Tyler Kent was born in China in 1911. His father was a member of the U.S. Diplomatic Corps. Kent was educated at Princeton, the Sorbone, the University of Madrid and George Washington University. Kent, who spoke French, Greek, German, Russian, Italian and Spanish, joined the State Department in 1934 as a clerk in the Foreign Service and was posted to Moscow.
While in the Soviet Union Kent was accused of helping White Russians to smuggle into the United States various Imperial Russian treasures. It was later revealed that he was also passing on documents to Nazi intelligence while in Moscow.
Kent was transferred to London to work as a cypher clerk at the American Embassy. His arrival in England in the company of Ludwig Matthias, a Gestapo agent, brought him to the attention of MI5.
In February 1940, Tyler met Anna Wolkoff. Her father, Admiral Nikolai Wolkoff, was the former aide-to-camp to the Nicholas II in London. After the Russian Revolution Wolkoff decided to remain in England. The Wolfoff family ran the Russian Tea Room in South Kensington, a place where members of the secret society, the Right Club, used to meet. Wolkoff introduced Tyler to Archibald Ramsay, the leader of the organization. Wolkoff, Kent and Ramsay talked about politics and agreed that they all shared the same political views.
Kent was concerned that the American government wanted the United States to join the war against Germany. He said he had evidence of this as he had been making copies of the correspondence between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Kent invited Wolkoff and Ramsay back to his flat to look at these documents. This included secret assurances that the United States would support France if it was invaded by the German Army. Kent later argued that he had shown these documents to Ramsay in the hope that he would pass this information to American politicians hostile to Roosevelt.
On 13th April 1940 Anna Wolkoff went to Kent's flat and made copies of some of these documents. Joan Miller and Marjorie Amor were later to testify that these documents were then passed on to Duco del Monte, Assistant Naval Attaché at the Italian Embassy. Soon afterwards, MI8, the wireless interception service, picked up messages between Rome and Berlin that indicated that Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence (Abwehr), now had copies of the Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence
Soon afterwards Wolkoff asked Miller if she would use her contacts at the Italian Embassy to pass a coded letter to William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) in Germany. The letter contained information that he could use in his broadcasts on Radio Hamburg. Before passing the letter to her contacts, Miller showed it to Maxwell Knight.
On 18th May, Knight told Guy Liddell about the Right Club spy ring. Liddell immediately had a meeting with Joseph Kennedy, the American Ambassador in London. Kennedy agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity and on 20th May, 1940, the Special Branch raided his flat. Inside they found the copies of 1,929 classified documents including secret correspondence between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.
The Special Branch officers also found duplicate keys to the embassy code room. The officers were also shocked to find that in Kent had what became known as Ramsay's Red Book. This book had details of the supporters of the Right Club and had been given to Kent by Archibald Ramsay for safe keeping.
Kent and Anna Wolkoff were arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act. The trial took place in secret and on 7th November 1940, Wolkoff was sentenced to ten years. Kent, because he was an American citizen, was treated less harshly and received only seven years.
In December 1945 Tyler Kent was deported to the United States. Surprisingly, his former employer the Department of State decided not to prosecute him for working as a spy for Nazi Germany.
Tyler Kent died in a Texas trailer park in 1988.
Home Front
Home Front Simulation
Forum Debates
Second World War
Controversial Issues in History
The Cambridge Spy Ring
The Kim Philby Spy Group
Anthony Blunt, the Royal Family and Nazi Germany
Rudolf Hess, Fascism and the British Establishment
The Strange Case of Rudolf Hess and the Duke of Hamilton
(1) Joan Miller, One Girl's War (1970)
Tyler Kent had arrived in Britain in October 1939 after spending five years at the United States Embassy in Moscow. At this time, he appeared strongly anti-Communist and pro-Fascist in outlook. As it turned out, he'd drawn attention to himself almost as soon as he got to London, by allowing a suspected Gestapo agent to visit him in his rooms. MI5 kept an eye on him from this point on, but took no immediate action. Kent actually made contact with the Russian Tea Room conspirators at the beginning of 1940, joining the Right Club shortly afterwards.
On the evidence of certain documents passing through his hands in the course of his work, Kent was strongly of the opinion that America's foreign policy had taken a disastrous turn. It was clear to him that Roosevelt planned to involve his country in the war, largely against the wishes of the American people. All documents tending to support this hypothesis, however obliquely, were copied by him and the copies transferred illegally from the embassy to his flat. It didn't take him long to amass a formidable collection. He intended to get this to the United States as soon as possible; once it became public property, he reasoned, it would furnish the isolationist movement with the power to defeat Roosevelt in the coming election. As far as Tyier Kent was concerned, the President was upholding America's neutrality in public, while actually planning to bring it to an end: such duplicity cried out for exposure.
Educational Websites
Standards Site, BBC History, PBS Online, Open Directory Project, Virtual Library,
Education Forum, History GCSE, Design & Technology, Learn History, Music Teacher Resource,
Freepedia, Teach It, Science Active, Geography IST, Brighton Photographers, Sussex Photo History,
Crompton History, Universal Teacher, English Teaching, English Online, History Learning Site,
History on the Net, Black History, Greenfield History, School History, Active History, I Love History,
E-HELP, Ed Podesta Blog, Macgregorish History, Historiasiglo20, Sintermeerten, ICT4LT |
News and Search
Guardian Unlimited, Times Online, Daily Telegraph, The Independent, New York Times,
Washington Post, BBC, CNN, Yahoo News, New Scientist, Google News, Channel 4, ZDNet,
Google, Excite, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, AOL Search, Hotbot, Metacrawler, Netscape, Ask, Search,
Go, Looksmart, Dogpile, Raging Search, All the Web, Kartoo, Search Engine Watch, About
|
