Flashback: Jesse Jackson Jr. Paid By Mob-Linked Union

Flashback to The Chicago Tribune November 10, 1995:

A union plagued by allegations of mob ties paid the salary of 2nd Congressional District candidate Jesse Jackson Jr. for the last two years through a political partnership with the National Rainbow Coalition founded by his father, Jackson acknowledged Thursday.

When previously asked about his work history for that period, Jackson had said that he was a national field director for the civil rights organization founded by Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

But what the son did not mention until asked about it by interviewers at the taping of a candidates forum Thursday, is that his salary totaling more than $56,000 over that period, came from the Chicago-based Hotel and Restaurant Employees International Union.

Part of his duties as a field director for the Rainbow Coalition, he said, was as a union organizer. But Jackson could not recall specific dates on which he organized, could not recall the name of the union president, Edward Hanley, and said he had no knowledge of the long-standing and well publicized allegations by authorities of the link between the union and mobsters.

In 1984, Hanley, a former West Side bartender, invoked the 5th Amendment 36 times during testimony before a U.S. Senate committee investigating mob influence within the orgaization.

This is the same Ed Hanley who's brother in law is convicted Chicago Mob killer Frank Calabrese Sr. Is Jesse Jackson Jr. an associate of organized crime?