Freedom of Speech

For 17 hours the Nashville jury struggled for a verdict. Three times it reported a deadlock to Federal Judge William E. Miller; three times he sent the six men and six women back to their locked room.

Finally Miller gave up, declared a mistrial--and for the fourth time in five years Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa walked free from a federal trial.

This time the charge was that Hoffa and another Teamster official had violated the Taft-Hartley Law by making $1,008,057 out of a trucking company with which the Teamsters did business. If Hoffa was worried about whether the rap would stick, he certainly managed to conceal his anxiety. During the long wait for the jury, he strutted around the corridors and delivered himself of some cocky, colorful opinions. "These FBI agents," harangued Hoffa, "are all stool pigeons. A bunch of rats and stool pigeons. Give one of them a local with 10,000 members and he'd be bankrupt in three years. If it wasn't for the taxpayers, they'd starve to death."

As for the Justice Department's methods, Hoffa claims, "Our phones are tapped and our hotel rooms are bugged. We'd make remarks just to see, and the Government attorneys would know next morning what we'd said. We're building a new $800,000 office building in Detroit, and they come to me and say the whole place is wired and bugged. I say, 'Hell, whaddya expect? Go on and finish the building.'

"You are walking on a picket line and an FBI agent comes up and rubs this white chemical on you and you're wired from then on. They can pick up everything you say until you have the suit cleaned.* They go to the school and investigate my kid. He's a good kid, if I do say so. They go around to his friends and say, 'How many suits of clothes has Jim Hoffa got? How much money does he carry around in his pocket?' They gave orders to every airline office in the country--when Hoffa makes a reservation, call the nearest FBI office and give the time he takes off and the time he arrives. You wouldn't believe some of the creepy stuff they are pulling."

"A Spoiled Brat." In post-trial interviews, Hoffa accused Judge Miller of prejudice, described Prosecutor James F. Neal as "one of the most vicious prosecutors who ever handled a criminal case for the Justice Department.'' All Hoffa's troubles, he said, came because Attorney General Bobby Kennedy had declared a "personal vendetta" against him. "There is no question.'' said Hoffa. ''he's a spoiled brat."

Hoffa had understandably kind feelings toward the jury. He was grateful, he said, "that under our American system there can be independent judgments by the jurors. This indicates that under provisions of the Constitution . . . only the jury system stands between the defendant and the law enforcement agencies, who seem to believe that while working for the Government their sole and only objective must be to convict regardless of the process."

Secret Session. But Judge Miller was not so sure about how well the jury system had worked. There was, he said, evidence "indicating that illegal and improper attempts were being made by close labor union associates of the defendant to contact and influence certain members of the jury." Records of two special court sessions, kept secret until the trial's end to avoid prejudice, showed that one prospective juror had reported to Miller a $10,000 bribe offer. Two regular jurors had been disqualified after attempts to influence them--one of them a housewife whose highway-patrolman husband testified he had been offered help in getting a promotion by Ewing King, president of Nashville Teamster Local 327. Miller said he would soon call a grand jury to investigate.

Another grand jury in Chicago is investigating alleged irregularities in the Teamster pension fund, and Hoffa already faces a fraud charge involving the misuse of $500.000 of union funds in a Florida real estate development. All in all, it seemed possible that Jimmy Hoffa still might not have the last word.

*FBI agents say they are mightily intrigued by such a chemical, but equally unaware of its existence. If Hoffa has the formula, they wish he'd share it.

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