for the grant. I immediately accepted the job.
After completing the grant proposal—which I presented to the CAC board of directors on August 8, the same night that President Richard Nixon announced his resignation amid the Watergate scandal—the executive director appointed me as his deputy director.
At 24, I had a good, albeit low-paying job doing important work at a federal poverty agency while continuing my graduate studies at Kent State University where I taught a class, “Racism and Poverty,” in the Honors and Experimental College.
Sadly, this grand moment of professional joy was short-lived.
On Wednesday, October 9, the CAC's bookkeeper asked me to come to his office. Upon my arrival, he alleged that our boss had used two CAC checks—one of which was payable to a local accounting firm—as collateral for a personal loan. Also, he had endorsed one of the checks, even though it was not made out to him. As we delved into the agency's financial records, we uncovered other alleged financial improprieties involving the executive director, who supposedly owned a local bar on the side.
There were unconfirmed rumors abound that he had borrowed money from a loan shark who was connected to the underworld in northeastern Ohio. At the time, I thought that Elliot Ness and The Untouchables had wiped out the Mafia back in the 1930s. I didn’t think the Mafia still existed.
The next day, I confronted my boss with the evidence, and he immediately fired me.
The CAC board of directors, which later forced the executive director’s resignation, allowed my termination to stand, despite support for my actions from the county prosecutor and the local media. The board correctly maintained that I was within a 180-day probationary period as a federal employee. Under the rules, I had no right to appeal.
Reluctant to file a lawsuit, especially for monetary damages against a federal poverty agency, I sought some act of good faith from the CAC board so that I could move on with my life without this matter haunting me in the future.
Finding none, I turned to my trusted friend, Nick Roetzel, a respected local attorney in Akron. Roetzel—who had been part of the legal team representing the NAACP in its landmark open-housing case, Hunter v. Erickson, before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969—evaluated my situation and assured me that we had a strong case.
In the end, we reached an out-of-court settlement in which the CAC board reinstated me to my old job and then simply allowed me to resign. Knowing the agency was financially strapped, I waived any claims to back pay.
For his payment as my lawyer, Nick generously accepted one of my prized possessions: a baseball signed by the 1954 pennant-winning Cleveland Indians.
Following the settlement, the Akron Beacon Journal, which had covered the litigation from the outset, published an editorial titled “Fighting the good fight” that summed up the finale:
Many talk about carrying on a fight against some wrong as a matter of principle. Few do so. Dan Moldea is one of the few. . . .
Moldea gained nothing from this in a tangible sense. He doesn't have the job back and he doesn't have the money. But he gained something far more important—the satisfaction of vindication, of a clean record, of a reputation of integrity. That made it a fight worth waging.[1]
Bill Ellis and The Reporter
After leaving the CAC in October 1974, I attended a reception for an old friend with the Black United Students at the University of Akron where I had served as student body president in 1972-1973. At the party, I met William Ellis, Sr., the owner and publisher of The Reporter, an Akron-based newspaper serving the Black community in northeastern Ohio. Mr. Ellis had previously worked as a young attorney for the NAACP on its landmark 1954 Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education.
When I mentioned that I was in graduate school at nearby Kent State where I taught a course about racism and had always aspired to be a writer, Mr. Ellis invited me to be the "token white guy" at his newspaper and offered me a weekly column. To the delight of my writing coach, “Mrs. Nolte,” one of my college instructors, I accepted his offer, even though I would only receive fifteen dollars per article.
Mr. Ellis published my first column on November 30, 1974.
My early work for The Reporter was lighthearted, focusing on sports and the arts. I covered events such as the local appearances of the U.S. Olympic boxing team and the Harlem Globetrotters. I wrote about a thrilling professional hockey game that went into double overtime and, in a separate column, advocated greater funding for the Ohio Ballet, which was based at the University of Akron.
Simultaneously, an acquaintance from the local branch of the American Friends Service asked me to speak to the Kiwanis Club about world hunger. After conducting some research, I prepared a twenty-minute talk, which also became the basis for one of my columns.
