Grand Jury Witnesses Say FBI Misled Presser Inquiry

A federal grand jury in Cleveland has heard testimony that FBI agents repeatedly misled Justice Department officials over a three-year period about the FBI’s use of Teamsters Union President Jackie Presser as an informant, The Times has learned.

Officials familiar with the case said that federal prosecutors and at least one Justice Department official have testified that the agents failed to tell them under questioning between 1982 and 1984 that the bureau had authorized Presser to participate in a payroll-padding scheme involving his Cleveland local.

The testimony is central to the grand jury’s examination of why the department abruptly dropped its lengthy criminal investigation of Presser last July. That inquiry was aborted after Presser’s lawyer argued that the Teamsters chief could not be tried because the FBI had authorized him to commit minor crimes while informing for the government.

Until then, a federal strike force composed of Labor Department investigators but not including FBI agents had investigated Presser’s role in the payroll padding scheme for more than three years under the assumption that nothing prevented his prosecution.

The case has attracted unusual public and congressional scrutiny because Presser has been President Reagan’s lone political supporter among major labor leaders.

Sources said that the grand jury witnesses have described the agents’ statements about Presser as typical of the FBI’s traditional reluctance to divulge the identity of informants, particularly those in contact with the top echelon of organized crime.

But, under direction of the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the Cleveland grand jurors are seeking to determine whether the agents’ alleged misrepresentations amounted to an “obstruction of justice” that eventually prevented Presser’s prosecution.

None of the agents has yet appeared before the grand jury. But sources close to them say that they contend department officials failed until just before the Presser case dissolved to ask precise enough questions about what Presser had been authorized to do.

When the right question was finally asked, according to one associate, the agents responded truthfully. “It was a classic case of miscommunication or misinformation, and nothing more,” he said.

More Serious View

But sources close to the case say that Justice Department investigators under the direction of Michael E. Shaheen Jr., counsel of the Office of Professional Responsibility, are taking a more serious view of the matter.

At least one of the FBI agents, Patrick Foran, has been advised of his constitutional rights--a step taken after the focus of an investigation moves from administrative to criminal. Foran, now assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas office, was supervisor in the 1970s of the organized crime unit of the bureau’s Cleveland office. He, like the other agents, declined through FBI spokesmen to comment.

Sources also say that investigators have discussed offering immunity from prosecution to Robert Frederick, the current supervisor of the Cleveland unit, in return for his testimony. Frederick began dealing with Presser after Foran left Cleveland in 1981, the grand jury has been told.

‘Worst-Case Scenario’

One theory under consideration by investigators--described as a “worst-case scenario”--is that Presser never did get authority for the payroll padding but that FBI agents concocted the story after the fact to protect their highly valued informant.

“That’s absurd,” an associate of one of the agents snapped when interviewed by a reporter. “Why would the guy stick his neck out like that and risk his career?”

As part of the obstruction-of-justice inquiry, grand jurors are examining the agents’ compliance with the attorney general’s guidelines for handling government informants.

Those guidelines were issued by Atty. Gen. Edward H. Levi in 1976 and made more restrictive by Atty. Gen. Benjamin R. Civiletti in 1980. They generally require written approval from higher FBI officials for a field agent to authorize an informant to engage in any criminal acts.

No Paper Work Found

In the Presser case, the Justice Department can find no paper work reflecting Washington approval, even though Presser allegedly put some “ghost employees” on his local’s payroll after the guidelines were issued, the sources said.

The agents and their defenders, however, take the position that the Presser authorizations were already in existence when the guidelines went into effect and that they did not need to be adjusted to the new rules.

According to officials familiar with the case, Cleveland strike force attorneys have testified before the grand jury that Joseph E. Griffin, special agent in charge of the FBI field office there, told them in 1982 and 1983 that Presser was not an informant and that any prosecution of him would not interfere with FBI operations.

The assurance was given orally to strike force chief Steven R. Olah after he had expressed concern about news media reports that Presser was a key FBI informant, the officials say the grand jury was told.

Sought Information

The sources also said that Justice Department official Paul E. Coffey sought to learn in 1984 if FBI agents had made any promises to Presser that might prevent his prosecution in the payroll-padding case.

They said that Coffey, deputy chief of the department’s organized crime section in Washington, has testified that the FBI acknowledged Presser’s informant status but assured him it had made no promises to the Teamsters leader.

Coffey, who had supervisory authority in Washington over the Presser investigation, earlier this year endorsed a strike force recommendation to prosecute Presser. He later was among the officials who decided to drop the case.

Former FBI supervisor Martin McCann, who worked in the Cleveland field office in the early 1970s, also figures in the grand jury probe, sources said. McCann has declined to respond to repeated telephone messages from Times reporters.

Ronald J. Ostrow reported from Washington and Robert L. Jackson from Cleveland.