Judge Swears In Panel to Oversee Teamsters : Labor: The three-man board will monitor the union’s attempts to investigate itself and to root out corruption and mob influence.

A federal judge on Tuesday swore in a panel that includes former CIA and FBI Director William H. Webster to oversee the Teamsters and rid the union of “the hideous, malicious influence” of organized crime.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Edelstein said he was confident that Webster, former U.S. District Judge Frederick B. Lacey and former United Mine Workers leader Harold E. Burke would “root out corruption” from the 1.5 million-member union.

The three make up the Independent Review Board, a permanent committee created to monitor attempts by the union to stamp out corruption and investigate itself. Each panel member will be paid $100,000 for his work.

Edelstein said the board was necessary because “the task of eliminating corrupt influences from the union is not complete.”

“This is a tremendous earth-shaking undertaking that requires perpetual vigilance, do I dare say even eternal vigilance. It cannot be realized pronto or with only modest effort,” he said.

Three temporary overseers appointed by the government took control of the union in 1989 under a settlement of federal racketeering charges against the Teamsters, the nation’s largest private-sector union.

Their efforts resulted in December in the first national rank-and-file vote in the Teamsters’ 89-year history. Ron Carey was elected on a platform to cleanse the union of decades of corruption and Mafia ties.

But in August, Edelstein approved a plan for the permanent three-member board. He said Carey had not attacked criminal influences, failing to file even a single disciplinary charge.

Edelstein noted that the 1989 agreement between the government and the Teamsters had a “resolve to rid, once and for all, the hideous, malicious influence of La Cosa Nostra” from the union.

The majority of the union members are honest people who “wanted to get rid of the rascals,” the judge said.

Nancy Stella, a spokeswoman for the Teamsters, had no immediate comment. She said attorneys for the union were considering an appeal of an August decision by Edelstein that outlined the task of the review board.

The judge noted that over the last 3 1/2 years the union had produced more appeals than were filed in any other case in the history of the federal judiciary, costing union members $10 million.