Hoffa's Fourth

Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa has been on trial in federal court four times in the past five years. The first three trials concluded with two acquittals, one hung jury. Last week in Nashville, Tenn., the defense began presenting its case in No. 4--and the proceedings were enlivened by a bit of gunplay.

The present charge against Hoffa is that he and another Teamster official accepted more than $1,000,000 in illegal payments from a Detroit trucking concern. According to the indictment, Detroit's Commercial Carriers, Inc. in 1949 set up a Tennessee firm named Test Fleet. The new outfit leased trucks to Commercial Carriers. All the Test Fleet stock was transferred to Mrs. Hoffa and the wife of Owen ("Bert") Brennan, a Teamster vice president who died in 1961; the two women discreetly used their maiden names of Josephine Poszywak and Alice Johnson.

This, the Government charged, actually amounted to a conspiracy between Commercial Carriers and Hoffa to violate a provision of the Taft-Hartley Act that bars employee representatives from receiving payments from employers except for wages and other specifically defined purposes.

The trial began seven weeks ago, and the record is already more than 3,000 pages long. Prosecution witnesses testified that Mrs. Brennan was rarely consulted and Mrs. Hoffa never, in the management of Test Fleet or of the Hobren (for Hoffa-Brennan) Corp., as Test Fleet was renamed in 1954. Rather, key decisions were made by Hoffa and Brennan. The Government contended that Hoffa profited greatly from Test Fleet but never contributed to financing the company. Ray Van Beckum, a former president of Commercial Carriers, testified that the lease arrangement was kept up in the interest of keeping the peace with the Teamsters.

None of this was very exciting stuff. But then, into the courtroom last week marched a young, half-crazed dishwasher who said he had been directed by a "vision" to kill Teamster Hoffa. He fired several shots at Hoffa with a BB pistol, pinked Jimmy's hide with a few pellets. Tough little Jimmy went fiercely after his assailant, planted a dandy right on his jaw; a Hoffa crony then kicked the would-be assassin. The man required 14 stitches in his scalp, was taken away to jail. Taking this incident as evidence of "hostility" against their client, Hoffa's hopeful lawyers swiftly moved for a mistrial. But it would probably take more than BB shot to derail the case against Jim Hoffa.

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