John Cye Cheasty

John Cye Cheasty was a New York investigator whose brief encounter with Jimmy Hoffa became a central episode in Hoffa’s effort to obtain inside information about the McClellan Committee. A former Navy serviceman and Secret Service member with investigative work as a specialty, Cheasty turned Hoffa’s attempt to buy his cooperation into a reported bribery scheme and a closely monitored exchange. His testimony later helped put the transaction before a jury, though it did not secure a conviction.

Background and Recruitment

By February 1957, Hoffa was impatient to learn how the McClellan Committee operated. He approached Cheasty, whose background in the Navy and Secret Service, as well as his investigative practice, made him a prospective source inside the committee. Hoffa proposed that Cheasty take a committee job and report its activities to him in return for $24,000, paid at $2,000 a month over a year.

Hoffa also gave Cheasty $1,000 toward the expenses of getting the job. The account presents the offer as a miscalculation: Hoffa had not adequately checked Cheasty’s character or loyalties. Cheasty was an honest investigator and patriot, and he reported the proposal immediately rather than accepting the arrangement as intended.

The Monitored Exchange

Bobby Kennedy hired Cheasty to work for the committee at an annual salary of $5,000. The FBI then placed microphones and cameras as part of its surveillance. Cheasty told Hoffa that he had an envelope of sensitive committee documents and wanted another cash installment in exchange for it, setting up a meeting near DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C.

At the meeting, Cheasty handed Hoffa the envelope, and Hoffa paid him $2,000 in cash. Cameras recorded the exchange. FBI agents moved in and arrested Hoffa on the spot, with the documents and money making the attempted purchase of committee information a witnessed and photographed transaction rather than a private allegation.

Testimony and Acquittal

In June 1957, Hoffa went on trial in Washington, D.C., accused of bribing a McClellan Committee investigator for information about the committee’s activities. Cheasty’s testimony supplied the account of the attempted recruitment and exchange. During cross-examination, Hoffa’s attorney, Edward Bennett Williams, asked whether Cheasty had ever officially investigated the NAACP. Cheasty said he had not, but the question introduced doubt without establishing that he had done so.

Hoffa was acquitted. The outcome sharply separated the strength of the recorded transaction from its result in court: Cheasty had reported the offer, worked with the committee, and taken part in an FBI-monitored exchange, yet the jury did not convict Hoffa. In the episode, Cheasty is less a continuing presence than the hinge between Hoffa’s covert search for committee information and the public criminal case that followed.