THE CURIOUS CASE OF TYLER KENT
Hanighen, Frank C.
The Curious Case Of Tyler Kent By FRANK C. HANIGHEN THE recent State Department statement on the Tyler Kent case was the first official recognition of the matter since the United States entered the...
...All very impressive and authoritative...
...Therefore, the Embassy waived jurisdiction...
...Ere long, I was hearing from their lips almost precisely the same story about Tyler Kent, Ramsay, Wolkoff et al that I had heard the year before in Washington...
...The State Department said that the London police believed that Miss Wolkoff "was in sympathy with certain of Germany's objectives, that she and some of her associates were hostile to Britain's war effort, that she wa involved in pro-German propaganda, that she had a channel of communication with Germany, and that she - was making use of that channel of communication...
...But I doubt that it can be entirely dismissed...
...Investigation In Order Mr...
...One evening in July 1942, I was sitting in a London apartment with a number of Labor members of the British Parliament...
...Kent simply knew the content of all messages that went in and out of the Embassy because he decoded them himself when on duty and his key to the code room file let him copy anything which came through in his absence...
...The only thing that saved Kent's life was that he was an American citizen and we were not yet at war," Kennedy concluded...
...Almost precisely, but plus one interesting detail (of which more later...
...It is doubtful, therefore, that the Patterson-McCormick and Hearst press will relapse into silence or abstain from rumors and charges...
...Any impartial reader of them will remain unconvinced as to the reasons for waiving diplomatic immunity for Kent...
...He was, on the contrary, a Red spy, who secured from her copies of the documents and put them in Stalin's greedy hands...
...Kent, mother of the boy, who lived in Washington and had been visiting Members of Congress in his behalf...
...Yet, ruminating it all sceptically, I couldn't forget the one additional detail which the British members of Parliament offered: that there was an extra copy of the documents at large—and that Scotland Yard was still hunting for this missing file...
...And the story of "documents for sale" certainly heightened suspicion...
...They had not been in the United States for many years...
...The State Department does not deny that communications between Churchill and Roosevelt, such as described in news accounts, went through Kent's hands...
...But, some of the information seemed to originate from Mrs...
...And as I listened to talk on this matter in Fleet Street, I came to the conclusion that, despite lack of documentary proof, there was "something to the Tyler Kent case...
...What it all added up to was a story like this: Mystery In The Code Room In the Winter of 1938-'39, a coding clerk in the American Embassy in London, named Tyler Kent, had observed a large number of telegrams crossing his desk sent from President Roosevelt to Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, in Neville Chamberlain's cabinet...
...This in no way discredits the news story about private communications between Churchill and Roosevelt...
...I have consulted with two former members of the American diplomatic service who have followed reports of this case closely...
...This, after all, is all that Mrs...
...However accurate this official statement may be, it suffers from the handicap of being released during a political campaign...
...In short, it looked to me as if there was substantial confirmation in impeccable London official circles for what had been dismissed as gossip in Washington...
...Kennedy's defense is the question of the subject matter of the documents stolen by Kent...
...Ambassador Kennedy employs some very cagy language when he says: "Kent did not serve as a special medium of communication between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in any way...
...In conclusion, these points need to be cleared up, if the American people are to feel satisfied that no secret negotiations were carried on by Churchill and Roosevelt regarding our entrance into the war...
...All this was a bit too Edgar Wallace for me...
...Kent, mother of the boy, has been demanding—his return to this country and trial before a United States tribunal...
...They were, as follows: That Miss Wolkoff had a friend whom she thought was a thorough anti-Bolshevik...
...The State Department stressed the fact that Kent's activities were inextricably mixed with those of Miss Wolkoff and associates and other people "suspected of subversive activities"—and that Britain at the time had priority on jurisdiction because Britain "was fighting for its existence...
...Therefore, it would seem wise to heed Sen...
...They were not regular readers of the McCormick-Patterson press...
...They were not criticizing Roosevelt for dealing to put the United States into war...
...Then came a piece in November 1941 in the Chicago Tribune—not normally the most authoritative source of nailed-down information...
...Shipstead's demand for a Congressional investigation of what is rapidly becoming a cause celebre...
...Joseph Kennedy's (Ambassador in London when Kent was code-clerk) interview with the newspapers, expanding on the State Department's statement...
