On the Kennedys’ Vendetta Against Hoffa

(Letter)

15 June 2008
Brooklyn, NY

To the editor:

In the article “Reinstate Freightliner Five Now!” (WV No. 915, 23 May), we write: “The 1989 RICO-inspired government takeover of the powerful Teamsters was the culmination of a decades-long union-busting vendetta by the Feds, beginning in the 1960s with Democrat Robert Kennedy, against the union and James Hoffa Sr.” While Hoffa was jailed in the 1960s, the government vendetta against the Teamsters began earlier. In 1957 Teamster president Dave Beck met his downfall before the Senate’s McClellan Committee investigation of labor “racketeering.” Hoffa was next. As we wrote in “The Hoffa Myth” (WV No. 76, 12 September 1975): “Beginning in the late 1950’s Hoffa became the object of a massive government vendetta, with five criminal proceedings in seven years, most of them braintrusted by Robert Kennedy, first as counsel to the McClellan subcommittee and later as U.S. Attorney General.”

Paul C.

P.S.: The liberal icon Robert Kennedy also had close ties to the anti-communist witchhunter Joseph McCarthy, who hired Kennedy as assistant counsel to his Senate committee, the counterpart to HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee). Robert Kennedy even made McCarthy godfather to his first child.