FBI searching Michigan farm for Hoffa's body-paper

WASHINGTON, May 18 (Reuters) FBI agents may be on the trail of new clues to the 30-year-old mystery disappearance of legendary former US union chief Jimmy Hoffa, a Detroit newspaper reported tosday.

After an undisclosed informant offered a tip in recent weeks, the bureau began a search for the body of the former Teamsters president on a Michigan horse farm, the Detroit News said on its Web site.

It quoted FBI Special Agent Dawn Clenney as saying the search began yesterday with a team of bureau agents and local police in Milford Township near Detroit.

Hoffa disappeared from a restaurant in nearby Bloomfield Township on July 30, 1975, and his body was never found, despite various confessions and tips. An FBI memo later that year suggested his disappearance was probably the work of an organized crime group that wanted to prevent him from regaining control of the powerful union and its pension fund.

His son, James P Hoffa, is current Teamsters union president.

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