The Sharks

"It seems," intoned Senator John Mc-Clellan sternly, "that in this dragnet procedure we have caught an assortment of man-eating sharks." It was indeed as forbidding a catch of fish as John McClellan's Senate labor rackets investigating committee has yet snared. One by one last week's school of hoods--including notorious Extortionist John (Johnny Dio) Dioguardi--appeared before the committee in the Senate caucus room and rasped out their Fifth Amendment pleas. But the evidence against them was there nonetheless. It added up to another chapter of the story of how mobsters took over segments of the nation's labor movement in the same strong-arm fashion that made Prohibition big business for the gangs.

Typical shark was squat, hoarse-voiced Max Chester (convictions for extortion, bookmaking, robbery), who walked into the offices of a Brooklyn plumbing supply manufacturer, Paul Claude, one day in 1954. Announced Max Chester: "I am going to unionize your shop." Testified fearful Paul Claude last week: "He wanted $2,000 to give me a contract that I can live with. I said, 'I haven't got $2,000.' He figured out with pencil and paper that a contract I couldn't live with would cost me $12,000. I could save myself $10,000, and I should be very grateful, he told me, that he is giving me $10,000."

Checks & Zippers. When Claude hesitated, Max Chester harassed him with threats, inquired pointedly about the health of Claude's children, reminded him that it was dangerous for children to play in the street. " 'They can get hit by a car.' It was always with the arm around my shoulder, and 'You have got to pay us off because you are mine and I own you. No matter where you are going to move, you are mine.' I was scared to death." In the end Claude paid Chester about $1,400 by cashing worthless checks for him.

Johnny Dio's man-eating sharks were everywhere, fanning out among makers of dog food, candy, zippers; they even swarmed around crucifix platers, printers, toilet-seat reconditioners, stone setters. In most instances the "organizers" operated under phony union local charters that were traceable to Dio, and ultimately to Teamster Union Big Shot Jimmy Hoffa.

Latching onto the 1,000 employees of Roto-Broil Corp. (electric broilers), one crooked local was so helpful as to allow the management (1956 gross: $10 million) to keep about $23,000 in check-off dues. In most other instances Dio-controlled "unions" were nothing beyond fronts for extortion thugs, who sent their worried victims into the arms of Equitable Research Associates, Inc. For handsome fees Equitable saw to it that employers were never bothered by Dio's union organizers. Equitable's boss: Johnny Dio.

Peanuts & Promises. Dio, who made a name for himself in his 20s as a strong-arm thug when he and an uncle muscled into the garment trucking industry, worked his way (after a stretch in Sing Sing) up into the labor rackets in a queer way. First he ran a few little dress-manufacturing shops. Then he took over a New York local of the foundering United Auto Workers (A.F.L.). With help from Jimmy Hoffa as well as the union's International Secretary-Treasurer Anthony Doria, Dio surrounded himself with mobsters who had grown tired of robbery, bookmaking and drugpushing.

When anti-Dio elements of the U.A.W.-A.F.L. International's executive board tried to get rid of Dio, Tony Doria fought the action, finally arranged for the union to buy Dio's resignation. The price, cash on the barrelhead: $16,000. Dio took the money--and like a feudal prince, took his locals too. He moved over to the Teamsters and began trying to grab the New York Teamster leadership for ambitious Jimmy Hoffa.

The $16,000 paid to Dio, the com mittee showed last week, was really peanuts. In 1956 Chicago Labor Racketeer Angelo Inciso was also told to get out of the union. Angelo took $300,000 and his local, is still going strong in Chicago. And only this year Tony Doria himself was bought out by the union with 1) a new Cadillac, 2) $25,000, and 3) promissory notes for $55,000 more. He is now suing for payment of the notes.

Ducks & Beeps. At length when 43-year-old Johnny Dio took the stand, he was a vision from an old George Raft movie--plaid summer suit, white shirt, dark, grey-flecked hair. He gave himself a final reassuring pat of his breast handkerchief when one woman cooed, "He's beautiful." Predictably, Dio had nothing to say in reply to 140 questions from the committee--except 140 Fifth Amendment refusals, read in a low voice from a typed statement.

Then, expressionlessly, he listened as the committee played recordings of two wire-tapped phone conversations made in 1955, after Dio supposedly had left the labor movement. One tap convinced listeners that Dio was still playing a heavy hand in extortion ("I'm telling him to put the pickets back on"). The other showed that Dio is a cog of sorts in the Hoffa machinery, which includes such officials as Teamster Organizer George Baldanzi. Teamsters' Eastern Conference Chairman Tom Flynn, and St. Louis Teamster Boss Harold Gibbons. And it also showed that one Tony "Ducks" Corallo, a mean-sounding tough with a long narcotics record, may well be a bigger fish in New York than Dio himself. Excerpts (with profanity replaced with electronic "beeps" to keep the business clean for the TV audience):

Dio: I didn't have no intention to come in, but I could come in, Tony.

Corallo: No? All right, you don't have to come in. Listen--

Dio: What?

Corallo: Find out what's all this talk about Gibbons and Flynn and knocking Baldanzi, huh?

Dio: That dirty, rotten son of a beep.

Corallo: Who?

Dio: I was with Jimmy last night.

Corallo: Who?

Dio: Jimmy Hoffa.

Corallo: You was with Jimmy Hoffa?

Dio: Yeah. That dirty, rotten son of a beep has been here for three days; nobody knows where to contact him--

Corallo: Who--

Dio: Flynn. He's been drinking, and Hoffa looked for him all day yesterday.

With such damning evidence the shark net closed tighter. This week Chairman McClellan planned to wrap it tighter around even more self-styled protectors of labor. The scheduled witnesses: Anthony Doria, Tony Corallo, Hoffa Pal John O'Rourke (whom Hoffa and Dio tried to boost into the top New York Teamster job), Teamster International Vice President Einar Mohn, who arranged for the issuance of paper teamster local charters to Dio, and James Riddle Hoffa himself.

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