THE CASE

C!!
TYLER KENT
By
HOWLAND SNOW
"Integrity and firmness are all I can promise"
George Washington, in a letter to
his lifelong friend, General Knox.
w
Published Jointly by
DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS
P. O. Box 1103, Grand Central Annex
New York 17, N. Y.
CITIZENS PRESS
P. O. Box 347, Old P. O. Bldg.
Chicago, Ill.
THE CASE OF TYLER KENT
CONTENTS
Beginning
at Page
BACKGROUND ............ Foreword . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . .. . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3
Introduction .................................. 4a
Citizen Tyler Kent, Biography.. . . . .. . .. . . . . . . . .. 5
LONDON SCENE...........The Case Begins; First . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The Case in Essence............... . .. .. . . . . .. . 7
Kent's Arrest: His Trial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
REPORT AND INQUIRY..... A "Roberts Report" from the Atlantic. . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Just What IS the Truth? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Inquiry ...................... ............... 20
CITIZEN VS. THE STATE ... Imprisonment ................................. 22
Deportation .................................. 23
Ambassador to the Court of St. James'. . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Whisky Rebellion-1945.................... 28
The Department of State.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
WORLD SCENE...........War and 1904-1946. .... .............. 31
SIDELIGHTS .............. Smear ....................................... 34
Captain Ramsay, M.P. ........................ 36
Death ....................................... 38
Tm: LEGAL POSITION ......The Case and the American Courts:
Immunity and the Supreme Court. . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Decision of the Court of Claims. . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
FREE SPEECH.............Rule of Silence; Rule of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
CONCLUSION ............We, the 55
CHALLENGE 58
1946
DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS
NEW YORK, N. Y.
AU ridtts reserved
\
FOREWORD
THE Case of Tyler Kent begins in London; in a Britain already
at war. Its ramifications extend around the globe.
* *
*
Some eighteen months before Kent's arrest in May of 1940, there had
been published, in Britain, a book entitled
"Propaganda In the Next War."
Its author was an Englishman, Sidney Rogerson; it was edited by another
Englishman, Captain Liddell Hart, widely known as the foremost military
critic in the United Kingdom.
This book is somewhat difficult to find in America.
On page 148 of this volume, there occurs the following:
"It will need a definite threat to America, a threat, moreover, which will
have to be brought horne by propaganda to every citizen, before the
republic will again take arms in an external quarrel.
"The position will naturally be considerably eased if Japan were involved
and this might and probably would bring America in without further ado.
At any rate, it would be a natural and obvious oj our propagandists
to achieve this, just as during the Great War they succeeded in embroiling
the United States with Germany."
That was in England, in 1938.
The Japanese struck in 1941.



NEW YORK, N. Y.
\
INTRODUCTION
THIS document is written in the interest of justice. In the words
of the mother of Tyler Kent, "I have no wish to get bitter, because
question is so close to my heart, but I do think that as an American I have
a right to plead due process of law-American law."
In many ways similar to, the Kent case has aspects that make it even
bigger than, the Pearl Harbor scandal and disaster. When the blame for
Pearl Harbor is finally fixed, those responsible for America's cataclysmic
. entry into the physical war will be named. When an aroused free people will
have forced a full, impartial and complete revelation of the Kent affair,
those responsible for all that led up to Pearl Harbor will be revealed.
Pearl Harbor, completely exposed, would determine the responsibility
for Pearl Harbor, with its sudden global war. When our people force the
solution of the mystey that had its drama in London, there could stand
revealed those responsible for that series of events that were to plunge an
entire Christian world into, not only war, but into the chaos, ruin, hope-
lessness and revolution which have resulted upon that war.
The case of Tyler Kent has been a case of contrasts, of violently
opposite points of view. There has been a campaign of public accusation,
innuendo and of smear. His has been a treatment quite in keeping with
the four years' procedure against Admiral Kimmel and General Short.
Both these men have been publicly accused-both have waited patiently
to be called.
