Elusive Heel

If Teamsters' Boss Jimmy Hoffa has an Achilles' heel, the Justice Department has yet to find it. The department has brought him to trial six times within the past decade. Twice it has won convictions. Yet elusive Jimmy has yet to spend a day in jail as a result. And he still has unchallenged command of the biggest (1,750,000 members), most powerful union in the U.S.

Last week the Supreme Court agreed to review Hoffa's conviction on charges of tampering with a Nashville jury in a 1962 federal trial, for which he was sentenced in 1964 to eight years in jail and a $10,000 fine. Though the Teamsters' lawyers had questioned the conviction on 21 points, the court limited its review to their contention that Edward Partin, a longtime crony of Hoffa who acted as a part-time guard at his hotel during the Nashville trial, had been released from jail in Louisiana to spy on Hoffa for the Government. Partin's courtroom testimony that Hoffa had bragged about bribing a Nashville juror, the Teamster boss claimed, was based in effect on "unreasonable search and seizure" and violated the privacy of his deliberations with his lawyer.

Whatever the court decides, it has given Hoffa what a Justice Department lawyer called "a year's free pass." Thus Hoffa is virtually guaranteed re-election to the Teamsters' presidency at the union's convention in July. "I will certainly run," he said last week, "and I do not expect any opposition."

The court's reprieve will not be wasted--at least not by Hoffa. At week's end he said that he would ask the convention to change the union's bylaws, apparently so that he can name his successor if he is jailed. Moreover, he proclaimed, he is considering organizing professional athletes, particularly football players disgruntled with the huge sums paid to "bonus babies." The team owners may not prove as amenable as, say, truck-fleet owners. Warned William Clay Ford, president of the Detroit Lions: "We can make truck drivers of these players real easy."

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