...Nor were they in any communication with the Opposition party in the United States...
...Kennedy do not answer all the vital questions...
...The other significant thing to note in the State Department release and in Mr...
...The American Embassy waived diplomatic immunity as to Kent, and the latter as well as the other principals were sent to jail...
...They were censuring Churchill for dealing with a foreign ruler to upset a government and put himself in as Prime Minister...
...They both contend that the United States Government should never have waived diplomatic immunity in the case of Kent...
...He should, therefore, have been tried in a United States instead of British court...
...Their concern in the case, however, was different from that of the Chicago Tribune...
...At any rate, these charges were exciting, if not credible...
...The alleged murder in New York appeared, even to reporters of papers anxious to play up the Kent affair, no more than a case of suicide...
...That a Dutch diamond merchant had a set of copies of the documents in New York and was offering them for sale...
...The Curious Case Of Tyler Kent By FRANK C. HANIGHEN THE recent State Department statement on the Tyler Kent case was the first official recognition of the matter since the United States entered the war...
...The case has remained for so long shrouded in official secrecy that "rumors and charges" have multiplied to a truly impressive extent...
...I first heard of the "case" as such in 1941, from the usual scraps of gossip and the clearing-house of coterie chatter...
...Ramsay, Member of Parliament, sympathetic to a friendship-for-Germany policy in England and strongly against continued British participation in the war...
...Kennedy confirmed the State Department statement that Kent had about 1,500 copies of diplomatic cablegrams in his room...
...The State Department and Mr...
...I returned to this country with this feeling...
...Then came the State Department release and Mr...
...Yet, one cannot help noticing two things about both these statements...
...McCormick's scribes...
...Kent, outraged by his secret covenanting, had copies made of the telegrams and gave them, via an intermediary, a White Russian lady named Anna Wol-koff, to a Capt...
...And they naturally stressed Churchill's unfaithful attitude towards the head of his party...
...He received no messages from the President with authority to decode them and deliver them privately to the Prime Minister...
...He claimed that Kent had "used the Italian Embassy to reach Berlin...
...The story, as thus quite unauthoritatively retailed, sounded sensational...
...The first news of the case came in the late Spring of 1940 and since then word-of-mouth reporting has snow-balled, until today many careful observers are disposed to shrug their shoulders and dismiss the matter...
...And other information came from the facile typewriters of Col...
...With these in his possession, Stalin was able to threaten Churchill and Roosevelt with exposure if they did not play in with his plans...
...Young Mr...
...That a friend of Kent in London on his return to this country was murdered in his New York apartment because "he knew too much...
...Kent violated his oaths of office and betrayed United States secret papers...
...Assurances were given and a political "deal" was made between Churchill and Roosevelt...
...Then came Pearl Harbor, and I forgot all about it until the Summer of 1942...
...Somewhere along this line, Scotland Yard intervened and Ramsay, Miss Wolkoff, and Kent Were taken into custody...
...The telegrams embodied discussions as to how the United States could be put into the war on the side of Britain, how the United States could assist Britain in her war effort, how United States neutrality could be circumvented, and how Churchill with Roosevelt's influence could succeed Chamberlain as Premier...
...Rumors Plentiful Now none of these men was ever pro-German, or anti-Russian...
...I must admit, however, that •¦¦¦my conviction was somewhat shaken by further wild productions of the rumor fao-tory which were flying around Congressional lobbies and the Press Club bar...
...Accordingly, a cautious observer was likely to reserve judgment because he might infer that a mother would naturally stress the circumstances which might favor release for her son—and an anti-Administration paper might well stretch facts, if not rumors...
...In fact, there is much reason to suppose that the increasing attention given this mysterious diplomatic affair by the press opposed to the Administration prompted the State Department to speak...
...Kent had been in frequent contact, it was said, with Miss Wolkoff and some of the documents found in his room had "been transmitted to an agent of a foreign power...
...The former Ambassador further stressed the immense confusion, when the offense was discovered, caused by the necessity of changing the U. S. codes...
...There's a long record of phony documents put up for sale...
...They were leftists who had long denounced Fascism, anti-Semitism, Hitler, etc...
...The offense was obviously committed first of all against the United States...
...They were discussing Churchill, and not with any great magnanimity, for they nursed hope of ousting him and his party...
Vol. 8 • October 1944 • No. 41
