In the recently-released “In Hoffa’s Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth,” Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith tells the story of Charles “Chuckie” O’Brien, Jimmy Hoffa’s right-hand man and suspected killer–and Goldsmith’s stepfather.
As a young man, Goldsmith revered O’Brien. But as he grew older and pursued a career in law and government, he came to doubt and distance himself from the man long suspected by the FBI of perpetrating Hoffa’s disappearance on behalf of the mob. It was only years later, when Goldsmith was serving as assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration and questioning its misuse of surveillance and other powers, that he began to reconsider his stepfather, and to understand Hoffa’s true legacy.
Goldsmith recently spoke about his book at the Harvard Law School Library, one of a series of talks and panel discussions hosted by the Library throughout the academic year, that feature the work of faculty, alums and other affiliated scholars from Harvard and beyond.
Read more https://today.law.harvard.edu/in-new-book-goldsmith-probes-family-ties-to-hoffa-disappearance/