Fish's $25,000

Tall, loudmouthed Congressman Ham Fish, New York's gift to the isolationist cause, has some explaining to do this week. He must tell the stony, fact-minded Internal Revenue Bureau why he did not include in his 1939 income tax return a cool $25,000 he got from Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, the bemedaled millionaire dictator of the Dominican Republic.

Story of the $25,000 was cracked by the Washington Post's ace newshawk Dillard Stokes* just five days before this week's New York primary election, in which Ham Fish faced the most serious opposition of his 22-year career as Congressman. Ham Fish snouted back: "political smear." His story: he handled the money as agent for Trujillo in some Texas oil well speculation; he lost half of it, sent the other half back.

But the Washington Post recalled that Ham Fish's relations with the Caribbean dictator had taken some curious turns. In 1937 after several thousand Haitian farmers were massacred by Dictator Trujillo's soldiers on the Dominican side of the border, Ham Fish arose in Congress and said: "This is the most outrageous atrocity that has ever been perpetrated on the American continent."

Fifteen months later Ham Fish made a trip to the Dominican Republic. He stayed at the dictator's walled-in estate, ate at his lavish table, came back a changed man. When Trujillo visited the U.S., Ham Fish spoke at a dinner for him: "General, you have created a golden age for your country. . . . You will go down in history . . . as a builder greater than all the Spanish conquistadores together." Shortly thereafter the $25,000 was deposited to Ham Fish's account in a New York bank.

The Revenue Bureau is not alone in its interest. Fish's $25,000 was first discovered by a Washington grand jury--the same jury which returned a perjury indictment against Fish's secretary, George Hill, after Hill lied about helping Nazi Propagandist George Sylvester Viereck (TIME, Jan. 26). The jury plans to talk to Ham Fish again.

* Other recent Stokes scoops: the indictment of the "vermin press" (TIME, Aug. 3); the grand jury investigation of George Sylvester Viereck, now in prison for failing to register as a Nazi agent; the story of how mailbags were removed from the office of Prescott Dennett (now under indictment for conspiracy to promote revolt in the armed forces) after a grand jury had subpoenaed them.

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