‘Ghost Worker’ Says Presser Paid Him $300 a Week

A convicted “ghost worker” and reputed associate of organized crime figures told a Senate subcommittee Friday that Teamsters President Jackie Presser put him on the payroll of the union’s Cleveland local at $300 a week for six years without requiring him to do any work.

The witness, Jack Nardi, 44, was the first of such “ghost employees” to give public testimony linking Presser with a scheme that has been the subject of grand jury investigations for the last four years.

Nardi’s testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs permanent investigations subcommittee also highlighted allegations that FBI agents sought repeatedly to torpedo the Presser investigation, which was conducted by a federal strike force staffed with Labor Department investigators.

Grand jurors are considering charging Presser with illegally spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in union funds to pay associates who performed no work for the Teamsters.

At the same time, some FBI agents are under investigation for allegedly making false statements to Justice Department attorneys last year when the agents claimed they had authorized Presser to put crime figures on his payroll in connection with his role as an FBI informant.

Nardi testified that three years ago, while he was serving time in a Florida jail on charges that he wrote bad checks, he was interviewed by an FBI agent who advised him not to cooperate in the Labor Department’s case against Presser.

Officials Called ‘Clowns’

Nardi said agent Nelson Gordon told him that Labor Department investigators James Thomas and George Simmons were “a couple of clowns who weren’t even allowed to carry guns,” a reference to the fact that labor agents are not armed. The Labor Department considered Nardi to be a key government witness in their case.

Nardi acknowledged that he had second thoughts about testifying against Presser and tried to solicit a $20,000 loan from the union leader in return for changing his grand jury testimony against Presser--or simply becoming “unavailable” if the Teamster president went to trial.

Nardi subsequently pleaded guilty to attempted extortion after the FBI, in a “sting” operation, secretly recorded his unlawful approach about a loan. He also admitted that he had illegally received $109,800 as a “ghost worker.”

Favor to Father

Nardi, son of a Teamster local official who was killed in a gang-style bombing in 1977, was asked by subcommittee Chairman William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.) why Presser had put him on the payroll in the first place.

Nardi said it had been a favor to Nardi’s father, with whom Presser sought good relations. But he said: “I now believe that Mr. Presser’s informant role for the government was the basis for putting me on.”

Robert Magee, a retired Labor Department enforcement official, said FBI agents pressed extortion charges against Nardi in hopes of discrediting him as a Labor Department witness in the case against Presser. In addition, Magee said, the FBI questioned Nardi extensively to try to elicit charges of misconduct against Thomas and Simmons, the two Labor Department agents.

“I concluded three years ago that the FBI was intentionally and seriously trying to disrupt the Labor Department investigation to prevent the indictment of Jackie Presser,” Magee testified.

FBI Defended

However, a top Justice Department official defended the FBI’s conduct.

Stephen S. Trott, chief of the department’s criminal division, said he could not answer many of the subcommittee’s questions “while these matters are still under grand jury investigation.”

But Trott said: “When the final chapter is written, the Justice Department and the FBI will emerge proudly as agencies who are able to take care of their own problems.”

Roth asked another witness, Raymond Maria, chief of the Labor Department’s anti-racketeering office, if he had ever heard FBI agents denigrate the role of Labor Department agents.

“Yes, sir. On more than one occasion,” Maria replied.

Maria, who was an FBI agent for 15 years, said he is seeking to develop a memorandum of understanding with Justice Department officials to spell out the respective roles of the two agencies in investigating labor union corruption.

Roth and Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), vice chairman of the subcommittee, said rivalry between federal law enforcement agencies in the labor racketeering area is “very, very harmful.” The Justice Department must recognize that Congress two years ago granted the Labor Department new powers in this field, the senators said.