A Jolt for Jimmy

The U.S. Justice Department has put numberless grand juries to work trying to dig up dirt on Teamsters Union Boss Jimmy Hoffa. During the past seven years, Hoffa was haled into federal courts four times on various charges--and four times he walked away laughing. But last week Justice Department Aide Walter Sheridan bolted out of a Chattanooga federal courtroom and put in a telephone call to his boss. "We made it!" Sheridan barked happily. "Nice work," said Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who has been making the downfall of Hoffa a principal target of his considerable zeal for seven years. Now Bobby had good cause for celebrating: Hoffa had just been found guilty on two counts of jury tampering. Each count can cost him $5,000 and five years in prison.

A Farce of Justice? The two-month trial grew out of an earlier legal battle in Nashville. There, in 1962, Hoffa went to trial on conspiracy charges. The case ended in a mistrial when the jury failed to agree on a verdict. After that, Justice Department investigators found evidence that Hoffa and a few colleagues had tried corruptly to influence two members of the hung jury. In the case decided last week, Hoffa and a co-defendant were convicted of trying to win over a woman juror by promising to get a promotion for her husband, a member of the Tennessee Highway Patrol. In the second instance, Hoffa and two other co-defendants were found guilty of trying to bribe a man whose father was on the jury.

After the verdict, Hoffa still talked tough. "Of course I'll appeal," he snapped to newsmen. "What do you think?" According to Hoffa, the whole thing was "a railroad job" and a "farce of American justice."

No Job in Jail. As for his professional future, he added: "You can rest assured of one thing. The entire membership of the Teamsters Union is behind Hoffa in this fight. The wages, working conditions, health, the welfare and the pensions, the things we have got for them. This is what they want, and this is why they are all behind Hoffa in this."

Not quite. Hoffa's conviction could well mean the end of his labor career.

There are plenty of dissident Teamsters, along with some ambitious Hoffa underlings, who are eager to take over Jimmy's job if he goes to jail. They will, of course, have to wait a while; Hoffa almost certainly can drag out his appeals for a long time. Meanwhile, he has another appointment in federal court--this one in Chicago, where he and seven other men will go on trial April 27 on charges of using the mails and wires fraudulently to make more than $20 million in loans from a Teamsters pension fund, and diverting $1,000,000 of that money for their personal use.

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