The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa

Walter Sheridan’s 1972 book, The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa, is cited as a key account of James R. Hoffa’s secret role in steering the McClellan Committee toward Dave Beck. Its significance in the narrative lies in the double edge of that maneuver: Hoffa helped remove a rival and divert scrutiny from his own affairs, but the method could also be read as informing on an ally—a breach with lasting consequences in a world governed by loyalty and silence.

Publication and source

The book is identified as Sheridan’s 1972 account, published while James R. Hoffa was alive and had just left prison. The later account draws on Sheridan’s description to reconstruct an episode from the committee’s early history, distinguishing what Sheridan reported from the broader interpretation attached to it.

Hoffa’s approach to the committee

When the McClellan Committee was formed in early 1957, its target was Dave Beck, then president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Sheridan wrote that James R. Hoffa secretly supplied Robert F. Kennedy with information about Beck by arranging for one of Beck’s own attorneys to pass it along. He also reported that Hoffa had the same attorney arrange a meeting with Kennedy, at which Hoffa would offer to cooperate with the committee. In this account, cooperation did not begin with an open approach: Hoffa used an intermediary already inside Beck’s legal circle.

The meaning of the disclosure

The later narrator treats Sheridan’s brief account as more than a detail about committee strategy. Because Beck’s attorney was acting for Beck, the reported arrangement raised a serious question about the attorney’s duty to his client and the possibility of professional consequences for Kennedy, depending on the facts. The book’s two sentences thus carry implications beyond the transfer of information: they suggest a covert alliance built through a compromised channel.

The disclosure also acquires a different weight in light of the mob figures’ code against informing. Russell Bufalino, Santo Trafficante, Carlos Marcello, Tony Provenzano, and Tony Jack are presented as men for whom betraying an ally by acting as a rat was an unforgivable defect. Sheridan’s account could therefore be read as evidence against Hoffa’s reputation for loyalty. The later narrative links that implication to Hoffa’s public threat, years afterward, to expose mob influence in the Teamsters Pension Fund under Frank Fitzsimmons; that later threat reinforced, rather than originated, the suspicion attached to his earlier conduct.

Strategic result and narrative role

In the late 1950s, the tactic paid off in immediate terms. The committee concentrated its resources on Beck, leaving Hoffa’s Test Fleet and Sun Valley deals on the back burner, while Beck was removed as an obstacle to Hoffa. The book’s account therefore presents a maneuver that was effective in the short term but perilous in its longer implications: the same secrecy that helped Hoffa redirect scrutiny could later make his conduct look like betrayal. The later narrative uses Sheridan’s book to connect an episode of labor politics to the suspicion and conflict that marked Hoffa’s subsequent relationships with powerful underworld figures.