On Trial

Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo dramatically put himself on public trial before the world last week. In Washington, Dominican Ambassador Manuel A. de Moya announced that his government was spending $160,000 to hire a public-relations firm and two eminent U.S. lawyers to find out the facts in the case of the disappearance of one of Trujillo's most impassioned critics, Columbia University Lecturer Jesus de Galindez. Trujillo's expressed hope: to disprove "fantastic charges" that Dominicans engineered last year's airplane kidnaping of Galindez from Manhattan, then killed U.S. Pilot Gerald Murphy, who flew the kidnap plane (TIME, Feb. n et seq.).

The investigators are dictator-hating New Dealer Morris L. Ernst, who has spent most of his career as a pugnacious battler for civil rights, and Republican William H. Munson, an ex-district attorney and New York State Supreme Court justice. The publicist: Sydney S. Baron, speechwriter for Tammany Boss Carjnine De Sapio. Under the agreement, the lawyers and their crew of private investigators will have free access to any persons or documents in the Dominican Republic, will be free to publish their findings without censorship. "We know of no analogous instance," said De Moya, "when a sovereign state voluntarily has requested public judgment before the world by citizens of another sovereign state."

Until now, the Dominicans have deliberately hindered the official U.S. investigation, e.g., they furnished what the FBI called a forged "confession" from the man they said killed Pilot Murphy. The sudden switch appeared to be a belated attempt to end a storm of bad publicity. But, even in the agreement with Ernst & Co., there is an escape clause. If the attorneys break the contract "for failure of cooperation," they will "preserve professional confidence and refrain from issuing any report."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.