Office of the Historian

891.51A/8–1244: Telegram

The Chargé in Iran (Ford) to the Secretary of State

Tehran, August 12, 1944—1 p.m.
[Received 4:24 p.m.]

610. Newspaper Setareh published July 26 interview with Millspaugh in which he was quoted as saying that since days of Shuster28 Iranian patriots had always turned to us whenever independence of country was threatened. He went on to say that if American advisers had not come to Iran various things might have happened, one possibility being that troubles would have occurred which would have resulted in Russian occupation of north and British occupation of south.

Millspaugh says he thought he was talking off the record and in any case was misquoted. He says paper will publish correction. I think, however, substance of his remarks was probably correctly reported as his own account of what he said does not differ very much from published version and I feel he is responsible for treating [creating?] dangerous incident through serious indiscretion.

[Page 425]

British Chargé d’Affaires Lascelles told me yesterday Soviet Ambassador29 had taken serious view of matter and had proposed to him a joint démarche to this Legation. I spoke briefly to Maximov at a reception last night and he said he had reported incident to Moscow for such action as might be deemed desirable. I told Maximov of Millspaugh’s statement that he was misquoted and that retraction would be published but he replied that damage had already been done. He was plainly determined to exploit situation and I should not be surprised if Soviets took opportunity to demand Millspaugh’s dismissal.

Legation feels and has pointed out to Millspaugh that this incident is especially unfortunate in that it comes at a moment when we had through the tripartite conversations outlined full British cooperation with advisers and had brought Russians at least to point of recognizing their existence.

Sent to Department repeated to Moscow.

Ford
  1. W. Morgan Shuster, financial adviser to the Persian (Iranian) Government in 1911; for correspondence, see Foreign Relations, 1911, pp. 679 ff.↩
  2. Mikhail Alexeyevich Maximov.↩