Wilbur's Argentine Firecracker

Speeding without lights down a street near the White House at 2 o'clock one morning last week, the 1973 Lincoln Continental bore five people toward the Jefferson Memorial. Among them was an odd couple: an intoxicated, aging man with a badly scratched face and bloody nose and a hysterical, curvaceous woman. When police halted the car, the woman leaped out and jumped into the nearby Tidal Basin, a 10-ft.-deep estuary of the Potomac River. The man stumbled out after her, just before an officer dragged her to safety. When the police refused to let him drive her home, the man shouted: "I'm a Congressman, and I'll have you demoted."

There were no arrests, but the tawdry scandal quickly became the talk of Washington, damaging a distinguished career and formerly impeccable reputation. The man was readily identified as Wilbur Daigh Mills, 65, the 18-term Democrat from Arkansas who, as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is one of Congress's most influential barons. The woman was soon found to be Mrs. Annabella Battistella, 38, a bosomy stripper who used to style herself "Fanne Foxe, the Argentine Firecracker." Now that the firecracker has exploded in Mills' face, he just might lose his seat in Congress and along with it the chairmanship of what is widely regarded as one of the two or three most powerful House committees; his successor as chairman would be Liberal Democrat Al Ullman of Oregon.

According to friends, Fanne formerly performed at the Silver Slipper, a sleazy Washington nightclub shoehorned between a pornographic bookstore and a pornographic theater. On the club's window are photos of scantily clad women in provocative poses and a sign promising AN EXTRAVAGANZA OF BEAUTIFUL, CURVACEOUS GIRLS. Inside, dancers shake to the heavy beat of music thundering from amplifiers and strip to their G strings, as B-girls cadge $2.75 drinks from male customers.

Soon after she met Mills at the Silver Slipper in July 1973, Fanne gave up her $500-a-week job and now has no visible means of support. That August, Mills and his wife Polly moved into an apartment in Fanne's luxury building, the Crystal Towers in Arlington, Va. According to club employees, Mills, usually with Fanne, visited the Silver Slipper about twice a month, where they sat at a small table near an emergency fire exit. Sometimes he ordered magnums of champagne for Fanne and drinks for the house, rarely less than $100 worth in a single evening and on one memorable occasion, it is said, $ 1,700 worth--paid for in cash.

Employees recalled that Mills and Fanne ended one evening with a loud quarrel when she decided that he was paying too much attention to a stripper named Vegas Vixen. Last week the women at the club seemed jittery about their notoriety. "Everybody's nervous --we're not supposed to talk: about it," Natasha, a brunette with deep cleavage, whispered into a customer's ear.

As the stories of the Congressman and Fanne swept Washington, Mills holed up in his apartment. At first his spokesman insisted that Mills had not been in the car; that was greeted with open skepticism on Capitol Hill. By Thursday, a still-cloistered Mills reluctantly issued a three-page statement admitting that he had been in the car after all, but claiming that the incident had been entirely innocent.

According to Mills' account, he and Polly had become "close friends" with Fanne, her husband Eduardo and a cousin, Mrs. Gloria Sanchez. When Mrs. Sanchez recently decided to return to Argentina, the Millses resolved to honor her with a Sunday evening bon voyage party. But Mrs. Mills had broken her foot. Said Mills: "She insisted that I take our friends to a public place we had frequented before." It was the Junkanoo, a restaurant with Polynesian decor, whose manager recalled having seen Mills and Fanne there twice in recent months. The Mills party left the restaurant at 9 p.m. on Sunday.

"We then visited another public place," Mills continued, "and after a few refreshments, Mrs. Battistella became ill and I enlisted the help of others in our group to assist me in seeing her safely home ... As we proceeded home, she attempted to leave the car and I attempted to prevent it. In the ensuing struggle, her elbow hit my glasses and broke them, resulting in a number of small cuts around my nose." Mills called himself "embarrassed and humiliated by the entire turn of events."

His statement said nothing about drinking or how Fanne suffered two blackened eyes. Nor did it mention the fact that Eduardo and Fanne are separated. Mills said nothing about reports of his lavish spending on Fanne at the Silver Slipper, reports that are raising questions about how an Arkansas Congressman of modest means can afford to entertain on such an expensive scale.

Erratic Behavior. The incident savaged Mills' reputation on Capitol Hill, where he has been known through the years as a circumspect man of rigid moral principles. In recent years, however, friends have witnessed a sad character change in Mills. They have become concerned about his erratic behavior and heavy drinking as his once distinguished career has foundered. His difficulties began three years ago when he made an abortive run for the presidency and took it seriously, though other Democrats did not. More recently, the Watergate prosecutor and a grand jury have quizzed Mills' staffers on illegal gifts to that campaign from milk cooperatives.

In his home district, which lies in the heart of the state's Bible Belt, the story of Fanne greatly bolstered the campaign of Mills' election opponent, Mrs. Judy Petty, 31, the first serious Republican contender for his seat in years. An attractive divorcee who worked as an aide to the late Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, she promised not to mention the incident in her campaigning. But in a district where voters take the Sabbath so seriously that Mrs. Petty's campaign manager has refused to let her stump on Sundays, the damage has already been done.

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