Censored

From Buenos Aires last fortnight, TIME Correspondent Robert Neville cabled that he would be filing an important story. In Argentina's Chamber of Deputies, Radical opponents of President Juan Peron's regime had made some sensational charges--that Peron's police force, augmented by hundreds of ex-Nazi soldiers, was torturing and brutalizing political prisoners. But Neville's story never reached TIME, nor did TIME's urgent "What happened?" messages reach Correspondent Neville. Last week, the explanation came.

After writing his story, Neville had turned it over as usual to the Argentine post office for transmission to the U.S. Instead, the post office turned it over to General Arturo Bertollo, who as chief of the Argentine police was the target of the deputies' charges. Although Juan Peron insists that there is no censorship in Argentina,* his police chief had simply suppressed Neville's story.

Only eight months ago, Peron's censors had snipped another Neville story into senselessness. Recently, the censorship had also been extended to other U.S. newsmen. Since March, radio correspondents have been denied access to broadcasting facilities, and last fortnight the Buenos Aires newscast of the U.S. Information Service was banned for two days. At week's end, U.S. Ambassador James Bruce lodged a protest with Argentina's Foreign Office.

In Prague, another correspondent for a free press got a revealing look at the ways of dictatorship. Stepping out of the door of his room at the Hotel Flora, scholarly Hans Tuetsch of the Neue Zuercher Zeitung, one of Switzerland's biggest newspapers, saw a middle-aged woman carrying a big radio set. As he watched, she moved into room 130, next door. Tuetsch later pointed out the woman to well-informed Czech friends, learned that she and her husband were both notorious police spies.

One day last week, Tuetsch spotted a strange piece of wire in his room. When he followed it along the wall, it led him out on the balcony, then through the window of room 130. Stepping inside, Tuetsch confronted the Czech espionage team. They were comfortably lounging in easy chairs next to a big loudspeaker, expectantly waiting for noises from next door. Said Tuetsch: "They were very much surprised to see me." Indignantly, Tuetsch marched to the office of Czech Press Boss Evzen Klinger, charged him with a "flagrant breach of confidence," and headed home to the free air of Switzerland.

* Where TIME itself has been banned since the cover story on Eva Peron in July 1947.

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