Tyler Kent
Encyclopedia
Tyler Gatesworth Kent was an American
diplomat
who stole thousands of secret documents for a pro-German
organization while working as a cipher clerk at the U.S. Embassy in London
during World War II
.
where his father was the U.S. Consul. He was educated at a prestigious private school, St. Albans School in Washington, DC, followed by Princeton University
where he studied history, George Washington University
, the Sorbonne
(where he studied Russian
) and the University of Madrid
. Through his father's connections, he joined the State Department and was posted to Moscow
under William C. Bullitt
, the first American ambassador
to the Soviet Union
. There he was promoted to cipher clerk.
By 1939, he was suspected of engaging in espionage
for the Soviet Union
, but lacking any solid evidence, the Diplomatic Service decided to transfer him to the embassy in London, where he began working on October 5, 1939.
Special Branch
. He was observed being a frequent guest of the Russian Tea Room in South Kensington
, a habitué for White Russians
led by Adm. Nikolai Wolkoff, the former naval attaché for Imperial Russia in London, and his wife, a former maid of honor to the Tsaritsa
. Through one of their daughters, Anna
, Kent met Irene Danishewsky, wife of a British merchant who was a frequent visitor of the Soviet Union. She became Kent's mistress. Because of their background, Irene and her husband were placed under surveillance
by MI5
as possible Soviet spies.
With a position which required him to encode and decode sensitive telegrams, Kent had access to a wide range of secret documents, especially the communications between Winston Churchill
and Franklin D. Roosevelt
, and he began to take many of the more interesting ones home with him. Churchill had just been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and was in regular communication with the President of the United States
, and both men expected that he would eventually become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
.
Meanwhile, Kent was also becoming active in politics. His views are uncertain, but many have assumed that he took an isolationist
line, and that he was prepared to help British
anti-war campaigns. Early in 1940, through Anna Wolkoff, he met Archibald Maule Ramsay
, an anti-semitic
Conservative
Member of Parliament
, and joined Ramsay's group, "The Right Club". Ramsay gave him the Right Club's membership list for safekeeping.
Kent later invited Wolkoff and Ramsay to his flat and showed them the stolen documents. He would later claim that he showed them to Ramsay in the hope that the latter would pass them to politicians hostile to Roosevelt. Anna Wolkoff herself made copies of some of these documents on April 13, and sent them to Berlin
through an intermediary from the Italian
Embassy. It was afterwards found, through interception of wireless messages by MI8
, that it came into the possession of Vice Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
, the head of the Abwehr
.
Wolkoff approached fellow Right Club member Joan Miller, and asked her if she could pass a coded letter to William Joyce
(later 'Lord Haw-Haw') through her contacts at the Italian embassy. Miller agreed, but what Wolkoff did not know was that Miller was an undercover agent for MI5 and directly under the supervision of its head of counter-subversion, Maxwell Knight
. Miller agreed to take the letter, but instead of taking it to the Italian embassy, showed it to Knight.
. On May 20, 1940, Kent was arrested in a dawn raid at his flat. Officers of MI5 found 1,929 official documents there: besides Churchill's cables, there was a book containing the names of people under surveillance by Special Branch and MI5. Searchers also found keys to the U.S. embassy code room.
On May 31, after 11 days of secret arrest, the U.S. State Department announced that he had been fired and "detained by order of the Home Secretary
". The statement did not say that he had been arrested under the Official Secrets Act
. Anna Wolkoff was arrested on May 20 and charged with violating the same act.
On October 23, Kent was tried in camera
in the Old Bailey
. Brown paper was pasted on the windows and glass door panels. He was specifically charged with obtaining documents that "might be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy" and letting Wolkoff have them in her possession. He was also accused of stealing documents that were the property of Ambassador Kennedy. The only spectators allowed at the trial were official observers, including Malcolm Muggeridge
, representing MI6. Two of the witnesses against Kent were Maxwell Knight and Archibald Ramsay, who was interned on the Isle of Man
under Defence Regulation 18B
because he had seen the documents. British officials who were knowledgeable of the documents believed that if they would come to light at that time, it would seriously damage Anglo-American relations, for it showed that Roosevelt was looking at ways to evade the Neutrality Acts to help Britain survive the German onslaught. It would have also damaged Roosevelt's reelection bid for the presidency that year.
In his trial, Kent also admitted that he had taken documents from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, with the vague notion of someday showing them to U.S. senators who shared his isolationist, anti-semitic views. He said that he burned the Moscow documents before being assigned to London. It was learned later on that he fell in love with an interpreter who worked for the NKVD
, thus fueling speculations that he had Soviet contacts.
On November 7, 1940, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. Isolationist groups in the United States claimed that he had been framed and that the trial was an attempted cover-up of an attempt to get the U.S. to join the war. The documents, finally released in 1972, did not support this claim. The papers that Kent had purloined did indicate Anglo-American naval cooperation, but they also showed that Roosevelt was not prepared to go further without support from Congress or the public.
