James P. Hoffa Teamsters International Vice President. Pope is president of Teamsters Local 805 in New York City. Hoffa earned a reputation as an advocate for fair trade and worker safety. He transformed the Teamsters into a premier political force by changing alliances and rhetoric unpredictably. Under his leadership, the Teamsters ended a federal program that allowed Mexican truckers to haul goods beyond the border zone in the United States. The Teamsters strongly opposed a trade deal with Colombia through lobbying and street protests, and were credited with helping to prevent a similar trade deal with Panama. The Teamsters successfully encouraged Congress to
Jimmy Hoffa caused by the 1975 disappearance of her husband, because her health had declined steadily since then. She is entombed in Michigan. In 1989, Kenneth Walton, the head of the FBI's Detroit office, told "The Detroit News" that he knew what happened to Hoffa. "I'm comfortable I know who did it, but it's never going to be prosecuted because ... we would have to divulge informants, confidential sources." In 2001, the FBI matched DNA from Hoffa's hair—taken from a brush—with a strand of hair found in a 1975 Mercury Marquis Brougham driven by longtime friend Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien on July 30,