■ or a few frighten¬ ing days in 1940, the fate of the free world lay in the hands of a lowly code clerk. Had his treachery not been foiled by a brilliant undercover operation, Great Britain might have fallen to Adolf Hitler. His name was Tyler G. Kent, a young man filled with ambition and pride. An elitist to the core, he had grown impatient and bored with his low-ranking postings in the foreign ser¬ vice. As part of the original staff of the Ameri¬ can embassy in Moscow during the 1930s, his taste for high living and beautiful women was exploited by the Soviet secret police, who used him to breach the embassy's lax security and gain access to secret documents. Rotated to the American embassy in London in 1939, Kent joined with British conservatives and anti-Semites who sympathized with the Nazis. Wishing to portray Roosevelt as se¬ cretly supporting Churchill in 1940, Kent hoarded the two leaders' classified messages in the hope that they might be used against FDR in his reelection campaign. In a twist equal to any spy thriller, MI5, the British Security Service, was on to Kent, hav¬ ing used a beautiful agent to infiltrate his ring. Their investigation not only led to Kent's arrest (continued on bock flop) f Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/conspiratoruntolOOOObear Also by Anthony Read (with David Fisher) COLONEL Z THE DEADLY EMBRACE KRISTALLNACHT CONSPIRATOR The Untold Story of Tyler Kent RAY BEARSE AND ANTHONY READ CONSPIRATOR 4 NAN A. TALESE DOUBLEDAY NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103 Doubleday and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bearse, Ray. Conspirator : the untold story of Tyler Kent / by Ray Bearse and Anthony Read, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Kent, Tyler. 2. World War, 1939-1945—Secret service—Soviet Union. 3. Spies—Great Britain—Bi¬ ography. I. Read, Anthony. II. Title. D810.S8K462 1991 940.54'8647—dc20 90-22873 CIP isbn 0-385-26261-2 Copyright © 1991 by Ray Bearse and Anthony Read All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America May 1991 First Edition 10 987654321 For Virginia and Rosemary, with love and gratitude Contents ONE Introduction xi Prologue 1 High Hopes 7 TWO Moscow: Lost Illusions 28 THREE Beavers and Bolos 42 FOUR The Bore War 59 FIVE “The Best Caviar in All London” 85 SIX Knight’s Black Agents 105 SEVEN M and the Mata Hari of Dolphin Square 120 EIGHT A Fool or a Rogue 137 NINE A Terrible Blow 160 TEN We Must Protect the Chief 179 ELEVEN Rex versus Tyler Kent 202 TWELVE This Unspeakable Blackguard 226 THIRTEEN The Myths Exploded 244 FOURTEEN Going Home 259 Appendices The Churchill-Roosevelt Messages 277 The Stolen Documents: Herschel V. Johnson's Summary 293 Analysis of the Stolen Documents 295 Sources 299 Bibliography 301 Notes 307 Acknowledgments 317 Index 323 Introduction THE CASE of Tyler Gatewood Kent has certain aspects of three-dimensional chess in that it can be viewed from several distinctive and contradictory perspectives. Also, it can be re¬ garded as a long-standing counterintelligence conundrum that has resisted resolution for fifty years. Analysis of the once classified case documents in Britain and the United States does not result in satisfying conclusions. In examining the available evidence, one can posit strong circumstantial hypotheses that Kent acted on behalf of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the peculiar political and social objectives unique to Tyler Kent. We know that he worked against President Franklin D. Roo¬ sevelt and Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy and was an outspo¬ ken anti-Semite. He abhorred the Bolsheviks, yet allowed him¬ self to be manipulated by their penetrations of the Russian emigre community in London. The early death of his father, a consular officer in the Department of State and a man of intelli¬ gence and integrity, left Tyler’s mother to manage a young son with uncertain career prospects in the depths of the Great Depression. Having attended a few notable schools as a diplomat's son, traveled extensively, acquiring several languages along the way, Tyler readily adjusted to life as a young, though unem¬ ployed, elitist. His mother may have viewed Tyler as a prospec¬ tive Secretary of State, but her immediate concern was to get him a job. Using all means available to her, Mrs. Kent impor¬ tuned such authorities as she knew in the Department of State to consider Tyler’s application for a position. Xll CONSPIRATOR Franklin Roosevelt already had agreed to the diplomatic rec¬ ognition of the Soviet Union, and William Christian Bullitt was named as the ambassador in Moscow. Loy W. Henderson, a highly regarded expert on Russia, was the diplomatic profes¬ sional charged with assembling the group that would establish the new embassy. Kent, whose father had been known and respected by Henderson, was interviewed for a clerk’s position on the Moscow staff, but Henderson opposed the appoint¬ ment, because he found Kent immature and felt that Moscow was not a suitable first posting for a novice. Henderson’s objection was dismissed by Bullitt, and Kent went to Moscow as a member of the new embassy staff. On his way there, aboard ship, Kent outraged former Governor George Earle, who was en route to a diplomatic posting in the Balkans, by putting a note into the slipper of Earle’s secretary when she was in the ship’s swimming pool. Kent’s note sug¬ gested a shipboard tryst. The secretary passed the note to Governor Earle. Within a day, Henderson felt the full force of Earle’s ire and, in turn, warned Kent that his failure to observe the conventions of appropriate conduct in the future would result in his dismissal from the Moscow staff and his swift return to