The Congressman and the Argentine Firecracker
Midnight Swim in the Tidal Basin
Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, Congressman Wilbur Mills was one of the most powerful people in America. The Arkansas Democrat was the longtime chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. In other words, he ran the tax-writing committee that affected everyone and everything.
A Harvard Law School graduate, Mills was first elected to Congress in 1938. By 1958, he became chairman of the powerful tax committee. He held this position for nearly two decades. He is often identified as being a key architect of President Lyndon Johnson’s Medicare program, launched in 1966.
Mills’s power and influence were so pervasive that he flirted with seeking the Democratic nomination for president in 1972. Unfortunately, his performance in the early primaries was disappointing, causing him to drop out of the race.
In July 1973, Wilbur Mills went to the Silver Slipper nightclub located in northwest Washington, DC. Nestled between an adult cinema and an adult bookstore, the Silver Slipper was a strip club, and the featured performer the night Mills arrived was an Argentinean immigrant named Annabel Battistella, who went by the stage names Fanne Foxe, and the Argentine Firecracker.[i]
In her biography, Battistella said that on the night Mills was there, he greeted her after her performance and lavished praise on her dancing.[ii] Mills then invited Battistella and another woman to his apartment for a nightcap. Shortly thereafter, Mills and Battistella began an affair.
Battistella stopped dancing once she and Mills began dating. Yet, the pair regularly visited the Silver Slipper together. The pair also frequently quarreled. Occasionally, the couple attended the Silver Slipper with several other people including Mills’s wife, Clarine “Polly” Mills. Wilbur Mills was sometimes generous at the strip club, buying expensive bottles of wine. According to a pair of strippers, Mills spent as much as $1,700 one night, paying his bill in cash.[iii]
About a month after Mills began dating Battistella, Mills and his wife moved into the Crystal Towers Apartments in Arlington, Virginia. It was the same apartment building where Battistella lived.
At about 2:00 a.m. on October 7, 1974, US Park Police stopped a Lincoln Continental near the Jefferson Memorial driving at a high speed with its headlights turned off. Behind the wheel was Albert Gapacini. Also in the car were Gloria Sanchez, Liliane Kassar, Battistella, and Mills.[iv] Police believed all of the vehicle’s occupants had been drinking, and Mills and Battistella were intoxicated. They noticed Mills had scratches on his face, and his nose was bleeding. Battistella had black eyes.[v] Without warning, Battistella ran from the car and dove into the nearby Tidal Basin.
The Tidal Basin is a man-made reservoir built in the 1800s. Planted along the Tidal Basin are many of the cherry trees given to the city by the Japanese government. Surrounding the basin are several memorials, including the Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Franklin Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr. memorials.
Dressed in an evening gown, Battistella dove into the Tidal Basin in what appeared to be a half-hearted suicide attempt. Park Police officers fished her out. The car’s occupants were booked and then released. It took a few days of media inquiries before Mills finally addressed the incident. Even then, his statement didn’t appear to square with the facts and defied credulity. He claimed that Battistella fell ill during an evening out with friends and he was merely trying to get her home safely.[vi]
The scratches and bloody nose occurred, Mills claimed, when he attempted to restrain Battistella from leaving the car. “In the ensuing struggle her elbow hit my glasses and broke them resulting in a number of small cuts around my nose,” he explained.[vii]
In her 1975 biography, Battistella wrote that she and Mills had “a lover’s spat [that] … escalat[ed] stupidly into a knock-down drag-out battle… Both of [their] eyes were black and blue.”[viii] Then, Mills did what so many politicians do. He blamed his absent wife for his predicament. She was “blaming herself for not accompanying us that night even with her broken foot,” Mills said.[ix]
Mills was safely reelected in November 1974, in what was a very good election year for Democrats following the Watergate scandal. However, only weeks later, he appeared with Battistella at a burlesque club in Boston. He appeared to be drunk. Word of this second public incident with Battistella led Mills to relinquish the tax committee chairmanship. He retired from Congress at the end of his term following the 1976 elections.
Mark Hyman is a 35-year military veteran and an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, Parler, and Mastodon.world at @markhyman, and on Truth Social at @markhyman81.
His books Washington Babylon: From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals That Rocked the Nation and Pardongate: How Bill and Hillary Clinton and their Brothers Profited from Pardons are on sale now (here and here).
[i] Stephen Green and Margot Hornblower, “Mills Admits Being Present During Tidal Basin Scuffle,” Washington Post, October 11, 1974.
[ii] Annabel Battistella, Fanne Foxe, (New York: Pinnacle, 1975), 112.
[iii] Green and Hornblower, “Mills Admits Being Present….”
[iv] “Man in Car Accident Mills, DC Police Say,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 10, 1974.
[v] Green and Hornblower, “Mills Admits Being Present….”
[vi] “Mills Keeping off Hill as Speculation Swirls,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 12, 1974.
[vii] Green and Hornblower, “Mills Admits Being Present….”
[viii] Battistella, Fanne Foxe, 154.
[ix] Green and Hornblower, “Mills Admits Being Present….”