President's Commission on Organized Crime, The Edge (1986): the Teamsters and longshoremen sections
The Commission's 1986 report on organized crime, business and labor unions. Its Teamsters section, "The Most Controlled Union," reviews five IBT presidents from 1952 to 1985 and quotes Roy L. Williams: "Every big [Teamster] local union ... had some connection with organized crime."
- Date
- 1986-03
- Kind
- hearing
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- President's Commission on Organized Crime, The Edge: Organized Crime, Business, and Labor Unions, Report to the President and the Attorney General (March 1986)
- Rights
- A report of a federal commission established by Executive Order 12435 to the President and the Attorney General. A federal work, public domain in the United States under 17 U.S.C. § 105. Read from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service scan; the page image stored here is the cover from that scan.
The Edge was the second report of the President’s Commission on Organized Crime, chaired by Irving R. Kaufman, and examines “the problem of labor and management racketeering by organized crime in the United States.” This page covers its section on the Teamsters and its section on the International Longshoremen’s Association. The report’s section on Atlantic City and hotel workers’ Local 54 is a separate record on this site.
Section Five, “The International Brotherhood of Teamsters: The Most Controlled Union,” says organized crime “influences at least 38 of the largest locals and a joint council” in several cities, and quotes former president Roy L. Williams: “Every big [Teamster] local union … had some connection with organized crime.” It counts five presidents from 1952 to 1985. “The first, Dave Beck, was convicted in 1959 for violating federal income tax laws.” Hoffa “was convicted of jury tampering in 1964 and disappeared (presumably murdered by organized crime) in 1975.” Frank Fitzsimmons “was not indicted during his tenure and died a natural death in office in 1981.” Williams served from 1981 until 1983, “when he was convicted of conspiracy to attempt to bribe a United States Senator.” The Commission writes that “Hoffa and Williams were indisputably direct instruments of organized crime” and that Presser’s past activities indicated he had associated with organized crime figures.
The longshoremen’s section recounts the ILA’s expulsion from the AFL, which ended “an affiliation of 60 years,” the tenure of Joseph P. Ryan, and the history of Brooklyn’s Local 1814 under Anthony Anastasio and then Anthony Scotto.
These are the Commission’s characterizations, not court findings. The report names living persons as members of crime families; this page does not repeat those statements, and no person page on this site takes a family or rank from this report. The text was read from uncorrected OCR of a photocopy.
