Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 7 Num. 30

("Quid coniuratio est?")


HOW THE MOBSTERS GOT INTO THE UNIONS


Interview With Sherman Skolnick -- February 26, 1996

CONSPIRACY NATION:
This is my idea of how the thing works: Back around the late 1800s, the workers banded together, and formed unions. And the bosses hired gangsters to beat up on them. So then the unions figured, "Well, if they're gonna hire gangsters, we're gonna hire gangsters." And that's kind of how the mobs got into the unions.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
There was a movie a few years ago about the organization of the Teamsters. And that's the thesis that they took. I think it was sort of a roman a clef about Hoffa. And then I think there was an actual movie on the television called "Hoffa".

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, I saw that movie, "Hoffa", with Danny DeVito and I think Jack Nicholson was the other one in it.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
In other words, it started out with exploited workers but then the gangsters took over. However nowadays, some workers say, "Well what's the difference if the Mafia runs the union, as long as I get good wages?" In some places, that is okay. [But] if the Mafia runs the union, they skim off... They make sweet-heart deals with the boss so that the wages are not very good. And the pension rights, in some instances, are almost non-existent.

One of the tricks they use, in the Chicago area and probably across the country, they make certain that small employees are forced to join a union even if they don't work regularly. And they've got to contribute like 8 dollars an hour, if they're skilled tradesmen, to the "health and welfare fund". And if the worker does not work regularly (like seasonal workers)... if they don't work for a month, whatever it is, that so many dollars to that "health and welfare fund" is for nothin'! Because the insurance only continues if you pay regularly.

So it's a racket for skimming off money.

In the case of the Teamster's Pension Fund, I did stories, years ago, that the Teamster's Pension Fund has been the largest private unregulated bank in the world. And the government didn't regulate it, and the CIA started to use the Teamsters in the early '50s, with "Red" Dorfman (who was the father of Alan Dorfman, who had been in the Marines. Alan Dorfman considered himself rather patriotic.)

And what they did is, they used the Teamster's Pension Fund as a bank, for the CIA to funnel covert money overseas to overthrow foreign unions that they didn't like.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
And eventually these unions got intertwined with the politicians; that they would give these huge "campaign contributions" (so- called) to the politicians, and then the politicians would do "favors" for them. And so that would be how the government and the unions began to kind of "be in bed together" -- right?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, during the '70s the Teamsters escaped prosecution when Jim Thompson was the District Attorney in Chicago. A key witness was allowed to be murdered. The witness was supposed to be protected by the government, but mysteriously, the guards "disappeared" and he was murdered. That was 1974. And that was a key witness against Alan Dorfman and others.

But then, by the end of that decade, into about 1980 and so on, suddenly the government decided that they wanted to put Dorfman in jail. And they found him guilty. And just before he was to be sentenced, he was being interviewed by a foreign news group. And he bitterly complained that he had been secretly in business with the Governor, and that he had been in the Marines and was patriotic and had helped the CIA -- and he couldn't understand why they now were about to sentence him to jail. And once he started that interview, in short order he was murdered. And it remains an unsolved murder.

They would like you to believe, through the press, that Alan Dorfman was killed by the mob. But I don't believe it. I believe that James Thompson, who at that time was the Governor of Illinois, he and his associates arranged the murder of Alan Dorfman -- who was a wizard! He was really good at the numbers in the pension fund.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
You know, the name Alan Dorfman "rang a bell" -- that whole case. But back at the time, I wasn't really following the news that much.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Judge Bua [BOO-ahh], Federal District Judge Bua, talked to us later that the Dorfman estate escaped scrutiny. So the judges, and the District Attorney, and all those guys were involved in the whole business.

Supposedly the corruption was justified in that, secretly (as I said), the Teamsters Pension Fund in Chicago was the largest private bank in the world and, like the Vatican Bank, had assisted the CIA in covert operations.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
So I'm still not sure what the deal is: the mob muscles in on the unions because they see a way of stealing money from the unions?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
At the close of the Second War there were left-wing unions in Europe. And they were controlling the docks in Marseilles, France. And it was there that the O.S.S. (which later became the CIA) arranged... They didn't want the left-wing unions to have any power. So they allowed the traditional gangsters to muscle in on the situation and to set up dope/chemical factories in southern France. That is all well-documented in a book by Alfred McCoy called The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia -- the rise of the gangsters and the dope business worldwide because...

Well... It went back further than that. During the Second World War they needed the help of the traditional Sicilian Mafia to fight the Germans. So what they did is, before the Allies landed on Sicily, the Mafia arranged to sabotage the roads... [This was done with the help of] a Sicilian gangster who lived in the United States: Lucky Luciano. And there's a book that goes into it, how Naval Intelligence made a deal with him. [CN -- As I recall, one book that tells of this deal is Little Man by Robert Lacey. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991)]

That's where the connection between the gangsters and the espionage agencies began.

And a more recent book is by the Godson and younger brother of "Momo" Giancana, called Double Cross.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. Yeah. Good book.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
That book rings so close to the truth, it is frightening.

In other words, the CIA used the gangsters. And then, when they were tired of them, they murdered 'em one by one and said that "other gangsters killed them." When in fact, many of 'em were killed with guns with special silencers that only the CIA had. And that includes Giancana. [CN -- Giancana was murdered by person/persons unknown.]

So there's been a long connection between the gangsters, the dope business, the espionage agencies, and the unions. And it continues to this day (although the unions are getting very weak in the United States.)


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