Presser Investigators Focus on Airport Meeting by 2 FBI Men

Justice Department investigators, attempting to expand charges that an FBI agent lied about dealings with Teamsters President Jackie Presser, are focusing on an airport meeting between the agent and another FBI official only hours before the pair submitted highly similar statements in the case, The Times learned Friday.

Sources close to the two men, both of whom oversaw Presser’s work as an FBI informant, acknowledge that Robert S. Friedrick, supervisor of the FBI’s organized crime squad in Cleveland, picked up Patrick Foran, assistant special agent in charge of the bureau’s Las Vegas office, at the Cleveland airport near midnight on June 19, 1985. But these sources insist that there was nothing conspiratorial about the act--that it was only one agent doing a favor for another.

Government officials, however, are openly skeptical that one agent would ask another to drive him from the airport--a cab ride of less than $10--at so late an hour merely for convenience sake.

Decision Not to Prosecute

The meeting is important because the responses to questioning on June 20, 1985, by Foran, Friedrick and a former FBI supervisor, Martin McCann, led to the Justice Department’s decision the next month not to prosecute Presser on labor fraud charges.

It is not known whether prosecutors have developed any hard evidence directly linking Foran to the false statements cited in the case, which is still pending.

In a related development, a source close to Friedrick said the suspended agent had no knowledge of a 1983 order by FBI Director William H. Webster that the FBI stop using Presser as an informant after he became Teamsters president that year. At that time, Friedrick was the agent “handler” for Presser, thus raising doubts of whether Webster’s order was carried out.

‘Ghost Workers’

Interviews of Friedrick, Foran and McCann by federal prosecutors and FBI officials, later converted to written statements, seemed to support the contention of Presser’s attorney, John R. Climaco, that the union president had FBI authorization to pay union funds to “ghost workers” who did no work.

But last month, after the Justice Department’s office of professional responsibility concluded that there actually had been no such authorization, a federal grand jury in Cleveland indicted Presser and two longtime Teamster associates on charges of siphoning off more than $700,000 of Teamster funds in the “ghost workers” scheme.

Indicted Separately

Friedrick was indicted separately on five counts of making false statements to FBI agents and attorneys in the department’s responsibility office who were investigating the dropping of the Presser case last July.

Government and non-government sources close to the case said charges were brought against Friedrick, but not Foran and McCann, because Friedrick allegedly made false statements in going beyond the responses the three men made last June.

Foran’s views about his dealings with Presser and his talks with Friedrick have not been disclosed because he has declined requests for an interview. He has also declined to answer the ques1953066862close to the case.

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