. After marrying a wealthy woman, he became a publisher of a newspaper with links to the Ku Klux Klan
. He condemned President John F. Kennedy
as a communist and charged that he was killed by communists because he was abandoning his communist leanings.
According to Ray Bearse and Anthony Read in their book on Tyler Kent, despite his anti-communist beliefs, officials in the FBI believed him to be a secret Soviet sympathizer. He was the subject of six FBI investigations from 1952 to 1963, all ending inconclusively. He died in poverty in a Texas
trailer park in 1988.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
diplomat
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
who stole thousands of secret documents for a pro-German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
organization while working as a cipher clerk at the U.S. Embassy in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Early life and career
Kent was born in Nowchwang, ManchuriaManchuria
Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...
where his father was the U.S. Consul. He was educated at a prestigious private school, St. Albans School in Washington, DC, followed by Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
where he studied history, George Washington University
George Washington University
The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...
, the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
(where he studied Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
) and the University of Madrid
University of Madrid
The Complutense University of Madrid is a public university in Madrid, Spain, and one of the oldest universities in the world.The University of Madrid may also refer to:* The Autonomous University of Madrid, a public university founded in 1968...
. Through his father's connections, he joined the State Department and was posted to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
under William C. Bullitt
William Bullitt
William Christian Bullitt, Jr. was an American diplomat, journalist, and novelist. Although in his youth he was considered something of a radical, he later became an outspoken anticommunist.-Early years:...
, the first American ambassador
Ambassador
An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....
to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. There he was promoted to cipher clerk.
By 1939, he was suspected of engaging in espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
for the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, but lacking any solid evidence, the Diplomatic Service decided to transfer him to the embassy in London, where he began working on October 5, 1939.
In London
As soon as Kent arrived in London, he was seen in the company of Ludwig Matthias, a suspected German agent who was being tailed by detectives of Scotland Yard'sScotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
Special Branch
Special Branch
Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security in British and Commonwealth police forces, as well as in the Royal Thai Police...
. He was observed being a frequent guest of the Russian Tea Room in South Kensington
South Kensington
South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....
, a habitué for White Russians
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...
led by Adm. Nikolai Wolkoff, the former naval attaché for Imperial Russia in London, and his wife, a former maid of honor to the Tsaritsa
Alexandra Fyodorovna of Hesse
Alix of Hesse and by Rhine later Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova , was Empress consort of Russia as spouse of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of the Russian Empire...
. Through one of their daughters, Anna
Anna Wolkoff
Anna Nikolayevna Wolkova , sometimes known as Anna de Wolkoff, was a White Russian emigré and a spy for Nazi Germany during World War II.-Early life:...
, Kent met Irene Danishewsky, wife of a British merchant who was a frequent visitor of the Soviet Union. She became Kent's mistress. Because of their background, Irene and her husband were placed under surveillance
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
by MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
as possible Soviet spies.
With a position which required him to encode and decode sensitive telegrams, Kent had access to a wide range of secret documents, especially the communications between Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
and Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
, and he began to take many of the more interesting ones home with him. Churchill had just been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and was in regular communication with the President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
, and both men expected that he would eventually become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
.
Meanwhile, Kent was also becoming active in politics. His views are uncertain, but many have assumed that he took an isolationist
Isolationism
Isolationism is the policy or doctrine of isolating one's country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances, foreign economic commitments, international agreements, etc., seeking to devote the entire efforts of one's country to its own advancement and remain at peace by...
line, and that he was prepared to help British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
anti-war campaigns. Early in 1940, through Anna Wolkoff, he met Archibald Maule Ramsay
Archibald Maule Ramsay
Captain Archibald Henry Maule Ramsay was a British Army officer who later went into politics as a Scottish Unionist Member of Parliament . From the late 1930s he developed increasingly strident antisemitic views...
, an anti-semitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
, and joined Ramsay's group, "The Right Club". Ramsay gave him the Right Club's membership list for safekeeping.
Kent later invited Wolkoff and Ramsay to his flat and showed them the stolen documents. He would later claim that he showed them to Ramsay in the hope that the latter would pass them to politicians hostile to Roosevelt. Anna Wolkoff herself made copies of some of these documents on April 13, and sent them to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
through an intermediary from the Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
Embassy. It was afterwards found, through interception of wireless messages by MI8
MI8
MI8, or Military Intelligence, Section 8, was the cover designation for the Radio Security Service , a department of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, part of the War Office...
, that it came into the possession of Vice Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral, head of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, from 1935 to 1944 and member of the German Resistance.- Early life and World War I :...
, the head of the Abwehr
Abwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
.
Wolkoff approached fellow Right Club member Joan Miller, and asked her if she could pass a coded letter to William Joyce
William Joyce
William Joyce , nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was an Irish-American fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster to the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He was hanged for treason by the British as a result of his wartime activities, even though he had renounced his British nationality...
