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The only people who ran into trouble, in fact, were Agents Daley and Dennis. The Justice Department in 1974 indicted Informer Hall on a charge of possessing stolen Treasury bonds, and threatened to indict the IRS agents as co-conspirators—though they protested that they had only been asked by Hall to check the serial numbers on the bonds. The agents composed a memo pointing out that the IRS and the Department of Justice had failed to inform the Senate Watergate committee of their reports about Fitzsimmons' account of his alleged meeting with Nixon. If indicted, they threatened to summon high-ranking Justice officials to testify about what had—or had not—been done with that information.
The agents were not indicted. Hall was acquitted of the possession charge, but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of fraud and was imprisoned for six months. After his release, he told the New York Times in 1975 about Fitzsimmons' alleged informing and said there had been a deal for the Government to go easy on the Teamsters leader; he also said he had given that information to a House Judiciary subcommittee. The subcommittee, however, never called Hall to testify; probably it was warned by the Justice Department that Hall was unreliable. Daley retired from the IRS in 1977 and Dennis in 1979. Both are living in Southern California.
The FBI finally got a look at the Daley-Dennis reports in 1978, after an anonymous tipster informed the agency that Fitzsimmons and the Pressers had been seen with the IRS agents. The tipster also hinted that the conversations might have had something to do with Hoffa, who disappeared in 1975 and is presumed to have been murdered. The FBI then began an investigation, about six years too late. By then the statute of limitations had expired, so nobody mentioned in the Daley-Dennis reports could be prosecuted anyway.
Some FBI agents nonetheless wanted to convene a grand jury in the hope that under oath some of the people named in the IRS reports might yield clues to Hoffa's fate. The Justice Department turned them down. Says one FBI agent: "Can you imagine the scene? Fitzsimmons, the Pressers, White House aides, Nixon Administration officials all trooping in; questions about Teamster campaign contributions and 'exchange targets'—it would have been a replay of Watergate. Nobody in the department wanted that." So the FBI investigation wound up last year without results, and the contents of the Daley-Dennis reports remained unknown to the public—until now.
* It is not clear whether the meeting took place in the Oval Office, where Nixon had installed voice-activated recording equipment. The FBI later examined the White House tapes for late 1972, but found no trace of the meeting, indicating that it might have taken place elsewhere in the building.
* Kleindienst, now practicing law in Arizona, went on trial in Phoenix last week on 14 charges of perjury stemming from a state bar investigation of an insurance deal involving the Teamsters.