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 his younger brother Robert F. Kennedy as Attorney General. Robert Kennedy had been frustrated in earlier attempts to convict Hoffa, while working as counsel to the McClellan subcommittee. As Attorney General from 1961, Kennedy pursued the strongest attack on organized crime that the country had ever seen, and he carried on with a so-called "Get Hoffa" squad of prosecutors and investigators. In 1964, Hoffa was convicted in Chattanooga, Tennessee of attempted bribery of a grand juror, and was sentenced to eight years. This case resulted from an earlier matter, the Test Fleet case, the trial for which had been held