The trail began with Dan O'Shea's discharge in a non-judicial tribunal of UPS and Teamster officials interpreting statutory law against union members called "The Panel", on to a tampered ballot box in the Washington, D.C. Teamster Local 639 union election involving 8,000 members shortly afterwards, leading on to Jimmy Hoffa overturning that same local Teamster election to protect "his own".

After Dan O'Shea's discharge, the local teamster election of officers for the largest union in the Washington D.C. area was just several months away. A new candidate slate was running against the 20-plus year incumbent officers who refused to acquire any so-called policies Dan O'Shea was discharged for. The new slate of officers (Members United Slate) printed up thousands of a 4-page campaign-piece on O'Shea's discharge, informing the 8,000 members of the utter failure of the incumbent officers to represent him.

It was the largest political campaign piece for the MUS slate.

Once the incumbent officers were voted out, the recount involved a tampered box. The incumbents were the ones in control of the ballot box. Hoffa, knowing he was about to lose an International Trustee (John Steger) on the Teamster Board put the local in "trust" and vaulted John Steger back to his position with the local union.

After a rerun election that again defeated the incumbents, the new officers did an about face and decided to fight Dan O'Shea's lawsuit and fully contradicted to the courts what they had told the 8,000 members during their campaign.

After any sham panel hearing, no union member has a venue to appeal to any ethics board of the IBT due to the actions of Hoffa. Hoffa "fired" the Teamsters own independent investigating team using members' dues money for his PR campaign to "dirty" the head of that team, Edward Stiers, despite spending over $15 million dollars, by their own accounting, of the members dues money.

Meanwhile, the Government's IRB investigation, continuing now for over more than a decade, allowing the American government to siphon off millions of members' dues money without restraint, further weakening the Teamsters under Hoffa. A NY Times article had the sum of $82 million dollars in 1999, eight long years ago.

How many more millions in dues funds have been redirected from pro-labor, hard working union workers to the interests of big business?

It's a tidy and neat package between the Teamsters and the Government, having Hoffa, a former corporate lawyer, give millions of Teamster members' dues money to the government, denying real money to be directed to benefit hard-working union members through union-supported politicians who would strengthen the rights of union workers.

As an end result, there is no "true" remaining ethics committee. As early as 2001 Hoffa prepared for the extermination of any ethics program within the Teamsters when all mention of any ethics program was deleted in the IBT constitution during the 2001 Teamster Convention. An article quotes in part "In a final blow, all references to the Ethical Practices Committee were struck from the constitution."

The Government's Independant Reveiw Board does not concern itself with the atrocities committed by companies and union officials targeting and assaulting their own members through backdoor "deals" in a corrupt and unlawful tribunal called the "Panel Committees", and in doing so Hoffa is rewarded by being able to target any internal opposition of union members by summarily terminating them at the panel hearings through interpretations of state statutes without due process and upheld by the courts.

The members have no "appeal" to these sham arbitration hearings and committees, especially for those workers who are injured or near retirement. The government agencies and judicial appointments a decade ago that had a slow current of conservative appointments has become a flood, and a high tide of the conservative assault has appeared, ignoring all past precedent, law and constitutional guarantees to American workers. The powers that be have and will protect each others interests. Dan O'Shea's own conservative, Republican paper-trail has run its course.

It took him three years of inquiry, through UPS, the Teamsters, the regional branch of the NLRB in Maryland to Bush's appointed General Counsel of the NLRB, Arthur Rosenfeld (who President Bush has since "awarded" a different appointment), to a Freedom of Information federal action against the NLRB, to a federal lawsuit in Maryland to finally "find out" no policy existed...and neither does constitutional due process for American workers.