
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, September 9, 1993                   TAG: 9309090219
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

NEWSPAPER TO REQUEST RELEASE OF HOFFA FILES

An attorney for the Detroit Free Press said the newspaper will ask the U.S. Supreme Court for a ruling on whether the government has a right to withhold secret files on Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters president who vanished in 1975.

The newspaper lost an appeal before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati last July in an effort to have the U.S. Justice Department release 14,000 documents related to the disappearance of Hoffa.

Barbara Crancer, Hoffa's daughter and now a St. Louis County, Mo., judge, will file a separate appeal to the high court requesting the documents, said Herschel Fink, the newspaper's attorney. Crancer, who lost a similar appeal last August before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to have the files released, could not be reached for comment.

The newspaper and Crancer sought the files under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. But the FBI contended that the release of any of the files would damage an ongoing investigation into Hoffa's disappearance.

- Wire report

by CNB