Grant to Dymally-Headed Institute Investigated

A federal grand jury is investigating a $100,000 payment made by the Japanese whaling industry to a Washington think-tank headed by Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Calif.), a former delegate to the International Whaling Commission, a federal prosecutor said Sunday.

U.S. Atty. Sam Currin of North Carolina said the money, payment for a contract between the Japan Whaling Assn. and Dymally’s Caribbean American Research Institute (CARI), is part of a federal investigation of troubled Shaw University, a Raleigh, N.C., college where Dymally serves as trustee.

Currin refused to say whether Dymally, a former California lieutenant governor, is a subject of the investigation. Dymally told The Times this weekend that he is unaware of any federal probe and he vigorously denied any wrongdoing.

Dymally confirmed that the Japanese lobby had made the $100,000 payment to CARI, where he serves as chairman of the board. But he said the institute obtained the $100,000 grant for financially pinched Shaw, whose officials took possession of the money and conducted “basic research on Japan-U.S.-Caribbean relations” for the whaling association.

Dymally said the university has abandoned the research and said he unsuccessfully sought return of $50,000 of the grant--which was not spent--to the institute “a few weeks ago.”

“This is a case where I legitimately went out to help this school and got caught up in the politics of Raleigh,” Dymally said. “This kind of story is just going to force me to turn in my resignation from the (Shaw) board.”

Shaw’s last president, Stanley H. Smith, resigned under pressure this summer and currently is president of the Caribbean American Research Institute, Dymally said this weekend.

Currin on Sunday refused to discuss any specifics of the North Carolina probe, which began about two months ago amid allegations of misuse of federal funds at the predominantly black college. The focus of grand jury inquiries into the contract between CARI and the whaling group was unclear.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported in its Sunday edition that Shaw University wound up with much or all of the whaling group’s payment and used at least part of it to employ a Dymally congressional aide, Theta W. Shipp, as a fund raiser and Washington contact.

Shipp is listed as a full-time member of Dymally’s Washington congressional staff

Dymally told The Times last weekend that Shipp, a Ph.D candidate at Washington’s Howard University, actually is a part-time congressional aide and a part-time “fellow” with CARI, where she conducted research specified by the whaling association’s contract.

But officials at Shaw University told The News & Observer that Shipp’s duties included staging a Washington fund raiser for the school and serving as a watchdog on federal issues. She is listed in the school’s latest faculty catalogue as a “liaison.”

Noted Important Issues

“She would underline what was important to Shaw,” George Debnam, chairman of the school’s trustees, told the newspaper. “If there was a change in the student aid law she would underline that.”

Shipp could not be reached by The Times for comment, but told The News & Observer that she is employed by CARI and not the university.

Dymally has had a long and controversial relationship with the whaling industry of Japan, one of a handful of nations that continues to engage in whaling despite an international moratorium on the activity. American environmentalists have long attacked him for advocating continued whaling despite evidence that whales are a threatened species of marine life.

Dymally accompanied the U.S. delegation to conferences of the International Whaling Commission in Buenos Aires in 1984 and England in 1985.

“Dymally said there are some whale species which are increasing and they would increase to excess when whaling is totally banned,” Japan’s Kyodo news service said in a June, 1985, report.