Order from the Court

As Teamster Boss James Riddle Hoffa sees it, the most serious threat to his job security lies in the three-man board of monitors fastened on him by a U.S. district court in 1958 to oversee his promised cleanup of the racket-riddled International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Consequently, Hoffa has kept his loo-member legal staff busy harassing the monitors in court, and helping him find other ways around them outside the court.

For a while he seemed to be outflanking the monitors successfully. Monitor Chairman Martin F. O'Donoghue, harried by anonymous callers at home and picketed at his office, called meetings, found it all but impossible to round up Monitors Daniel B. Maher, Hoffa's minority member on the board, and Lawrence T. Smith, named by rank-and-file New York Teamsters who had charged that Hoffa's 1957 election was rigged.

When the monitors did meet, O'Donoghue's legal strategy was voted down. Monitor Smith, unaccountably reversing his former stand, accused O'Donoghue of being obsessed with "getting Hoffa." Then last fortnight Monitor Maher announced he would retire because of heart trouble. Hoffa named as his successor Detroit Lawyer William E. Bufalino, president of Teamster Local 985, a jukebox operators' and car washers' union described by the Senate rackets committee as "a leech preying upon workingmen and women to provide personal aggrandizement for Mr. Bufalino and his friends."

Hoffa's bold-as-brass-knuckles nomination marked the end of the law's patience. Sternly, U.S. District Judge F. Dickinson Letts, 84, last week reminded Hoffa & Co. that the monitors are merely the court's helpers, that Hoffa must ultimately answer to him. The stocky, white-haired judge refused to accept Maher's resignation, then ordered Monitor Smith to resign. When he declined, Judge Letts fired him. ("You have been disappointing to the court in your failure to recognize your responsibilities and duties.") As Smith's successor, Judge Letts appointed a former FBI man: Bronx-born Terence F. McShane, 32, a federal agent in the 1956 Hoffa wiretap case who later conducted an investigation of the secretary-treasurer of Hoffa's home Local 299 in Detroit. That done, Judge Letts was ready to proceed with the showdown trial late this month of the monitors' civil suit against Hoffa on charges that he misused $500,000 in union funds in connection with Florida real estate speculation.

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