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...