The Hoffa Wars: The Rise and Fall of Jimmy Hoffa

by Dan E. Moldea, Mark Crispin Miller (Editor)

The definitive portrait of the powerful, corruption-ridden Teamsters union and its legendary president, Jimmy Hoffa—organizer, gangster, convict, and conspirator—with a new afterword by the author James Riddle “Jimmy” Hoffa was one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in twentieth-century America. His remarkable journey from young union organizer to all-powerful head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is an epic tale worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, jam-packed with intrigue, subterfuge, violence, and corruption. His successes were monumental, his fall truly spectacular, and his bizarre disappearance in the summer of 1975 remains one of the great mysteries in American history. Widely considered to be the definitive volume on the career and crimes of Jimmy Hoffa, The Hoffa Wars, by acclaimed investigative journalist Dan E. Moldea, is an eye-opening, extensively researched account of the steady rise and fall of an ingenious, ambitious man who was instrumental in transforming a small union of seventy-five thousand truckers into the most powerful labor brotherhood in world. Shocking disclosures in Moldea’s no-holds-barred account include the devil’s bargain that put Hoffa and his union in the pockets of the Mob, Hoffa’s role in the joint CIA-Mafia plots to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro, the deal Hoffa made with US president Richard Nixon that released the disgraced Teamster president from prison eight years early, and the truth behind Hoffa’s eventual disappearance and likely murder. But perhaps the most startling revelation of all concerns the integral part Jimmy Hoffa played, in concert with underworld kingpins Carlos Marcello and Santos Trafficante, in America’s most terrible twentieth-century the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Genres: History, Biography, True Crime, Nonfiction, Politics, Crime, Labor

706 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Dan E. Moldea, a specialist on organized-crime investigations since 1974, bestselling author, and independent journalist, has published eight nonfiction books: The Hoffa Wars: Teamsters, Rebels, Politicians and the Mob (1978); The Hunting of Cain: A True Story of Money, Greed and Fratricide (1983); Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob (1986); Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football (1989); The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy: An Investigation of Motive, Means, and Opportunity (1995); Evidence Dismissed: The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of O.J. Simpson (with Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter, 1997); A Washington Tragedy: How the Death of Vincent Foster Ignited a Political Firestorm (1998); and Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer: Adventures in the Jungles of Crime, Politics, and Journalism (2013). He is currently at work on his ninth true-crime book.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting journalistic account of the life and crimes of Jimmy Hoffa and the connections between him and other Teamster leaders and the mob.

Unfortunately suffers from very thin sourcing which makes many of the more interesting claims impossible to verify. There are numerous instances throughout the book where Moldea attributes states of mind, thoughts, emotions, and motives to people like Hoffa he has no source for or way of actually verifying. One can write that off as artistic/journalistic license but if one wants to consider this a serious work of investigative reporting and not just a salacious story, you have to be more precise about attributing motives or thoughts when you have no source.

Also gets way too hung up in pinning the JFK assassination on Hoffa, which is kinda silly. He certainly had motive and connections to the mob figures who WERE likely involved, but so many other details of the plot, especially regarding the activities of Oswald, required a much more powerful and connected source than even Hoffa. He may have had some tangential connection, perhaps introducing some of his mob associates to the actual directors of the scheme in the CIA, but the idea that he and the mob solely handled it on their own is untenable especially in light of the information released and unearthed in the 30 years since the 92 edition of this book.

The book also suffers from an inordinate love for the petit bourgeois ideology around the concept of being an owner operator. While this group of drivers was no doubt mistreated by corrupt officials, little attention is given to the fact that the owner operator model is and always has been bad for workers and something that has only become much much worse since deregulation of the trucking industry. So not exactly a solid working class or even just labor friendly look at the whole "employee vs independent contractor" issue.

All that being said, Moldea does a good job digging into the connections between various teamster leaders and organized crime figures. He also does an excellent job documenting the long history of the fight by rank and file reformers to take back their union and run it democratically, culminating in the election of TDU backed president Ron Carey in 1991. There's a lot of good information in here, but unfortunately it's surrounded by a lot that can't be verified and that really hurts it's value as a citeable source.

