ALL FALL DOWN: One Man Against the Waterfront Mob

by Donald Goddard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1980

The knockout story of a hero in spite of himself--Joe Teitelbaum, at 34 the short, cocky, shirtsleeves owner of a nonunion stevedore agency in Miami. One day enormous Fat Freddie Field, general manager of the mob-led International Longshore-man's Association, puts the squeeze on Joe for $3,000. When he refuses, Fat Freddie flies to New York and leans on Joe's shipping clients; his business halves almost overnight, since shipowners can't afford labor troubles. Freddy now demands that Joe join the checkers union. Joe does. Freddy demands that Joe hire only union stevedores. He resists. Then the bite by the ILA mobsters becomes dizzyingly unpredictable. (According to author Goddard, they exact a ""private tax"" from the export/import trade that costs every American $75 a year.) Eventually Joe breaks down, suffers a severe heart attack, is tried on a trumped up solitication-to-murder charge, and joins the Operation Unirac commission investigating waterfront corruption--the largest federal undercover job ever mounted. When Joe gets wired and starts collecting tapes of his payoffs, his enthusiasm grows for getting back at the thugs who've been flattening him for ten years or more, and he has visions of carrying his bug fight into the top payoff offices: N.Y. Governor Carey's, the Congress, the White House. Then one day in 1977, Unirac's strike force hits ILA offices in Miami and New York with nearly a thousand subpoenas and commandeers truckloads of company records--all of which results in 110 people indicted. But now, today, star witness Joe Teitelbaum is under a death-sentence from the mob, while convicted top dogs such as Fat Freddie's henchman Anthony Scotto are free on bail pending review of their appeals. A vastly readable, crackling crime report by a New York Times editor.

Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Times Books

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION