‘In Hoffa’s Shadow’ Details How a Famous Disappearance Hit Close to Home

My first thoughts were that this might be a good, interesting book (evil is always more interesting than good) and we should pay more attention to a very underrated movie: "Hoffa" starring Jack Nicholson. Very worth watching and check out the director/supporting actor. Surprising.

Read "I Heard You Paint Houses" by Charles Brandt. Its the basis for the new Scorsese film "The Irishman". Great read. I am looking forward to reading "In Hoffa's Shadow".

I do wonder how many people will remember anything about Hoffa other than his disappearance. From a different era but sounds like it has some pointed lessons for today....

Goldsmith complains that surveillance techniques used against Hoffa "could be used to destroy just about any citizen who draws the ire of the state." I don't know the author's associates, but I have known very few people who I suspect could be destroyed by the content of private conversations.

I met Hoffa once very briefly - but it was not recently. - It was shortly after he got out of prison - about 1972 or early 1973.. - I was a law student, and a labor law professor brought him to campus to give a lecture. I don't remember much of what he said - but I do remember him saying that the rank and file still thought him as their leader, despite the restrictions on his release. After his talk was completed, he shook hands with a number of law students including me and I felt like I had just shaken hands with the godfather.

...and I queue up the Stones' "Sympathy For The Devil."

Chuckie's opaque, shifting, ominous utterances sound very much like those of our President.

"Chuckie sounds like he’s telling it like it is, except when he’s not, which is often — a trick he learned out of professional necessity. “I never told anybody what was right,” he said to Goldsmith. “I always used what I had to use to divert it.” According to a 1976 memo from the F.B.I., “O’Brien is described by even his closest friends as a pathological liar.” Goldsmith is gentler: “Chuckie inhabits a different linguistic and conceptual universe than I.” Did Trump tale lessons from Chuckie? He acts like it.

I think this will be an interesting read, if anything from various accounts of Hoffa's driver as well as adding another source for the Hoffa disappearance. But to be completely frank, I was spellbound while reading, "I Heard You Paint Houses" by Charles Brandt which is based on the death bed confession of Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran. I'd love to see more books researched and written about the disappearance of Helen Brach.

Perhaps in his next book he can examine the conservative trope that college is where impressionable youth are brainwashed by commie profs and turned socialist.

I no longer discern any differences between Mafioso and other powerful or wealthy people.

The book sounds like a self-serving longer version of a "National Enquirer" article. I will pass for sure.

Stephen Brill wrote an excellent book about the teamsters in 1978: "The Teamsters". He had a great deal of information and plausible conjecture about Hoffa's disappearance. He also addressed O'Brien's possible role. Does this new book give a response to Brill's groundbreaking work?

Interesting, how the Law-breakers as well as the Law-makers abuse or misuse the Law! To reach the goal of a clean and good government--of the people, by the people, for the people--requires a much higher degree of "Town Hall Activism". This is especially true for the Information age. The citizen participation in the current Impeachment Debate can be a good barometer!

My Aunt, Florence Criley, was an organizer for UE and knew Hoffa well enough that he gave her a tour through the Teamster's building after he took over from the corrupt Dave Beck. She knew that Hoffa was too entangled with the mob to make a clean break, but she thought that unlike Beck, Hoffa put the interests of his members first.

Nothing is as dead than yesterday's news!