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Teamsters Get FBI Deposition on Presser

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Times Staff Writers

Jackie Presser, the late president of the Teamsters Union, admitted that the nation’s largest union was infiltrated by organized crime and he became a government informant to clean it up, the FBI’s top investigator has said in the first sworn statement in the case by a high-ranking bureau official.

The deposition of Oliver B. Revell, the bureau’s executive assistant director for investigations, was taken by Teamster attorneys. It may help the union to counter federal charges that it has been dominated by the Mafia for decades by demonstrating that a senior union officer was working with law enforcement to end the underworld domination.

Revell’s disclosure of Presser’s surprising admission about mob infiltration marked the first time that a high-level FBI official had been called upon to assess Presser’s role.

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A copy of the deposition, taken in the government’s civil racketeering case against the Teamsters, was obtained by The Times. In it, Revell credits Presser with having had unusually noble motives for a government informant.

Revell said that Presser, during a decade as a secret informant, provided crucial information to help convict leaders of the Mafia’s Genovese family in New York while telling FBI agents that the underworld family controlled his actions as a Teamster leader.

Trial of the racketeering case is set for Feb. 27 in New York following refusal of the Teamsters Union 10 days ago to accept a settlement offer by the government.

Revell confirmed that the FBI encouraged Presser to maintain his Mafia contacts.

The FBI official replied “that’s correct” when asked whether “part of his (Presser’s) task would have been to continue a relationship with the Cleveland or other LCN (La Cosa Nostra) families in order to obtain information?”

Presser “would not be allowed to initiate criminal activity, but he certainly was tasked and encouraged to provide as much information about their activities as possible,” Revell said.

In this connection, Revell called into question the veracity of the FBI’s No. 2 official in Las Vegas, Patrick Foran, who once was Presser’s contact agent in Cleveland. Foran has claimed that he authorized Presser to keep Mafia-related non-working employees on the Teamster payroll, for which Presser was later indicted.

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Declaring that the motives of most government informants are not as high-minded as Presser’s, Revell said that it was Presser’s “stated intent of lessening the hold of organized crime on the Teamsters Union.”

“He gave us a strategic view into the attempt by La Cosa Nostra to control and dominate the Teamsters Union at the national and at many of the local levels,” Revell said.

Although he never met Presser personally, Revell said that “one of the questions I asked early on was why (was Presser an informant).” He said that agents and FBI supervisors who dealt with Presser spoke of his desire to rid the nation’s largest trade union of corruption.

“There also are other aspects to it,” Revell continued. Asked to elaborate, he added:

“Having an out, an avenue to protect himself, an opportunity to have the government act on his behalf if he became subject to serious threat.”

As rumors circulated over the years of Presser’s informant status, “there were a number of instances when information would come to my attention that he was a subject of a plot or threat,” Revell testified.

“There was one specific instance when the Chicago outfit (Mafia) wanted to kill him and (the) New York (Mafia) intervened on his behalf.”

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Although Revell did not note it, some law enforcement officials have speculated that one of Presser’s motives in becoming an FBI informant in the mid-1970s was to instigate prosecutions of rival Teamster officials and thus speed his own rise to the presidency.

Revell, in fact, confirmed that Presser was a key informant in the government’s 1982 prosecution of his predecessor, former Teamster President Roy L. Williams, who was convicted along with others of attempting to bribe a U.S. senator.

Referring to Presser as “highly productive,” he said that the late Teamster chieftain, who died of cancer last July, also had helped the government convict several Midwest Mafia leaders of conspiracy in January, 1986, in connection with the use of the Teamsters Union Central States Pension Fund to purchase gambling casinos in Las Vegas.

That case, which was tried in Kansas City, revealed that untaxed proceeds were “skimmed” from casino profits and distributed to Mafia leaders in Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Cleveland and New York.

Revell said that Presser, whose code name was “All Pro,” was “the No. 1 labor racketeering source” for the FBI.

Ironically, investigators for the Labor Department, unaware of his ties to the FBI, began developing a racketeering case against Presser and two associates in 1982 based on the alleged employment of Mafia-related “ghost employees” by Presser’s Cleveland Teamster local.

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Foran and two other agents who were subordinate to Revell tried to head off Presser’s indictment on grounds that they had advised Presser to hire the Mafia relatives, but federal prosecutors decided that the agents were not being truthful and brought the case anyway. Presser’s two Teamster associates were convicted last month.

Foran last year took the rare step for an FBI official of refusing to testify in that criminal prosecution and in the massive government racketeering suit in New York, on grounds that he might incriminate himself in a related inquiry into how the FBI handled the Presser case.

Revell said that until the question arose over the alleged authorization of Presser, he “would have staked my life and reputation on his (Foran’s) veracity.”

“I don’t know what his veracity is now,” Revell said.

He added that the matter involving Foran “is not a completed situation,” and that “there are other actions pending.”

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