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Family Weekly I May 5, 1963
The Battle of the Century:
THE BOBBY KENNEDY-
IN 1923 promoter Tex Rickard im
ported a huge, shaggy-haired Argen
tine named Luis Firpo to battle Jack
Dempsey for the heavyweight title.
Canny Rickard billed the imbroglio, "The
Battle of the Century," and the Polo Grounds
in New York was jammed with the credulous
who thought that the crude South American had
a chance against the champion. The Battle of the
Century was vicious enough, but it took only two
rounds for Dempsey to render Firpo very uncon
scious indeed.
Ever since 1957, however, a fight has been go
ing on between Robert F. Kennedy and James R.
Hoffa which has a much better right to be called
the Battle of the Century than the two-round af
fair promoted by Rickard.
It began when Bobby Kennedy, as chief counsel
for the awkwardly named Senate Select Commit
tee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Man
agement Field, headed by Sen. John McClellan,
submitted Hoffa to several grueling sessions be
fore a tv audience estimated at 25 million people.
(Only 82,000 saw the Dempsey-Firpo fight.)
Previously the Committee had gotten rid of
Dave Beck as president of the Teamsters Union,
and this, ironically enough, brought Hoffa to the
presidency. To stretch a point, it might be said
that indirectly the Committee placed Hoffa in the
driver's seat. Then the Committee set out to get
the aggressive head of 1,900,000 teamsters.
Hoffa spent 18 tough sessions before the Com
mittee with counsel Kennedy doing most of the
questioning. Unlike many of his associates, Hoffa
did not seek sanctuary in the Fifth Amendment.
He was questioned about some of his unsavory
aids, about an alleged attempt to bribe a Com
mittee investigator, about the allegation that he
had tapped telephones of his subordinates.
On the stand Hoffa was unco-operative and
slippery; time after time he resorted to the "I
don't remember" technique. Kennedy kept after
him relentlessly, but Hoffa, like a good boxer,
deflected the verbal blows with evasive tactics. He
was patronizing toward Kennedy. At one point
he said, "But look, Bobby boy, you just don't
understand these things." Kennedy went white
with anger. There are those who say that it was
that gibe which made Kennedy resolve to get
Hoffa at all costs.
Hoffa emerged from the hearings battered and
bruised but reasonably intact. Kennedy had
proved beyond doubt that many of Hoffa's aids
were gangsters, but there was no evidence that
- Hoffa himself had ever been a strong-arm man .
or that he had been derelict in dealing with the
huge union funds virtually at his disposal.
And so the Senate Rackets Committee (as it
generally was known) finished its hearings with
20,000 pages of written testimony, with the ap
proval of the television public, and with an im
petus that projected tenacious, tough-minded
Bobby Kennedy into the office of Attorney Gen
eral of the United States. The Washington cor
respondents who once called him Bob or Bobby
now call him General, the traditional title ac
corded the head of the Department of Justice.
On him the title looks good; his maturity is at
tested to by every Department of Justice lawyer
I know (including a former member of the staff
whom I once called "Whizzer" but who is now
Mr. Justice Byron White of the Supreme Court).
Hoffa, too, has gained in experience and ma
turity. His grip on the enormous Teamsters
Union seems stronger than ever, and a dozen
times he has publicly defied the Attorney General
and labeled his efforts as nothing but a "personal
vendetta against Hoffa and his union." (Hoffa
likes to refer to himself in the third person.)
Hoffa sincerely believes that the Attorney Gen
eral and his 1,700 lawyers will not be happy until
he is not only removed from office but also help
ing to sew mailbags behind the unresponsive bars
of a Federal penitentiary.
The Stakes Are High for Both
Washington, D.C., is a city which has no indus
try; it doesn't produce food or first-division base
ball teams its only product is gossip. Drop into
the sophisticated Jockey Club or visit the Na
tional Press Club or (if you're silly enough) at
tend the daily round of diplomatic, press, politi
cal, or social cocktail parties, and you'll hear a
lot of gossip a great deal of it concerning the
feud between Kennedy and Hoffa.
It is generally agreed that this is a fight to
the death. The stakes are high. If Hoffa loses,
he will no longer be the most important union
official in the country. If Kennedy loses, it could
cost him the Presidency in 1968 (according to the
betting in Washington, he is at present a shoo-in
for the nomination).
The Attorney General has denied that this is a
personal feud. He has not commented publicly on
the Hoffa affair since he took office nor would
he discuss his feelings toward Hoffa when I
talked to him recently. Not even off the record.
I saw Hoffa the same day in the imposing
Teamsters Union building at 25 Louisiana Ave.,
just 1,900 feet from the Department of Justice
building, and for once Hoffa had no arrows to
shoot at Kennedy. In the past he has been quil
free in attacking him, but during my visit he
smilingly refrained from discussing personalities.
Few people in Washington seem to be neutral
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