Witness for the Prosecution

Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa has never won any prizes as the friendliest guy around. And he has been particularly surly during his current trial in Chattanooga on charges of jury tampering.

At one point during the Government's three-week presentation, Hoffa took to addressing U.S. attorneys as "Gestapo agent" and "Kremlin agent." He threatened Prosecutor James F. Neal with legal proceedings against "you and your bums." Another time, Hoffa offered to fight a U.S. marshal.

What made Hoffa so disagreeable was the appearance of a surprise Government witness: Edward Grady Partin, 39, secretary-treasurer of a Baton Rouge Teamsters local--and, as it turned out, an undercover federal man during the 1962 Nashville conspiracy trial, from which the jury-tampering charges arose. In 6 1/2 days of testimony, Partin insisted that he had been in Hoffa's confidence at the time of that trial. Hoffa, he said, had asked him to come to Nashville, told him "there might be some people he wanted me to talk to. He said that they were going to get to one juror and try to get to a few scattered jurors and take their chances." Partin quoted Hoffa as saying "I've got $15,000 or $20,000 to get to the jury." When he decided to leave Nashville temporarily, Partin said, Hoffa "told me when I came back he might want me to pass something around for him. He put his hand behind his back like this," Partin added, with an appropriate gesture, "and hit his rear pocket." Later, Partin said, he remarked to Hoffa that the trial did not seem to be going well, and Hoffa replied: "Don't worry about it too much because I have the male colored juror in my hip pocket. One of my colored business agents, Campbell, came in and took care of it." The Nashville trial ended in a hung jury. Aside from Hoffa, Larry Campbell, business agent of Hoffa's home local 299 in Detroit, and four other men are defendants in Chattanooga.

When the defense's turn came last week, much of the testimony was aimed at Partin, charging him with everything from woman chasing to dope addiction.

But Federal Judge Frank Wilson ruled out some of the testimony, because "we are not here to try domestic life." With Hoffa himself likely to take the stand this week, the trial seemed to be boiling down to his word against Partin's.

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