Epstein in his book "Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer" puts forward the claim that it was Armand Hammer, then a medical student, rather than his father who performed the abortion and his father Julius assumed the blame. Epstein's claims come from interview comments made by Bettye Murphy who had been Armand's mistress. According to Murphy and Epstein's account the legal strategy was that Julius did not deny that an abortion had been performed, but insisted that it had been medically necessary and that a licensed doctor rather than a medical student would be more convincing in presenting that argument. When his father was sentenced to prison, Hammer and his brothers took Allied Drug, the family business, to new heights, reselling equipment they had bought at depressed prices at the end of World War I. According to Hammer, his first business success was in 1919, manufacturing and selling a ginger extract which legally contained high levels of alcohol. This was extremely popular during prohibition, and the company had $1 million in sales that year. After Julius was imprisoned, he sent Armand Hammer to the Soviet Union to look after the affairs of his company Allied Drug and Chemical. Hammer traveled back and forth from the Soviet Union for the next 10 years. In 1921, while waiting for his internship to begin at Bellevue Hospital, Hammer went to the Soviet Union for a trip that lasted until late 1930. Although his career in medicine was cut short, he relished being referred to as "Dr. Hammer." Hammer's intentions in the 1921 trip have been debated ever since. He has claimed that he originally intended to recoup $150,000 in debts for drugs shipped during the Allied intervention, but was soon moved by a capitalistic and philanthropic interest in selling wheat to the then-starving Russians. In his passport application, Hammer stated that he intended to visit only western Europe. Edgar Hoover in the Justice Department knew this was false, but Hammer was allowed to travel anyway. A skeptical U.S. government watched him through this trip and for the rest of his life. After graduating from medical school, Hammer extended earlier entrepreneurial ventures with a successful business importing many goods from and exporting pharmaceuticals to the newly-formed Soviet Union, together with his younger brother Victor. According to Hammer, on his initial trip, he took $60,000 in medical supplies to aid in a typhus epidemic and made a deal with Lenin for furs and caviar in exchange for a shipment of surplus American wheat. He moved to the USSR in the 1920s to oversee these operations, especially his large business manufacturing and exporting pens and pencils.