FBI Handled Fearful Presser in a ‘Twilight Zone’

When the late Teamsters Union President Jackie Presser was supplying the FBI with information about organized crime, he was so afraid that his secret role would be disclosed that he insisted that the bureau, which usually commits everything it learns to paper, not even keep an official file on him.

Instead, a Cleveland FBI supervisor filled seven spiral notebooks with handwritten notes of conversations with Presser. The supervisor personally carried typed reports--merely saying “the source advises”--to FBI headquarters in Washington, where they were kept in an unofficial folder, and copies were stored in the supervisor’s personal safe in Cleveland.

Hundreds of Pages

The unusual way that the bureau handled Presser and their close relationship are detailed in hundreds of pages of previously sealed testimony obtained by The Times.

This first-time account, provided by former agent Robert S. Friedrick to Justice Department investigators in sworn depositions before Presser was indicted in 1986, has become available as a jailed Friedrick serves a contempt sentence for refusing to testify at the Cleveland trial of two Presser associates.

The account directs a rare beam of light into the murky world of confidential informants and shows how Presser’s case differed from the norm.

Although the FBI has always prided itself on meticulous record-keeping, Presser was handled in a “twilight zone” manner, for he believed that he would be killed by the Mafia or by rival unionists if his FBI role were ever disclosed.

The disclosures suggest why Friedrick, a 14-year FBI supervisor who was Presser’s contact from 1980 to 1985, was willing to put his career on the line to protect the labor chieftain.

According to Friedrick’s testimony, Presser was still cooperative with the government even after the Labor Department began investigating his activities in 1982. But he was fearful and exasperated that his FBI friends could not control this long-running investigation by a rival agency, which led to his cover’s being blown eventually.

Link to White House Told

Right up until Presser’s indictment two years ago, Friedrick testified, FBI officials were assuring the Teamster chief that nothing would come of the Labor Department’s criminal investigation, believing that it was a weak case. Presser reported that he had received similar assurances from an unnamed White House aide, the FBI supervisor added.

Friedrick himself was indicted in May, 1986, on charges that he had falsely claimed responsibility for Presser’s hiring of “ghost employees” who never performed work for the union. His indictment was dismissed, however, when an appellate court ruled last year that he had been tricked into making self-incriminating statements.

But Friedrick, summoned to testify at the trial of two Presser associates in Cleveland, was held in contempt of federal court when he remained mute after receiving a grant of immunity. His attorney said that Friedrick believed the Justice Department might seek to trap him in new perjury charges, which lie outside the protection of immunity.

Presser never stood trial; he died of cancer last July.

Transcripts show that Friedrick, in a series of interviews with government lawyers just before Presser’s indictment, said he believed that it was unfair for the union leader to be accused of misspending $700,000 on the salaries of “ghost employees.”

Weighs Good and Bad

“Because of the fact that he had stuck with us, been an informant for 10 years and provided some pretty significant information, I just didn’t feel like the case that they had against him even compared to what he had done for us,” Friedrick said. “I know it was a couple hundred thousand dollars, but I think within the scheme of things he’s probably saved the government, you know, much more than that.”

Friedrick said that his confidential FBI reports would show that information provided by Presser “was used to make important FBI cases throughout the country . . . primarily having to do with the Teamsters and organized crime that is associated with the Teamsters.”

He said he and two previous FBI agents who had “handled” Presser had urged him to become the top officer of the nation’s largest union.

“We encouraged Presser to go as high as he could in the union because it was our belief that, the higher to the top he could get, the better the information we could obtain,” Friedrick said.

Although Friedrick was not asked to enumerate the tips received from Presser, he volunteered that Presser had been a key informant in the FBI’s Chicago-based “Pendorf” investigation that led to the 1982 bribery-conspiracy convictions of one-time Teamsters President Roy L. Williams, whom Presser succeeded at the union helm, and the late Allen M. Dorfman, a reputed mob associate who had strong ties to the Teamsters.

Was Gunned Down

Dorfman was gunned down in a Chicago parking lot a month after his conviction amid reports that he was planning to cooperate with federal authorities in hopes of a more lenient sentence.

Presser’s role in providing information that led to the conviction of Williams, his predecessor, for attempting to bribe a former U.S. senator long had been suspected. But Friedrick’s testimony, although lacking any details, was the first confirmation of it.

Perhaps understandably, Presser, who was a vice president of the Teamsters until his elevation to the top position in 1983, repeatedly expressed fears for his safety if his cooperation with the FBI became publicly known, according to Friedrick’s testimony.

When told in 1984 that his informant role might be disclosed in federal court if he was indicted, “Presser was devastated . . . and started swearing,” the transcript said. Presser told Friedrick that “you guys are trying to get me killed through the media,” an apparent reference to exclusive reports in The Times that he was an FBI informant.

It was only a year earlier, in 1983, that the FBI for the first time had organized Presser’s material into an official file in Washington--and, even then, only so that it could officially close the file and terminate his nine-year informant status, Friedrick said.

Inappropriateness Cited

He explained that then-FBI Director William H. Webster believed it was inappropriate to supervise an informant who had just been elected to head the nation’s largest union and who had regular access to the White House--a result of the Teamsters’ strong political support for President Reagan.

Later in 1983, Friedrick said, Presser was called to appear before the Senate Labor Committee in his role as Teamsters president, and Webster feared that he might be asked under oath if he was an FBI informant. Closing the file would give Presser the right to deny such a role, Friedrick suggested.

But Friedrick said that Webster was prepared to explain the facts privately to senators if the question arose at that hearing. It did not.

Despite the official termination of Presser as an informant, Friedrick said, he and Jim Moody, then head of the FBI’s organized crime unit, continued to meet with Presser in 1984 and 1985. Although Friedrick did not explain this, other sources said that officials below Webster interpreted the director’s order to mean that they could no longer direct Presser to gather information for them but could still accept tips on criminal matters that he volunteered.

To facilitate this process, the sources said, Friedrick and Moody often would ask a close associate of Presser, Anthony Hughes, to describe to Presser the kind of information they wanted. Hughes, too, had been a longtime informant.

Met at Presser’s Home

In describing contacts with Presser over the years, Friedrick said that the two often would meet for an hour or two in a downtown Cleveland hotel room on weekdays or at Presser’s home in suburban Lakewood, Ohio, on weekends. He said that Hughes generally was present.

“I was meeting with these guys on Sundays just about pretty regular,” Friedrick related. “I mean, I met with those guys like on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and all this. This was serious stuff. I was identifying with these people.”

He grew so close to Presser, Friedrick said, that “at Thanksgiving time they gave me a turkey or two . . . and some liquor at Christmastime.”