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No Guarantee. Many law-enforcement officials argue that the benefits of restrained wiretapping far outweigh the hazards. On the basis of his own experience as a prosecutor in the New York courts, Columbia Law Professor Richard Uviller contends that bugging is one of the most effective weapons against organized crime. A preliminary report on the effects of the wiretap provisions of the new crime-control law tends to bear him out: the 174 taps authorized by four state courts after the Omnibus Crime Bill was passed last year led to no fewer than 263 arrests. "We can't guarantee that there won't be abuses in this area any more than you can be assured that a cop will use his gun properly," says Alfred Scotti, chief assistant in the busy Manhattan D.A.'s office, which asks the courts for about 75 wiretap orders a year. "But you want him to have the gun, don't you?"
Perhaps. Yet that question overlooks another important argument: misuse of a gun is usually a public act; eavesdropping, on the other hand, tends to be a highly secret tactic. By disavowing court supervision of the practice, particularly in cases of eavesdropping on domestic political groups, the Justice Department has created a dangerous precedent. There is a vast difference between legally approved snooping on a Mafia overlord and unauthorized surveillance of a political maverick whose views do not happen to please an administration in power.
* Hoffa, who is already serving time in the Lewisburg, Pa., federal penitentiary for jury tampering, was turned down by a Chicago federal court last week in his effort to win a new trial on his 1964 conviction for conspiracy and fraud in handling union funds. At the same time, a Houston federal judge rejected Clay's bid for a reversal of his 1967 draft-dodging conviction. Both appeals were based on the argument that the Government had used illegal wiretaps, but the judges ruled that the eavesdropping had not contributed to the convictions.