My world-hunger article caught the attention of Dick Nixon, a United Farm Workers organizer in Akron—not related to President Richard Nixon. Dick reached out to me, asking if I would be interested in writing about the UFW's ongoing conflict with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Nixon provided me with a box of documents and introduced me to several knowledgeable people. Through reading his materials, interviewing his contacts, and conducting additional reporting, I crafted my first hard news story for The Reporter.[2]
I later received a letter from UFW President Cesar Chavez, thanking me for publishing it.
A blast from the past
I wasn’t completely new to the Teamsters and the trucking business.
During summer breaks in college as an initiated member of Teamsters Local 24 in Akron, I had worked as a “casual” laborer while Jimmy Hoffa was still the union's president.
I loaded trucks, unloaded trucks, and drove small-to-medium-sized trucks.
In early July 1971, while transporting automotive parts and two large oil drums on Interstate 71 South to Columbus, my cargo suddenly exploded. I managed to escape a second blast by jumping from my large pickup truck. I landed on the wide median at the bottom of a grassy hill next to a highway patrolman who had witnessed the incident while driving northbound.
Fearing the loss of my job for losing the truck, I returned to the burning vehicle, grabbed a pair of gloves, and dropped the tailgate. I got behind the wheel and maneuvered the truck to the top of the grassy hill near the highway's edge. Then. shifting gears from low to reverse, I rocked the truck up and down the hill while braking on the downslope. This caused the burning load to slide off the back of the truck.
Real truckers stopped to help extinguish the fire on my truck and its gas tank. Thanks to them, I suffered only a minor shoulder injury, some cuts and bruises, and a hell of a sunburn from the fire. But, most importantly, I was credited by the Ohio State Highway Patrol with saving my truck, which I thought would save my job.
The Akron Beacon Journal published a story reporting:
A quick‑thinking Akron truck driver en route to Columbus "rocked" a flaming load of merchandise out of his pickup truck Thursday morning, preventing a serious explosion which could have cost him his life. . . .
"All I could think was that if the truck blew up, I would lose my job," said the Akron University student.[3]
The truckers who stopped to help me were credited with saving my life. Before I left the scene, I managed to get most of their names and addresses.
Though my boss initially scolded me for going back into the burning truck, he gave me a small raise in pay. He and I also took the time to write letters to those truckers, expressing our gratitude for their life-saving actions. I promised each one of them that I would find a way to repay their kindness someday.
The black ledger
Dick Nixon, a regular reader of my column, encouraged me to continue investigating the Teamsters. When I mentioned that I needed a topic for my master's thesis at Kent State, he gave me the contact information for a Teamsters reform leader who lived in Akron, Gordon "Mac" McKinley,
In mid-December, I called McKinley, a member of the Professional Drivers Council on Safety and Health (PROD), part of Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen universe, and the Teamsters United Rank and File (TURF), a union-reform organization. Both groups had been investigating and challenging the Teamsters' leadership for, among other legitimate complaints, their repeated misuse of the union’s pension funds, as well as their provable ties to the Mafia.
On December 17, 1974, at 3:15 A.M.—which I consider the date of birth for my career as an independent investigative journalist—McKinley and I met for the first time on a cold and dark street corner in downtown Akron. From the outset, he made it clear that he was armed and ready for trouble. Admittedly frightened by this entire scene, I assured him that I was only there to gather information for my column and possibly my master’s thesis. “I’m just a student,” I insisted.
After a brief conciliatory exchange, Mac handed me a black ledger that listed loans from the Teamsters' Central States, Southeast, and Southwest Areas Pension Fund.
Back home, I reviewed the ledger and found loans to mobbed-up Las Vegas casinos, shady real-estate ventures, country clubs, and trucking companies. One large loan even went to televangelist Rex Humbard's Cathedral of Tomorrow in nearby Cuyahoga Falls.
Knowing little about the Teamsters and the Mafia, I was obviously intrigued by the ledger's contents. I kept in touch with Mac, who tutored me about the corruption of his union while drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes at his kitchen table during my Christmas break from graduate school.
The reformers
After I earned his trust, Mac suggested that I contact PROD's executive director, Arthur Fox, a respected top attorney for Ralph Nader in Washington, D.C. Arthur had two talented deputies, Michael DeBlois, an experienced organizer with a keen sense for national politics, and John Sikorski, a recent Harvard Magna who wanted to work for a few years before attending law school.