[patrick Lorelli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really this book did not enlighten anything to the person that has been following the mob in different books and other stories you are really not given any new information. For the people that have read anything about the Chicago mob the “Outfit” you already know the he used teamsters’ retirement fund to laundry money and also help build casinos in Las Vegas. His biggest problem was not being able to put the money back in and to start playing hardball with the higher ups thinking he was something. Which he was gone forever no trace. The author talks about the association with the Kennedy election and also the assignation which has always been associated with the Chicago mob and New Orleans mob. He also speaks about the Cuban involvement which was also one of the reasons for The Watergate break-in since Nixon was part of the team that came up with the original plan when he was Vice President, also why two Cuban Nationals were arrested during that break-in. There was always talk of a secret bank account in Laguna California that was linked to Nixon and the mob and when it was rob in the 70’s the men who did were not only hunted down by the feds but by the mob. There is a book all about that which was interesting. This book for me was not anything new I have been reading and following stories here in the states and Italy since the early 70s. If you want to get started it would be an okay book.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dan E molder is an investigative journalist who has conducted extensive research on James (Jimmy) Riddle Hoffa. Molder’s biography of Hoffa is an in-depth look at the life of this interesting and controversial figure of the 20th century. Molder follows Hoffa from a young union organizer to the all powerful leader of the Teamsters Union. Hoffa’s disappearance in 1975 is one of the great mysteries.
The author shows how Hoffa put the Union into the clutches of the Mod. The author discusses the Nixon bribes, mafia connection, shakedowns during organizing and Hoffa use of the Union Pension fund to provide capital for the mob to build casinos in Los Vegas.
It was in this book “The Hoffa Wars” published in 1978 that Molder put forth the theory that Hoffa along with mobsters Carlo Marcello and Santos Trafficants arranged the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This theory has become very popular over time. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is fairly long at a bit over 21 hours. Eric Martin narrated the book.

[N · Rating 4 out of 5]

"An act of God," claimed a police officer. "Yeah," the shaken driver responded, "if God is a member of the Teamsters Union."

Enjoyed reading this, learnt a lot, but I'm glad I read a bunch of other Teamster- and mob-related shit before tackling this so I already knew who the main players were - otherwise it would've been (more) overwhelming.

[Pietro Condello · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be honest, I really didn't know much about Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters beyond Danny DeVito's 1992 movie with Jack Nicholson. There really was so much more to this story, and Dan Moldea remains the authority on the subject. Hoffa's story started in Detroit 1932, in the throes of great depression as a union organizer for Local 299 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Hoffa's rise through the ranks of the IBT to president of Local 299, to national vice-president to national president coincided with his steadily strengthening connection to Detroit and Chicago organized crime, followed by his prison term and still mysterious disappearance that remains an FBI open case to this day. I found Moldea gets too deep into the inside baseball of union politics, and the JFK theory, while compelling, just doesn't meet the sniff test of real journalism, which detracts from the rest of his work which is the source of much of what we collectively know about this fascinating historical figure.

Some interesting topics Moldea covers at length:

- Hoffa's connection to the mob and financing of Vegas casinos through union pension funded loans

- His connection to the CIA's "partnership" and use of the mafia's entrenchment in Cuba to help in the plot to overthrow Castro

- Bobby Kennedy, chief counsel of the Senate permanent investigations subcommittee and the McClellan Committee hearings

- The Apalachin meeting of 1957 at which over 100 mafia bosses got together to discuss mob operations

- Hoffa's jury tampering case that landed him in jail

- Hoffa's prison alliance with Carmine Galante and surprisingly not Tony Provenzano

- Bobby Kennedy's assassination plot Sept in 1962

- Richard Nixon's intervention on Hoffa's behalf in 1960 to quash the Sun Valley indictment

- The admittedly circumstantial evidence linking the mafia and the Teamsters with the assassination of John F. Kennedy & Lee Harvey Oswald, and the fact that the Warren Commission never really pursued the connection

- The fallout between Hoffa and Russell Bufalino (head of the Bufalino crime family) & Tony Provenzano (captain of the Genovese crime family and vice president of Teamsters Local 560) after Hoffa's release from prison

- The infamous meeting at the Machus Red Fox restaurant, supposedly ordered by Russell Buffalino and organized by Anthony Giacalone , where Hoffa believed he was to have a "peace conference" with Tony Provenzano

- The revelation that although until the late 1970's, it was widely assumed (but never proven) that Salvatore Briguglio killed Hoffa, Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran most likely pulled the trigger, based on evidence uncovered in the last few decades.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1978 and already the nexus of anti-Castro CIA+Mafia assassination plots morphing into anti-Kennedy sniping (whether allegorical or actual) was already well documented and swirling in the error around Trafficante the rest of the Tampa Mafia, et al including Hoffa hiring goons in a Teamster atmosphere of bombings, beatings and blocking highways with the big rigs of wildcat strikers. Pretty amazing stuff and it all happened here while J. Edgar chose to reject the notion of organized crime and Nixon sent runners to get dirty union and crime kickbacks by the bagful.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

i remember all this quite well and the book brought back memories.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book on Jimmy Hoffa I have ever read. If you are interested in his life, his affiliations and his disappearance, this is a must read.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is very, very well-researched, but it is also dull as paint. When I start thinking about this book, it reminds me more than anything of my grad school experience with science communication. Which seems totally irrelevant for a book about unions and the mob, but bear with me. The main key to getting people to understand science, we were told, was story. And there is a story here - one of labour movements and corruption and organised crime - and I think it's an interesting story, or at least it is in parts. But mostly it's buried under an absolute welter of detail. Flip open to any page and it's acronym soup. Now maybe, when this book was published, it was referring to organisations and people so familiar to the reader that they could easily absorb it, but this is all happening in another time and another country from my perspective, so it can be very hard to follow. In all fairness, things do pick up some in Part Two, which does have marginally more sense of story for me to follow, but mostly it is a hard and often tedious slog.

It does make me want to read a more generalist book on the topic, though. And the total willingness of the upper echelons of the Teamsters union to gouge the rank and file for their own benefit, and to get in bed with the mob, is frankly disturbing. I know the history of labour movements isn't all sunshine and roses, but it seems like half the people in here, given the slightest opportunity, are throwing (literal) sticks of dynamite at each other. And at each other's families, which is worse.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of detail and I found it to be a very dull read. Lots of acronyms, lots and lots of names of people and it was difficult to follow. I had to put it down after 50 pages. Unfortunate, because I was excited to read this book with the hype behind it. This book was very difficult to locate a copy at the time of purchase and I don't think it's in print anymore.

I have read other Jimmy Hoffa books that had a different method of delivery of information. Those books I was able to follow crystal clear. This book almost make me feel like I had to take notes to refer back to while reading it. It reads much like a college textbook.

Don't let my three star review deter anyone from reading. I'm sure this is a great book for someone who is very geeked out on Hoffa and more particularly The Teamsters.

[Jack Getz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting but Dense

I enjoyed so much of this historic time capsule back into the tumultuous days (and the end) of Jimmy Hoffa, the Mob, The Kennedis, assassinations, Bay of Pigs, Nixon, Johnson, the corrupt CIA, Castro, sensational trial, murders, thugs and other major historical milestones, the real stories stories of which have been swept under the carpet for too long. This mam is the absolute maven of these stories and histories.

I found a good deal of the inner workings of the Teamsters history to be too pedantic for my tastes, but if you like detailed history, the Mob and any of the above, this is your guy.

[Carl A. Marine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok book

There was a lot of information in this book regarding Jimmy Hoffa's rise and fall. So much that the chapters we're too long. I needed a score card to keep track of all the details in the too long chapters, which made it hard to read. I have read plenty of books with this much information that were organized better.

[Night of the Big Rain · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely influential book. I’ll admit I don’t know that I can fully accept the JFK assassination theory put forward, but I think The Hoffa Wars is a landmark text that anyone interested in deep politics should read and have on their shelf to have on hand for reference. Moldea’s book Dark Victory should probably be read along with or directly after The Hoffa Wars.

[Mary Tarro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well done capture of the corruption at the top of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, victimizing rank and file, decade after decade.

[Charlie West · Rating 1 out of 5]

The writer has a good style, but he’s so anti-Hoffa it’s despicable to watch RFK in the Kiffer committee go after Hoffa as the Kennedys gained their money from bootlegging liquor they got the Kennedys into the presidency and then they go after what got them there and the whole time the CIA is Trying to assassinate Castro the country and this guy trashes the mall he doesn’t do his research. He thinks he’s the greatest in the field. You should read the book teamsters. Rozzy, G and Connor, and Hoffa were all found dead and they were made to look like mob land killings unfortunately they were, about to testify it was a CIA that killed them. People needed to stop corporate America. Unfortunately this is one of the best books written about half of the author so that it’s hard to read. Half was for the workingman it wasn’t for pocket.

[Hélène Young · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a hard time following the story. I had to keep going back to figure out who was who and for the timeline as well. I should have taken notes....

[George Presley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uneven reading. A few interesting chapters describing Hoffa's involvement with underworld figures and his war against the Kennedy's. Other than those chapters, it was a repetitive account of ongoing struggles within the ranks. Of little interest to me. I was however interested in reading this book knowing that my uncle's brother was mentioned in it. My uncle had said his brother was in it, probably knowing none of us would be interested enough to pick it up. Well I did 35 years later and that part was quite entertaining to me. Frank Chavez is mentioned and not in a very favorable light. Described as an enforcer and a "goon", it mentions his personal interest in "taking out" Bobby Kennedy and meeting with Jack Ruby at the time of JFK's assassination. I certainly wouldn't subscribe to the politics he embraced, but it was compelling to read. My family almost packed it up to move to Puerto Rico as the going was good, but those plans were scrubbed when Chavez was shot by his own bodyguard. Nevertheless, these chapters were not enough to redeem this book.

[MANISH PATEL · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece detailing life story of Jimmy Hoffa from his beginning years, to his rise in teamsters union, and the eventual fall. The author has described inner workings, and unavoidable politics, back stabbing in such an environment. It also portrays how Hoffa during initial years was indeed a well-intentioned leader, before the union became too large with different people vying for attention and headlines and before Hoffa became power hungry

[Tom Nolan]

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