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'''Tyler Gatewood Kent''' (March 24, 1911 - November 20, 1988) was an [[United States|American]] [[diplomat]] and [[traitor]] who, while working as a cypher clerk at the US Embassy in [[London]], stole thousands of secret documents.
'''Tyler Gatewood Kent''' (March 24, 1911 - November 20, 1988) was an [[United States|American]] [[diplomat]] and [[traitor]] who, while working as a cypher clerk at the US Embassy in [[London]], stole thousands of secret documents.
Kent claimed the documents showed a conspiracy between Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to bring America into World War 2. Churchill was then just the Naval Secretary and would later become Prime Minister. Churchill and Roosevelt knew each other from the period when both were Naval Secretaries during the 1910's. In the secret telegrams, FDR would refer to Churchill as 'naval person' instead of by his name. Kent's arrest was in May 1940, and America would enter the war in December 1941, over a year later.
Kent was born in Nowchwang, [[Manchuria]] where his father was the American Consul. He was educated at a prestigious private school, St. Albans School in Washington, DC, followed by Princeton University where he studied history. Through his father's connections he joined the Diplomatic Service and was posted to [[Moscow]]. By 1939 he was under suspicion for [[espionage]] for the [[Soviet Union]], but lacking any solid evidence, the Diplomatic Service decided to act by transferring him to the London Embassy shortly after the outbreak of [[World War II]].
Kent was born in Nowchwang, [[Manchuria]] where his father was the American Consul. He was educated at a prestigious private school, St. Albans School in Washington, DC, followed by Princeton University where he studied history. Through his father's connections he joined the Diplomatic Service and was posted to [[Moscow]]. By 1939 he was under suspicion for [[espionage]] for the [[Soviet Union]], but lacking any solid evidence, the Diplomatic Service decided to act by transferring him to the London Embassy shortly after the outbreak of [[World War II]].
Kent's abstraction of documents had been noticed and on May 20 he was arrested in a dawn raid at his flat (1,500 documents were found there). Ambassador [[Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.]] agreed to waive [[diplomatic immunity]] and Kent was tried ''in camera'' under the [[Official Secrets Act]] 1911. On November 7, 1940 he was convicted and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. The trial and imprisonment of Kent, and the co-operation of the US authorities, led isolationist groups in the USA to claim that he had been framed and that the trial was an attempted cover-up of an attempt to get the USA to join the war.
Kent's abstraction of documents had been noticed and on May 20 he was arrested in a dawn raid at his flat (1,500 documents were found there). Ambassador [[Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.]] agreed to waive [[diplomatic immunity]] and Kent was tried ''in camera'' under the [[Official Secrets Act]] 1911. On November 7, 1940 he was convicted and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. The trial and imprisonment of Kent, and the co-operation of the US authorities, led isolationist groups in the USA to claim that he had been framed and that the trial was an attempted cover-up of an attempt to get the USA to join the war.
At the end of the war Kent was released and deported to the USA. He there insisted that he had always been a staunch anti-communist, but was nevertheless interrogated by the [[FBI]] in 1951, where he told no more than had been disclosed at his trial. The FBI investigation has been criticised as naive. Afterwards, Kent was associated with newspapers linked to the [[Ku Klux Klan]]. He died in poverty in [[Texas]] in 1988.
At the end of the war Kent was released and deported to the USA. He there insisted that he had always been a staunch anti-communist, but was nevertheless interrogated by the [[FBI]] in 1951, where he told no more than had been disclosed at his trial. The FBI investigation has been criticised as naive. Afterwards, Kent was associated with far-right newspapers linked to the [[Ku Klux Klan]] and expressing anti-Jewish opinions. He died in [[Texas]] in 1988.
==References==
==References==