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DETROIT (Reuters) - The FBI on Friday dismissed criticism investigators were wasting money by tearing up a Michigan horse farm in a search for the body of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa.
The FBI has rolled out cadaver dogs, ground-piercing radar, heavy equipment, archaeologists and dozens of agents in the search for evidence of Hoffa's grave on a farm about 20 milesfrom where the charismatic Teamsters union boss went missing on July 30, 1975.
Critics have blasted the search as unlikely to solve the mystery of Hoffa's presumed murder, especially since the FBI was acting on a lead first offered three decades ago.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Daniel Roberts issued an unusual statement on Friday defending the exhaustive search as part of an ongoing probe of Mafia activities.
Authorities have long suspected that Hoffa, declared dead in 1982, was murdered by mobsters who did not want him to interfere with their sway over the truckers union.
"The expenditure of funds has always been necessary in each and every case the FBI works, and this one is no exception," said Roberts. "We will not abandon our responsibility to investigate a pending Organized Crime case because it might be termed 'too old."'
The FBI has not given an estimate for the cost of its renewed search for Hoffa or detailed the number of agents involved from the bureau's Detroit, Chicago and Washington offices. "It would not be appropriate at this time," said FBI spokeswoman Dawn Clenney.
"The investigation is still ongoing."
The Detroit News reported earlier this week the Hoffa search could cost up to $500,000, based on estimates from unnamed federal officials.
The newspaper's columnist, Laura Bergman, called that a waste of taxpayer money. "The Detroit area hardly lacks crimes that require solutions -- that are begging for the kind of manpower and resources now being deployed on this loony Hoffa hunt," she wrote.
Since the search began a week ago, FBI contractors have used an excavator to tear down a horse barn on the Hidden Dreams Farm to begin sifting through soil under its foundation for evidence. A tent was erected to house the thoroughbreds owned by the farm's current owners.
The search was triggered by a tip from Donovan Wells, 75, a federal prisoner serving a 10-year drug trafficking sentence who lived on the farm at the time of Hoffa's disappearance.
A former lawyer for Wells, James Elsman, said Wells offered the information to the FBI 30 years ago but the bureau ignored the tip. Now, Wells has offered it again in hopes of securing a reduced sentence.
Wells, who has reportedly passed a polygraph test, told his lawyers he saw men burying what appeared to be a body with a backhoe on the farm a day after Hoffa vanished.
"Even if they find a piece of the body, a scoop of DNA, so what?" said Elsman. "This just raises questions about the use of government resources. It's ludicrous."
Hoffa was last seen outside a Detroit-area restaurant where he was to meet a New Jersey Teamsters' boss and a local Mafia captain. No trace of Hoffa has ever been found, and no one has been charged in the case.