:: rawblogXport ::

:: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 ::

The Man Who Wanted to Know Too Much - by Tom Robbins, Village Voice
As a result of Mack's intrepid digging, this spring one of the city's largest carpentry contractors, a builder named James Murray, fled to Ireland just ahead of a huge federal indictment compiled with criminal information uncovered by Mack.

Owners of another firm admitted, after exhaustive Mack interrogations, that they'd been paying bribes to shop stewards for almost a decade to let them get away with paying low wages in cash on projects ranging from hospitals to the new stadium at Randalls Island. Mack's probe also revealed that the builders had paid off a mob-tied worker inside the union to make records there disappear. And Mack learned that yet another company had been able to avoid union scrutiny of its jobs after a carpenters' business agent was warned that he'd be 'thrown off the building' if he came snooping around.

But instead of being thanked for his efforts, Walter Mack got terminated.

Carpenters' union officials called Mack a 'runaway train' that had to be stopped, and dropped him moments after a federal judge approved his dismissal. 'Walter Mack is very thorough,' said Pete Thomassen, president of the New York City District Council of Carpenters during a court hearing last year on the matter. 'In some cases, he was too thorough.'

Several past employers have shared that odd assessment of Walter Mack—the man who asks too many questions.

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