(later 'Lord Haw-Haw') through her contacts at the Italian embassy. Miller agreed, but what Wolkoff did not know was that Miller was an undercover agent for MI5 and directly under the supervision of its head of counter-subversion, Maxwell Knight
Maxwell Knight
Charles Henry Maxwell Knight OBE, known as Maxwell Knight, was an English spymaster, naturalist and broadcaster, whilst reputedly being a model for the James Bond character M.-Spymaster:...
. Miller agreed to take the letter, but instead of taking it to the Italian embassy, showed it to Knight.
Arrest, trial and conviction
On May 18, the U.S. ambassador, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was informed of this development, and agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunityDiplomatic immunity
Diplomatic immunity is a form of legal immunity and a policy held between governments that ensures that diplomats are given safe passage and are considered not susceptible to lawsuit or prosecution under the host country's laws...
. On May 20, 1940, Kent was arrested in a dawn raid at his flat. Officers of MI5 found 1,929 official documents there: besides Churchill's cables, there was a book containing the names of people under surveillance by Special Branch and MI5. Searchers also found keys to the U.S. embassy code room.
On May 31, after 11 days of secret arrest, the U.S. State Department announced that he had been fired and "detained by order of the Home Secretary
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
". The statement did not say that he had been arrested under the Official Secrets Act
Official Secrets Act
The Official Secrets Act is a stock short title used in the United Kingdom, Ireland, India and Malaysia and formerly in New Zealand for legislation that provides for the protection of state secrets and official information, mainly related to national security.-United Kingdom:*The Official Secrets...
. Anna Wolkoff was arrested on May 20 and charged with violating the same act.
On October 23, Kent was tried in camera
In camera
In camera is a legal term meaning "in private". It is also sometimes termed in chambers or in curia.In camera describes court cases that the public and press are not admitted to...
in the Old Bailey
Old Bailey
The Central Criminal Court in England and Wales, commonly known as the Old Bailey from the street in which it stands, is a court building in central London, one of a number of buildings housing the Crown Court...
. Brown paper was pasted on the windows and glass door panels. He was specifically charged with obtaining documents that "might be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy" and letting Wolkoff have them in her possession. He was also accused of stealing documents that were the property of Ambassador Kennedy. The only spectators allowed at the trial were official observers, including Malcolm Muggeridge
Malcolm Muggeridge
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy...
, representing MI6. Two of the witnesses against Kent were Maxwell Knight and Archibald Ramsay, who was interned on the Isle of Man
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...
under Defence Regulation 18B
Defence Regulation 18B
Defence Regulation 18B, often referred to as simply 18B, was the most famous of the Defence Regulations used by the British Government during World War II. The complete technical reference name for this rule was: Regulation 18B of the Defence Regulations 1939. It allowed for the internment of...
because he had seen the documents. British officials who were knowledgeable of the documents believed that if they would come to light at that time, it would seriously damage Anglo-American relations, for it showed that Roosevelt was looking at ways to evade the Neutrality Acts to help Britain survive the German onslaught. It would have also damaged Roosevelt's reelection bid for the presidency that year.
In his trial, Kent also admitted that he had taken documents from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, with the vague notion of someday showing them to U.S. senators who shared his isolationist, anti-semitic views. He said that he burned the Moscow documents before being assigned to London. It was learned later on that he fell in love with an interpreter who worked for the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
, thus fueling speculations that he had Soviet contacts.
On November 7, 1940, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. Isolationist groups in the United States claimed that he had been framed and that the trial was an attempted cover-up of an attempt to get the U.S. to join the war. The documents, finally released in 1972, did not support this claim. The papers that Kent had purloined did indicate Anglo-American naval cooperation, but they also showed that Roosevelt was not prepared to go further without support from Congress or the public.
Later years
At the end of the war, Kent was released and deported to the United States. He never changed his beliefs: he insisted that he had always been a staunch anti-communistAnti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
. After marrying a wealthy woman, he became a publisher of a newspaper with links to the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
. He condemned President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
as a communist and charged that he was killed by communists because he was abandoning his communist leanings.
According to Ray Bearse and Anthony Read in their book on Tyler Kent, despite his anti-communist beliefs, officials in the FBI believed him to be a secret Soviet sympathizer. He was the subject of six FBI investigations from 1952 to 1963, all ending inconclusively. He died in poverty in a Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
trailer park in 1988.
External links
- R. v. Tyler Kent, [1941] 1 K.B. 454
- excerpt from a BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
film by Robert HarrisRobert Harris (novelist)Robert Dennis Harris is an English novelist. He is a former journalist and BBC television reporter.-Early life:Born in Nottingham, Harris spent his childhood in a small rented house on a Nottingham council estate. His ambition to become a writer arose at an early age, from visits to the local...
, playable from Adam CurtisAdam CurtisAdam Curtis is a British BAFTA winning documentarian and a writer, television producer, director and narrator. He works for BBC Current Affairs.-Early life and education:Curtis was born in 1955...
' blog entry titled "Wicked Leaks" (dated 17 Dec 2010, accessed 25 Dec 2010)