Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime
Printed page 19265 of McClellan Committee hearings Part 55: Provenzano repeatedly declines to answer questions from counsel Kennedy and Senators Curtis and Capehart.
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Testimony of Anthony Provenzano, July 6, 1959 (McClellan Committee, Part 55, pp. 19264–19268)

Anthony Provenzano, with counsel, answers nearly every question from the McClellan Committee, including whether he was president of Teamsters Local 560 and whether he took money from Pitman and Dorn, with "I respectfully decline to answer because I honestly believe my answer might tend to incriminate me."

Date
1959-07-06
Kind
hearing
Source
Internet Archive, scan of the printed hearings (Boston Public Library copy)
Retrieved
2026-10-12
Docket
Investigation of Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, Hearings before the Select Committee, 86th Cong., Part 55, pp. 19264–19268
Rights
A work of the United States Congress, printed by the Government Printing Office. Public domain in the United States under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The scan is of a GPO printing; Internet Archive marks it not in copyright. The stored page image was taken from the Internet Archive scan; quotations follow the Archive OCR, checked against the page image.

Printed in Part 55, under the heading “Testimony of Anthony Provenzano, accompanied by counsel, H. Clifford Allder.” He gave a business address in Hoboken and a residence in Hackensack; the street addresses are not reproduced here. Page 19264 prints them, so the stored image is page 19265.

Asked his occupation, he says: “Mr. Senator, I respectfully decline to answer because I honestly believe my answer might tend to incriminate me.” He gives the same answer when Kennedy asks whether he is president of the local (the OCR misreads the number as “660”), whether he was elected in June 1958 and later president of Joint Council 73, about the money from the Pitman and Dorn companies, about named associates, about Jimmy Hoffa, and about Michael Communale. Senator Capehart asks: “Do you intend to take the fifth amendment to any and every question asked you?” The answer is the same.

Invoking the privilege is not evidence of guilt. The names and facts in counsel’s questions are questions, not testimony, and the witness adopted none of them; this archive does not record them as facts about anyone. He was later convicted on the Dorn payments (334 F.2d 678).

itemMcClellan Committee hearings, Part 55: July 1, 6, 7, 8 and 9, 1959Part 55 of the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field hearings, printed in 1959, including the July 6 session on Teamsters Local 560 and New Jersey trucking companies.itemTestimony of Arthur Pitman, Hoboken trucking company president, July 6, 1959 (McClellan Committee, Part 55, pp. 19239 ff.)A New Jersey trucking executive tells the McClellan Committee that Anthony Provenzano, then a Local 560 business agent, asked him for $5,000 and said he "wouldn't be in business too long" if he did not pay, and that he eventually paid $2,500.itemTestimony of Walter A. Dorn, Dorn's Transportation Co., July 6, 1959 (McClellan Committee, Part 55, pp. 19246 ff.)A trucking executive tells the McClellan Committee that in 1952 two Local 560 business agents told him "if I wanted to stop having trouble I had better get him some money," and that he paid Anthony Provenzano about $1,500 in cash at the Swiss Town House in Weehawken over the next fifteen months.itemUnited States v. Provenzano, 334 F.2d 678 (3d Cir. 1964)The Third Circuit affirmed Anthony Provenzano's Hobbs Act conviction. He was indicted in 1960, as an officer of Teamsters Local 560, for extorting $17,100 from Dorn's Transportation Company between 1952 and 1959.