the United States. Kent found that, although he regarded himself socially as a member of the U.S. Foreign Service, he was not so regarded by the commissioned Foreign Service officers. Instead, in accor¬ dance with the rules of the day, Kent was relegated to live with the other clerks in social exclusion. In this imposed circum¬ stance, Kent soon became the intellectual leader of the lower decks and audited, if he did not participate in, various black market and smuggling activities, all quite beyond the gaze of the supervising Foreign Service officers. Eventually, he bought an automobile, a rare extravagance, and soon had an exceedingly active social life of his own. Among his new friends were several “ballerinas” who were better known for their association with the Soviet secret police than they were for their Bolshoi performances. As time went on, his view of the Bolshevik regime hardened, as did his contempt for Franklin Roosevelt. When he returned to the United States in 1939, he applied for an appointment as a Foreign Service officer but was not accepted, owing to nega- Introduction xiii tive comments by officers who had supervised his work in the field. He then sought a posting to Berlin, soliciting recommen¬ dations from many of the same officers. He was again disap¬ pointed. It was at this time that Kent was first cleared for access to classified communications, and he returned to Moscow. A few months later he was sent to London to augment the staff of Ambassador Kennedy. Earlier, Kennedy believed that Roosevelt might not run for a third term and had been led to deduce, from FDR’s elliptical comments, that he, Kennedy, might emerge as a viable Democratic candidate in the 1940 election. Roosevelt’s later announcement that he would run again was seen by Kennedy as a personal betrayal. While ambassador in London, Kennedy reported that Great Britain was doomed, and recommended that the United States not involve itself in an already lost cause by shipping arms and munitions to a country soon to be conquered by the Germans. Kennedy was also convinced that FDR had exceeded his pow¬ ers when he cabled Bullitt, then in Paris, Anthony Drexel Bid¬ dle, the U.S. ambassador in Warsaw, and Joseph E. Davies, the U.S. ambassador in Brussels, to encourage their host gover- ments to stand fast in their opposition to the Nazi hordes; the United States would, it was implied, somehow support their resolve. When the Germans took Warsaw they seized the cable file from the U.S. embassy and published to the world some of the provocative cables. The charge was immediately denied, and the skilled pen of Joseph Alsop produced the White Paper that dismissed the German publication as consisting of altered and forged documents. Because the London embassy was provided with information copies of the cables to Paris, Warsaw, and Brussells, Kennedy was convinced of further duplicity on the part of the president. His remaining trust was destroyed by the content of the cables. Seeing a personal need to protect his own reputation, he had certain FDR cables retyped in the Lon¬ don embassy for inclusion in his personal files. The British government continued its efforts to induce Ken¬ nedy to believe that the British would fight even if they stood alone. Kennedy’s reporting of his gloomy analyses of Britain’s prospects was largely disregarded by the White House and Secretary of State Cordell Hull. In an effort to offset the effects XIV CONSPIRATOR of Kennedy’s expressed views, Churchill, then First Sea Lord, introduced a direct, informal communications link between himself (as “former naval person”) and Roosevelt (as potus, or President Of The United States). Into this mare’s nest of diverse motivations, back-channel communications, private betrayal, and conflicting aims came Tyler Kent, the cipher clerk from Moscow. Kent cannot be seen as a controlled agent of the USSR or of Nazi Germany. He was a feckless young man with a disregard for discipline, a penchant for extravagant political thought, and deep resent¬ ments flavored by his contempt for authority. Unanticipated circumstances gave Kent access to copies of official documents that he believed would destroy Roosevelt’s advantage in the 1940 election. He was certain that if these papers were provided to the America First organization and to sympathetic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Com¬ mittee, the ensuing public and congressional outrage would lead to the impeachment of Roosevelt. In the view of the British, any threat to FDR’s re-election might result in the growth of isolationism in the United States and the termination of essential credits to buy weapons, ships, munitions, aircraft, and tanks. Without continuing U.S. efforts to supply Britain with fuel and food, she might be defeated along the sea routes, unable to sustain the RAF in the air and starved at home. The U.S. election of 1940 was seen as critical to Britain’s survival. The authors have drawn on a vast accumulation of recently declassified official documents, trial records, and interviews with surviving diplomatic and intelligence sources with direct knowledge of the case. Their account provides a comprehen¬ sive study of the aberrant behavior of a junior American clerk who, for a brief time, held the prospect of diverting the course of world history by his actions. Robert T. Crowley 2 November 1990 Washington, D.C. If this country had been at war, I would have recommended that he be sent home and shot. —Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy Fathers and mothers your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars. —President Franklin D. Roosevelt I shall drag America in. —Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill