Cops in the Lobby

Just before midnight, two policemen walked into Teheran's Park Hotel last week looking for Sefton Delmer, crack foreign correspondent for the London Daily Express. They were not sure of his looks, though to other correspondents in Iran Delmer's rotund, 250-lb figure and flamboyant air were as well known as stories about his big expense accounts. When Delmer lumbered in from filing a dispatch on the oil crisis, one policeman asked: "Are you Mr. Sefton?" Snapped Delmer: "No, and if you have any business with me, you'd better make sure I'm the right man."

While the cops trudged off to check up, Delmer got off a flash to his London office:

COPS WAITING FOR ME STOP SEE YOU SOON. The Express broke open its last edition to splash a bannerline across Page One: PERSIA EXPELS DELMER.

Illustrious Company. When the cops returned, they had the name straight. They handed Delmer a note: "According to a decision of the cabinet, you will leave Teheran within 24 hours of receiving this." The officers asked Delmer to sign a receipt. Angrily he wrote: "I have received the above order. I protest against. . . this outrageous violation of the freedom of the press and the United Nations Charter."

The experience was nothing new for Delmer. In 20 years of global reporting for Lord Beaverbrook, he has been expelled from Nazi Germany, Fascist Spain, Communist Czechoslovakia and Poland.

While Delmer was being served, Haig Nicholson, Reuters' veteran Middle East manager, got called out of a bridge game at the British colony's Teheran Club to be handed a similar order. Next day, the British ambassador demanded an explanation. He was told that a special press commission had tried and convicted Delmer of "vilifying and defaming the country," Nicholson of "changing the truth." Explained Prime Minister Mossadeq: "Of course, the two correspondents were not present at this trial, but I have no doubt that the verdict was amply justified."

Last Word. The explanation did not satisfy the foreign press corps in Teheran. In a body, it assembled at the Foreign Ministry to demand specifics. Lamely, Deputy Premier Hussein Fatimi quoted excerpts from Daily Express editorials (which Delmer did not write), referred vaguely to a supposedly inaccurate Reuters' report, sternly added that Iran has no need to tolerate "insults and lies." New York Timesman Michael Clark, informal spokesman for the group, snapped right back with a lecture on freedom of the press. Said he:"The reflections with which we have just been gratified are more generally heard in police states . . . We cannot concede the right of this government to give us lessons in professional conscience . . . The Deputy Premier and his government have presumed to constitute themselves the guardians of truth."

Quietly, Nicholson packed his bags and departed for Bagdad. Correspondent Delmer got off a last jab at the government as he bought air passage to Beirut. He handed the telegraph office a message to his office, knowing it would be relayed to Iranian officials. Wrote Delmer: "I called the Persian government oil-grabbers and contract-breakers, and I still do."

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