The Fall of Chairman Wilbur Mills

From the stage of Boston's Pilgrim Theater, a seedy burlesque house in the city's newly designated "Combat Zone" for sex films and ecdysiast exhibitions, a shapely, silken-gowned Fanne Foxe, "the Argentine Firecracker," had a surprise for her audience. "I'd like you to meet somebody," she said, then called to the wings: "Mr. Mills, Mr. Mills! Where are you?" Onto the stage strode Arkansas Congressman Wilbur Daigh Mills, 65, the redoubtable Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Placing a hand on Fanne's shoulder, Mills began a brief exchange of quips with the audience, then received a kiss on the cheek from his favorite stripper and calmly walked offstage. With that unlikely bit of business, Mills' distinguished 36-year legislative career came crashing down around him.

It was one of the steepest falls from power in congressional history. Mills, the overlord of federal revenue legislation, whose Ways and Means Committee has responsibility for drafting major tax, trade and Social Security bills, has long savored his reputation as the most powerful man in Congress. The spectacle of one of the House's most revered elder statesmen cavorting onstage with a stripper sent shock waves through Congress, most especially members of Mills' own party. In sorrow, House Speaker Carl Albert announced that Mills would not be Ways and Means chairman when the 94th Congress convened in January. A confused and ailing Mills checked himself into the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., for a checkup and a badly needed rest.

Reports that the once dignified, upright Mills, married to his wife Polly for 40 years, was drinking heavily and carousing in Washington nightspots had been circulating for months. The rumors became public scandal after the Tidal Basin incident of last October, when Mills' car was stopped late at night by Washington police. The car contained five passengers, including Mills and Mrs. Annabella Battistella, 38, a frequent companion of his in the past year, who worked as a striptease dancer at a Washington nightclub under the name of Fanne Fox. Fanne leaped from the car, ran toward a small estuary of the Potomac River known as the Tidal Basin, and jumped or fell into the water. She was rescued by a policeman.

Fatal Foray. The incident threatened Mills' re-election chances in the first contest to offer a Republican challenge to his seat since he initially won it 36 years ago. Nonetheless, Mills gained re-election in November by a comfortable majority. Though his powers as chairman were due to be curbed by a reform-minded Democratic caucus in any case, it looked as if he could keep his chair if he was willing to fight for it. Then came his fatal foray into Boston, a trip that Mills undertook, he later told newsmen, to dispel rumors that he had been having an affair with Fanne Foxe. The trip had exactly the opposite result, and saddened and dismayed House members declared that Mills had to go.

None of them have been able to understand Mills' recent erratic behavior, but nearly all of them recognize it as markedly out of character. There was speculation that the medication that Mills has taken since his back surgery in 1973 may have brought on his bizarre conduct. Friends say that lately Mills has become addled and repetitious in conversation, and makes frequent complaints of pain in his abdomen. Mills has clearly not been himself for some months, and it was his odd behavior, as much as his recent shenanigans with Fanne Foxe, that caused the Democrats in the House to move against nun.

They toppled one of the chamber's titans. After serving for four years as a judge in Arkansas' White County, Mills won a seat in Congress in 1938. He was re-elected in 17 subsequent contests, with token Democratic opposition in only three races and with no Republican opponent until this year.

Grew Tired. Since he took his seat on Ways and Means in 1943, Mills has made the committee's intricate tax-writing and budgetary chores his special province. By the time he assumed the committee chairmanship in 1958, he was the undisputed master of revenue legislation in the House. In the years since, his formidable grasp of the U.S. tax code has made committee members and Congress reliant on the chairman and consolidated Mills' power.

His power manifest, some congressional observers believe, Mills in recent years grew tired of his chairmanship. But even his colleagues were taken aback when, late in 1971, Mills decided to make a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. The move proved to be disastrous, and Mills was ignominiously ignored at the 1972 party convention in Miami Beach; some associates date his decline from then. That campaign had other negative fallout:

large campaign contributions that Mills received from dairy cooperatives and other donors are now under investigation by the special prosecutor's office.

While Mills insists that he is innocent of any wrongdoing, friends say that he fears he could be indicted.

Exactly what single cause or combination of causes--health, boredom, disappointment, anxiety--led Mills to disregard recklessly his reputation and career remains a mystery. Fanne herself, while perhaps garrulous to a fault (see box), has not provided much illumitiation. Largely guileless, enormously flattered by Mills' attentions, she is scarcely the stereotype of a designing woman. Indeed, she may not really comprehend the role she has played in the destruction of the man whom she still calls "Mr. Mills." What is certain is that what began as delicious Washington gossip has become a personal and professional tragedy in which no one in the capital can any longer find pleasurable titillation.

Sick Man. Mills, once the canny master of the cloakroom, was slow to realize that the end had come. TIME Correspondent Neil MacNeil reports that Mills' final perception of the situation came last week in a talk with Illinois Representative Dan Rostenkowski, a Ways and Means Committee man for nine years. Confessing that he had a serious problem, Mills took Rostenkowski into the chairman's private office, where he asked the Illinois lawmaker for a frank appraisal of where he stood.

"Mr. Chairman," Rostenkowski replied, "you've got a runaway caucus out there. You've embarrassed a lot of the members." As Rostenkowski explained that Mills' power was slipping from him, Mills drifted away, as though in a trance. "You know I'm a sick man," he finally said. "I've got terrible pain."

"You've got to go to the hospital," said Rostenkowski.

Another Congressman came into the room and urged Mills to go to the hospital, then left the two men alone again. Mills turned to Rostenkowski and asked once more: "How do you think I stand?" Rostenkowski was frank: "Mr. Chairman, you're out of business. It's all over for you. The members on this committee are terribly disappointed." At that, Mills picked up the telephone and called the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda to ask for admittance.

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