Top Teamsters Get Only Brief ‘Hi’ From Bush

WASHINGTON — Although he has openly embraced officials of the corruption-plagued Teamsters Union in the past, President-elect Bush offered only the briefest of private greetings to the union’s leadership Tuesday when they attended a closed-door meeting with his designated chief of staff, John H. Sununu, Bush aides said.

Sheila Tate, a spokeswoman for Bush, said: “The Teamsters people were meeting with Sununu and the President-elect simply stopped by briefly. The purpose was to thank them for their support during the election campaign.”

A transition team source said that Bush “literally popped his head in the door and said ‘Hi’ ” and left without making any substantive comments to union President William J. McCarthy and other top officials of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, whose top leadership faces a civil trial next month for alleged racketeering.

Won’t Intercede

Sununu was said to have warned the group that the executive branch would not intercede in the pending trial, which stems from a suit filed by the Justice Department in June. In filing the suit in federal court in New York, U.S. Atty. Rudolph W. Giuliani charged that the Teamsters were deeply involved in organized crime, and he sought to use the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law to “take back the Teamsters from the Mafia.”

A source said that among those at the 20-minute session in Sununu’s office were Teamsters Vice Presidents Joseph W. Morgan and Daniel C. Ligurotis and the union’s general counsel, James T. Grady.

Bush was not present when Sununu warned the men against discussing the RICO case, a transition source said.

Top Priority

McCarthy has taken as his No. 1 priority beating the suit against himself and the top Teamsters officials. If successful, the suit would force out the union’s top leadership and order a new, government-supervised election on grounds that the present leaders are either linked to organized crime or have done nothing about such links.

Bush declined to meet publicly with the Teamsters officials, although in 1981 and 1985 he appeared before the group to thank union leaders for their political support. The Teamsters were the only major union to support Bush and Vice President-elect Dan Quayle and, unlike most unions, also backed the Reagan-Bush tickets in 1980 and 1984.

One source suggested that the Sununu meeting was meant to mollify Teamsters officials irked at Bush’s absence.