Dave Beck

Dave Beck appears in the book as both the disgraced president of the Teamsters and the target of a maneuver that helped clear the way for his successor. His fall brought a criminal scandal into public view; the account also suggests that Jimmy Hoffa helped direct the scrutiny toward Beck while shielding his own interests.

Presidency and Fall

In 1957, Beck was the Teamsters president and Hoffa’s predecessor and mentor. The book says Beck abdicated the presidency and went to jail after embezzling $370,000 from the Western Conference of Teamsters. Among the uses of the money was financing a house for his son. His departure marked a sharp transfer of power: the account presents Hoffa, who succeeded him, as wielding the union presidency with little restraint.

Beck’s personal scandal thus had consequences beyond his own prosecution. His removal opened the leadership position to Hoffa, while the circumstances of his embezzlement gave investigators a conspicuous target. The book places this transition at the start of Hoffa’s period of nearly absolute control over the union.

The McClellan Committee and Hoffa’s Maneuver

When the McClellan Committee was formed in early 1957, its initial target was Beck. Walter Sheridan, an aide to Bobby Kennedy, later wrote that Hoffa secretly arranged for one of Beck’s own attorneys to feed Kennedy information about Beck’s wrongdoing. Sheridan also said that Hoffa had the same attorney arrange a meeting with Kennedy, at which Hoffa would offer to cooperate with the committee. The account describes Beck’s lawyer as the intermediary; it does not establish what Beck himself knew about the arrangement.

The investigation’s focus on Beck worked to Hoffa’s advantage. While the committee concentrated its resources on the incumbent president’s misconduct, Hoffa’s own Test Fleet and Sun Valley dealings receded to the back burner. Beck was removed from the path to the presidency, and the scrutiny that might have reached Hoffa’s affairs was redirected. In this telling, Beck’s downfall was at once a real scandal and the instrument of a political calculation by the man who succeeded him.

Retrospective Significance

Sheridan’s account appeared in 1972, after Hoffa had walked out of prison. The book emphasizes the moral and political implications of the maneuver: Hoffa had used an attorney representing Beck to provide damaging information to Kennedy and to arrange Hoffa’s own offer of cooperation. That later description makes Beck more than a predecessor displaced by ordinary union politics; he becomes the ally Hoffa sacrificed to weaken a rival and protect his position.

The narrative does not give Beck a developed voice or describe his response to the disclosures. His place in the story is defined instead by the contrast between the two men’s fortunes: Beck’s embezzlement brought imprisonment and ended his presidency, while Hoffa’s calculated assistance to the investigation helped shift attention away from his own dealings and left him free to consolidate power.