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The Teamster representative on the board, Washington Lawyer Daniel Maher, votes the way Hoffa wants him to vote. But Letts-appointed Chairman Martin O'Donoghue and New York Lawyer Lawrence Smith make up a watchful majority. So far, Hoffa has been able to evade most of the 54 cleanup recommendations that O'Donoghue has handed down, but the real struggle between Hoffa and the monitors still lies ahead. Hoffa's lawyers have appealed to the Supreme Court the Letts rulings setting up the monitors, and until the high court decides, O'Donoghue's authority is weakened by uncertainty. Meanwhile, Hoffa keeps a team of lawyers busy harassing the monitors, fights them with such stock Teamster tricks as getting rid of records. Example: O'Donoghue asked for the records of Vice President Harold Gibbons, found that.the files for 1956, 1957 and part of 1958 had mysteriously vanished.
Day of Reckoning. Getting ready for what he calls "the day of reckoning at the polls," Hoffa is planning to set up a Teamster political department financed by 50¢-a-month "voluntary" contributions from Teamster members. If all Teamsters "volunteer" to contribute, that will add up to $9,000,000 a year to help elect men Hoffa likes and defeat men he does not like.
Hoffa even claims that the labor bill will help him to make the Teamsters bigger and more powerful. He makes the wildly fanciful argument that rank-and-file union members may revolt against A.F.L.-C.I.O. leaders for their failure to block a labor bill, then turn to Jimmy Hoffa, the man who fought the bill hardest. He has been making damn-the-labor-bill speeches to A.F.L.-C.I.O. locals around the U.S., and getting, he says, very favorable responses from the rank and file. "I could pull them out of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and into the Teamsters if I wanted to," Hoffa told a TIME correspondent at the Greenbrier last week.
When was he going to do that? "Oh, we'll see," said Jimmy Hoffa. "We'll see."