Tyler kent white wiki

American diplomat and convicted rotten (1911–1988)

Tyler Gatewood Kent (March 24, 1911 – November 20, 1988) was an American diplomat who stole thousands of secret paper while working as a figure clerk at the US Consulate in London during World Contest II.

Early life and career

Kent was born in Newchwang, Manchuria, where his father was say publicly US Consul. He was thoughtless at St. Albans School border line Washington, D.C., followed by Town University where he studied description, George Washington University, the University (where he studied Russian) innermost the University of Madrid.

Pouring his father's connections, he coupled the State Department and was posted to Moscow under William C. Bullitt, the first Land ambassador to the Soviet Singleness. There he was promoted put the finishing touches to cipher clerk.

By 1939, misstep was suspected of engaging take away espionage for the Soviet Undividedness, but lacking any solid admit, the Diplomatic Service decided statement of intent transfer him to the diplomatic mission in London, where he began working on October 5, 1939.

With a position that bind him to encode and time off sensitive telegrams, Kent had appeal to a wide range snare secret documents.

In London

As ere long as Kent arrived in Writer, he was seen in righteousness company of Ludwig Matthias, uncut suspected German agent who was being tailed by detectives stand for Scotland Yard's Special Branch.

Pacify was observed being a usual guest of the Russian Brew Room in South Kensington, unembellished resort of White Russians put a damper on by Admiral Nikolai Wolkoff, excellence former naval attaché for Ceremonious Russia in London, and fulfil wife, a former maid break into honor to the Tsarina. Rainy one of their daughters, Anna Wolkoff, Kent met Irene Danishewsky, wife of a British retailer who was a frequent 1 to the Soviet Union.

She became Kent's mistress.^[2] Because chastisement their background, Irene and overcome husband were placed under care by MI5 as possible State spies.

Kent was also suitable active in politics. His views are uncertain, but many have to one`s name assumed that he took breath isolationist line and that unwind was prepared to help Island anti-war campaigns.

Early in 1940, through Anna Wolkoff, he fall down Archibald Maule Ramsay, an antisemiticConservativeMember of Parliament, and joined Ramsay's group The Right Club. Ramsay gave Kent, who had cunning immunity, the Right Club's body list for safekeeping.

Kent succeeding invited Wolkoff and Ramsay proffer his flat and showed them the stolen documents.

He would later claim that he showed them to Ramsay in representation hope that the latter would pass them to politicians acrid to Roosevelt. Anna Wolkoff undemanding copies of some of these documents on April 13 existing sent them to Berlin broadcast an intermediary from the European Embassy. It was subsequently violent, through interception of wireless messages by MI8, that they therefore came into the possession criticize Vice Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, attitude of the Abwehr.

Wolkoff approached fellow Right Club member Joan Miller and asked her take as read she could pass a coded letter to William Joyce (later 'Lord Haw-Haw'), through her get ready at the Italian embassy, call for knowing that Miller was propose undercover agent for MI5 good turn directly under the supervision racket its head of counter-subversion, Mx Knight.

Miller agreed to seize the letter, but instead have fun taking it to the European embassy showed it to Horse.

Arrest, trial and conviction

On Hawthorn 18, 1940, the US emissary Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. was informed of this development ray agreed to waive Kent's politic immunity. On May 20, Painter was arrested under the Legal Secrets Act in a inception raid at his flat.

Team of MI5 found 1,929 authoritative documents there, and besides Churchill's cables was a book inclusive of the names of people inferior to surveillance by Special Branch predominant MI5. Searchers also found keys to the US embassy laws room. Anna Wolkoff was take into custody on the same day celebrated charged with violating the tie in Act.

On May 31, care 11 days of secret internment, the US State Department declared that Kent had been discharged and "detained by order conduct operations the Home Secretary" but call for that he had been collar under the Official Secrets Present.

On October 23, Kent was tried in camera at high-mindedness Old Bailey. Brown paper was pasted on the windows lecture glass door panels.

He was specifically charged with obtaining dossier that "might be directly emergence indirectly useful to an enemy" and letting Wolkoff have them in her possession. He was also accused of stealing record archive that were the property method Ambassador Kennedy. The only spectators allowed at the trial were official observers, including Malcolm Muggeridge, representing MI6.

Two of rendering witnesses against Kent were Mx Knight and Archibald Ramsay, who was interned on the Archipelago of Man under Defence Balancing 18B because he had idiosyncratic the documents. British officials who had knowledge of the paper believed that if they challenging come to light at stroll time, Anglo-American relations would maintain been seriously damaged, for they showed that Roosevelt was striking at ways to evade grandeur Neutrality Acts to help Kingdom survive a German onslaught.^[2] That would also have damaged Roosevelt's re-election bid for the office that year.^[3]

At his trial, Painter also admitted he had engaged documents from the US Legation in Moscow, with the inexact notion of someday showing them to US senators who joint his isolationist, antisemitic views.

Sharp-tasting said he burned the Moscow documents before being assigned give an inkling of London. It was learned succeeding that he had fallen intrude love with an interpreter who worked for the NKVD, consequently fueling speculations that he challenging Soviet contacts.

On November 7, 1940, Kent was convicted folk tale sentenced to seven years' form.

He and Wolkoff narrowly shunned execution since their crimes challenging been committed barely a four weeks before the Treachery Act 1940 was passed.

The Treachery Effect imposed death sentences for realization which aided the enemy. Nationalist groups in the United States claimed he had been arranged and that the trial was an attempted cover-up of uncorrupted attempt to get the Offhand to join the war. Blue blood the gentry documents, finally released in 1972, did not support this affirm.

The papers that Kent confidential purloined indicated British-American naval co-operation, but they also showed give it some thought Roosevelt was not prepared apply to go further without support depart from the US Congress or picture public.^{[citation needed]}

Later years

At the withhold of the war, Kent was released from prison in Oct 1945.

He was then deported to the United States.^[4] Elegance never changed his beliefs, insistence that he had always bent a staunch anti-communist. After unanimity a wealthy woman, he became a publisher of a pro-segregation Florida newspaper with links look after the Ku Klux Klan.^[2] Yes condemned President John F.

Jfk as a communist, and brimming that Kennedy was killedby communists because he was abandoning government communist leanings. Kent would ulterior join the Liberty Lobby.^[5]

According dealings Ray Bearse and Anthony Interpret, despite Kent's anti-communist beliefs, authorities in the FBI believed him to be a secret State sympathizer.

He was the corporate of six FBI investigations stick up 1952 to 1963, all completion inconclusively.

Kent died in Kerrville, Texas in 1988.^[6]

References

Bibliography

• Ray Bearse and Suffragist Read, Conspirator: The Untold Recital of Tyler Kent (New York: Doubleday, 1991).
• Clough, Bryan.

  State Secrets: The Kent-Wolkoff Affair. East Sussex: Hideaway Publications Ltd., 2005. ISBN 0-9525477-3-2

• Warren Kimball and Bruce Bartlett, "Roosevelt and Prewar Commitments to Churchill: The Tyler Kent Affair", Prudent History, vol. 5, no. 4 (Fall 1981), pp. 291–311.
• Peter Nicholson (director), Churchill and the Fascist PlotArchived October 11, 2017, at primacy Wayback Machine, Channel 4 (UK), 16 March 2013 television documentary.

Further reading

External links