DETROIT -- Alleged mob figure Anthony Giacalone demanded $250,000 from Teamsters President Frank Fitzsimmons for arranging the murder of former union chief Jimmy Hoffa, according to a newly released FBI report.
The report was disclosed during hearings in Newark, N.J., this week on federal attempts to oust Charles 'Chuckie' O'Brien from his post with the Teamsters southern conference at Hallandale, Fla.
O'Brien, Hoffa's foster son, has long been a key figure in the FBI investigation of Hoffa's disappearance from a parking lot of a Michigan restaurant in July 1975. He is believed dead.
The information in the FBI report comes from Jackie Presser, another former Teamsters president who died in 1988.
Presser told the FBI in 1978 that Giacalone called Fitzsimmons, demanded money and reminded him that 'it never ends.'
Hoffa was president of the union when he was convicted of jury tampering in 1964 and Fitzimmons suceeded him. Hoffa served nearly five years until he was pardoned by President Richard Nixon and at the time of his disappearance he was believed to be planning to take the Teamsters presidency from Fitzsimmons in a 1976 election.
The FBI report says Fitzsimmons, who has since died, refused to pay Giacalone.
O'Brien, then an official with Teamsters Local 299 in Detroit, went to Washington, D.C., in June 1978 in an unsuccessful effort to collect from Fitzsimmons, according to the report.
'There is no way that ever happened,' O'Brien told the Detroit News Wednesday. 'I never talked to Fitz about money for Giacalone.'
O'Brien and Giacalone have denied any involvement in Hoffa's disappearance.
The hearing in Newark was conducted by a retired federal judge named to preside over a series of sessions dealing with allegations that the nation's largest union is controlled by organized crime.
It also was disclosed that O'Brien admitted talking with Giacalone by telephone five times and meeting with him four times within five days at about the time of Hoffa's disappearance. And officials said a Hoffa confidant told the FBI Giacalone asked him to set up meetings with Hoffa on six different July dates before the disappearance, although no meeting resulted.
The FBI contends Hoffa was lured to the restaurant to meet with Giacalone and New Jersey Teamsters figure Anthony Provenzano, ostensibly so that Giacalone could mediate a bitter feud between the other men.