The gentlemen at PROD provided me with materials about a significant lobbying effort by the American Trucking Association, an adversary of union workers, for a controversial resolution in Congress. I wrote a story critical of the proposed legislation that received some media attention.[4]
Also, in early 1975, I met another noble union reformer, Ken Paff, who had earned his undergraduate degree in physics at Berkeley, where he was an activist in the university’s famed Free Speech Movement. After abandoning his work for a Ph.D., and moving to Cleveland, Ken, a card-carrying member of the Teamsters, engineered an effort to organize a progressive, workers-run, rank-and-file-reform organization that was preparing for the upcoming battle over the union’s contract negotiations.
The organization Ken helped to create and eventually lead was the Teamsters for a Decent Contract (TDC), which later became the legendary Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU).
From the outset of my work about the mobbed-up Teamsters, I took sides with and loyally supported PROD and TDC/TDU, which would later eclipse TURF.
My eight-part series
In my weekly column for The Reporter, I launched the first of my eight-part series on January 25, 1975, titled "The Teamsters, Their Pension Fund, and the Mafia," based largely on the ledger from Mac McKinley. This series included previously unpublished information.
Although busy with her academic work, Mrs. Nolte, my writing coach, reviewed each of my columns. She encouraged me to compile my research and articles into a book, as well as for my master's thesis. Providing further inspiration, she gave me a copy of The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens, the memoir of the late-muckraking journalist.
Just before the eighth and final installment of my series was published on March 15, I informed my boss, Bill Ellis, that I was leaving the newspaper to focus exclusively on my independent investigation of the Teamsters and the Mafia.
A fateful fact-finding trip
During Easter break in 1975, I drove my 1970 Thunderbird to Washington, kicking off a five-city tour. My first stop was a meeting with Arthur Fox, Mike DeBlois, and John Sikorski at PROD. We swapped stories at their office and then over dinner that night.
I also gave my new friends the proposal for my thesis/book about the Teamsters, inspired by Mrs. Nolte.
Arthur arranged for me to speak with Ralph Nader, whom I had once met after his speech at the 1972 National Student Association Congress in Washington while I was an undergraduate and a student-rights leader.
During our March 1975 conversation, Nader encouraged me to write my proposed book about the Teamsters and referred me to his New York literary agent, Philip Spitzer. Spitzer had a master’s degree in publishing from New York University and a degree in French literature from the University of Paris. After I sent him my book proposal, he agreed to represent me.
The next day, I drove to Dayton where I spoke at a TURF rally arranged by union reformers associated with my friend, Mac McKinley. After my speech, an intoxicated local Teamster pulled a handgun from his jacket and threatened to shoot me. Mercifully, his friends convinced him to put the gun away and escorted him out of the room.
My trips to Louisville and Nashville were much calmer. I conducted interviews, collected documents, and then headed north.
The Gaylur Products trial and Allen Dorfman
In Chicago on March 31, I attended the Gaylur Products/Central States Pension Fund trial at the federal courthouse. The trial featured, among others, defendants Allen Dorfman, the former fiduciary manager of the Teamsters pension fund, and Teamsters bail bondsman Irwin Weiner. Both were accused of defrauding the fund.
During a break in the trial, I saw Dorfman and Weiner talking privately in an outside courtyard. Intruding on their conversation, I introduced myself as a graduate student at Kent State who was writing a master's thesis about the Teamsters. Dorfman, whom I had interviewed on the phone a few weeks earlier, remembered me. He laughed when I asked if he was as bad as federal prosecutors claimed. But, getting serious, Dorfman insisted that he was "no different and no worse than anyone else in a position to manipulate money and power."
Notably, shortly before the trial, two ski-masked assailants murdered Daniel Seifert, a key prosecution witness. . . . In the end, Dorfman and Weiner were acquitted.
