Presser Seeks FBI Papers to Prove Agency Authorized Fraud Actions

Teamsters President Jackie Presser filed a legal motion seeking voluminous government documents in his labor fraud case, signaling Tuesday for the first time that he will defend himself by claiming that his actions were authorized by the FBI.

Although this defense had been anticipated, Presser has never acknowledged publicly that he was an FBI informant. The motion, which his attorney had attempted unsuccessfully to keep secret, seeks “each and every FBI form wherein special agents of the FBI memorialized each interview/debriefing of Jackie Presser.”

The sealed motion, filed by Presser’s lawyer, John R. Climaco, seeks to establish the authority that FBI agents had from the early 1970s--when Presser first became a government informant--to the present to sanction “criminal activity on behalf of an informant or confidential source.”

Brothers Urge Motion

Presser and two long-time union associates, Harold Friedman and Anthony Hughes, were indicted by a federal grand jury here last May on charges of siphoning off more than $700,000 of union funds over 10 years in a payroll-padding scheme.

Climaco and his brother, Michael, who is representing Hughes, urged that the discovery motion be kept sealed on grounds that making it public would likely generate unfair pretrial publicity. But U.S. District Judge George W. White rejected their request for secrecy, which had not been supported by government prosecutors, making the motion public Tuesday.

In July, 1985, Justice Department officials originally rejected a recommendation by federal strike force prosecutors that Presser be indicted on the labor fraud charges. That decision was made after Climaco claimed that his client had been authorized to conduct a scheme in which mob-related “ghost employees” who did not work were kept on the union payroll in an effort to solidify his ties to organized crime figures.

However, the investigation resumed and the subsequent indictment was returned after the department determined that the claims of FBI authorization, backed by some bureau agents who “handled” Presser as an informant, were false.

Seeks Friedrick Records

Robert S. Friedrick, supervisor of the organized crime squad in the FBI’s Cleveland office, was indicted on charges of making false statements to FBI and Justice Department investigators in connection with the Presser case. FBI Director William H. Webster fired Friedrick last month.

Presser is also seeking in his motion the employment records of Friedrick, former FBI agent Martin McCann and Patrick Foran, now assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas office. McCann and Foran preceded Friedrick in handling Presser as an informant.

It was learned Tuesday that McCann, now head of security for LTV Steel in Cleveland, maintained in a statement to FBI investigators that he had authorized Presser to hire mob-related workers but that he had assumed they actually performed services for the union.

Presser also asked the government to disclose the procedures that McCann and Foran were required to follow “in authorizing, committing or participating in criminal activity.”