“A public place in broad daylight”
While in Chicago, I stayed with reform leader Robert Grant of the local independent Teamsters Union. For three days, I ate with his family, used his telephone, and slept on his couch. Like Arthur Fox and Ken Paff, Bob Grant embodied the ideal union reformer: smart, tough, brave, and selfless. Through Grant, I met other Chicago dissident leaders, including union activist Dan La Botz, an impressive scholar, an excellent writer, and a charismatic speaker.
On my final day in Chicago, I received an anonymous call at Grant's home, promising damaging information about Allen Dorfman. The caller suggested a meeting at a bar just north of the city at 4:00 P.M. Trusting my instincts, I went to the meeting—at a public place in broad daylight.
However, as I approached the bar—long story short—I was attacked and beaten by two men.
With no health insurance, I slowly drove back to Akron where I laid up for nearly three weeks. The incident also left me badly shaken and even humiliated for walking into that ambush.
But, then more than ever, I was determined to remain in the fight. I left the graduate program at Kent State—without completing my thesis and, thus, I never received my master’s degree. Instead, I dedicated myself to investigating labor racketeers and underworld figures. Amid my recovery from the painful life-altering experience in Chicago, I had come to view my new line of work as a righteous cause.
I was determined to lead what Dr. Martin Luther King called “a committed life.”
Jon Kwitny
Meantime, Jonathan Kwitny, a well-known reporter at the Wall Street Journal, had reached out to me after hearing from Arthur Fox about my work on the Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund.
Having recently read Kwitny's 1973 book, The Fountain Pen Conspiracy, I regarded him as among the top investigative journalists in America, along with Jack Anderson, Seymour Hersh, David Burnham, Donald Bartlett, James Steele, Bob Woodward, and Carl Bernstein. To me, these journalists, along with Senate investigator Walter Sheridan and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Clark Mollenhoff, were like gods.
Early on, I had called Walter Sheridan—the author of the revealing 1972 book, The Rise and Fall of Jimmy Hoffa—who always provided me with solid advice. When I asked him to sign my copy of his book, he wrote, “Welcome to the fray!” I later adopted him as a trusted mentor.
In the spring of 1975, only a few journalists, like Kwitny and me, focused on the Teamsters and the mob. This group included Jim Drinkhall of Overdrive, Denny Walsh of the Sacramento Bee, and Lester Velie of Reader's Digest. And then, there were also “The Giants,” authors of seminal mobology books, like Ovid Demaris, Hank Messick, and Ed Reid.
Asking for my assistance, Kwitny said that he wanted the documentation I used for my eight-part series in The Reporter. He explained that he was writing his own three-part series about the Central States Pension Fund for the Wall Street Journal.
I provided Jon with everything except the black ledger of loans from the pension fund, which I closely guarded. I refused to share it with anyone, even Jon who later became a close friend. That rare document kept a new guy, like me, in the game and in demand.
Kwitny's three-part series about the Teamsters and the Central States Fund ran in the Wall Street Journal on July 22-24.[5]
The following week—on July 30, 1975—Jimmy Hoffa disappeared from a public place in broad daylight.
From Day One, I was right in the middle of the investigation. . . . But that’s another story.
This is an updated history originally published in Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer.
ENDNOTES
[1] Editorial, Akron Beacon Journal, “Fighting the good fight,” October 13, 1975.
[2] DEM, The Reporter, "Does Slavery Exist In America?" January 11, 1975.
[3] No byline, Akron Beacon Journal, “Quick Truck Driver Averts Serious Blast,” July 9, 1971.
[4] DEW, The Reporter, "Ford Signs Truckers' Death Certificate," January 18, 1975.
[5] Here are the three parts of Jon Kwitny’s series that were published the week before Jimmy Hoffa disappeared:
* Jonathan Kwitny, Wall Street Journal, “Union Financiers: Questions Are Raised By Loans and Benefits Of Teamsters Fund,” Jul 22, 1975.
* Jonathan Kwitny, Wall Street Journal, “Union Financiers: Insiders and Mobsters Benefit From Loans By Teamsters Fund,” July 23, 1975.
* Jonathan Kwitny, Wall Street Journal, “Union Financiers: How the U.S. Failed To Convict 7 for Deals With Teamsters Fund,” July 24, 1973.
Great career -- with a lot more to come.
Good stuff here. The well-aimed start of a string career