The Kent case is as simple as can be. It is solely a question of secret
messages, and solely one of the contents of those messages. It is a simple
question of truth, nothing more.
"The correspondence to which your son's indiscretion has called atten-
tion will undoubtedly assume a large role in the history of the present
war," writes Mr. Varian Fry, Executive Secretary of the American Labor
Conference on International Affairs, to Mrs. Kent.
What, then, is the truth? We are entitled to know.
This document is written to help achieve that end.
>I<
*
'"
4a
;'
CITIZEN TYLER KENT - BIOGRAPHY
TYLER Gatewood Kent was born on March 24, 1911, at Newchang,
Manchuria. His father was the late William Patton Kent, of Wytheville,
Va., a man who had seen twenty years' service in the American diplomatic
corps; a man whose grandfather was John Hendren, Treasurer of the
Confederacy in the American Civil War. Among ancestors was David
Crockett. Appointed originally by President Theodore Roosevelt, the father
had been Consul and Consul General abroad. He passed away in Wash-
ington, D. c., in 1936.
Kent's family came originally from England and Scotland, in 1644. To
President Franklin Roosevelt, Mrs. Kent wrote in 1942 that the family
had included "lawyers, doctors and preachers among those green hills" of
Virginia's beautiful Valley of the Shenandoah. "The. men of our family,"
she wrote, "died for the Confederacy during the Civil War."
Kent himself was educated at St. Albans, Washington, D. c., at Prince-
at the Paris Sorbonne, the University of Madrid, and at George
Washington University here. He learned French, German, Greek, Italian
and Russian.
In 1931, Kent was ready for the Foreign Service, and made his applk<i-
tion. The depression intervened and it was not until 1933 that a post was
offered. Kent accepted. The post offered, and accepted, was-Moscow.
He remained six years in Moscow. Remember, he spoke Russian. Those
six years' observation of Communism at its fount left a deep impression.
Twenty-six months after his arrest, and seven and a half months after
we were legally in the war, Mrs, Kent would write to the President and usc
her son's own words:
American worker wouldn't stand jor a the condi-
tions under which the Russian worker exists."
In October, 1939, Kent was transferred to our Embassy in Grosvenor
Square, London, and placed in a position of the highest trust and confidence
-the code room. Almost immediately he encountered the amazing secret
messages which are the key to the whole affair.
* * *
THE CASE BEGINS - THE FIRST MESSAGE
N OW, it doesn't need this historian to point out
to a diplomatic code room is not given to
utmost secrecy come almost daily in and out, messages that WOUld be some-
what astonishing to an average citizen. Such communications are usually
simple routine to the inner circles of the diplomatic whispering galleries
throughout the world.
5
Kent had scarcely taken over his London duties when he was given a
message to be sent at once. This message was in code.
This message, in code, was from a subject of His Majesty's British
government to the Chief Executive of the United States. The message
was from Mr. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty in the
cabinet of Neville Chamberlain. The message by-passed, it went over the
head of, the legal chief of the British state. It was sent by the man who
was later to assume the position held by Chambe'rlain, then his chief. This
astounding behavior was from the man who was to say,
"I have not become the King's first minister to preside over
the liquidation of the British Empire." (A statement somewhat
open to question, by the way.)
The message that had been handed Kent to send, was to start a train
of events the end of which is not yet. Five years and a million American
casualties later it would be 'the subject of debate in Parliament. It
be raised in the Congress of the United States. It would be talked of from
Auckland in New Zealand to Buenos Aires in the Argentine.
When that 1944 Parliamentary debate would be published, and passed
by the British censor, Senator Henrik Shipstead, of Minnesota, would say
on the floor of the Senate (June 19):
"A private citizen in Britain may negotiate with a foreign
government, under the laws of Britain, for aught I know. But
that of itself is not so important as the fact that this is an
official debate, in the Parliament of an Allied government, and
that it passed the censorship to the people of the United
I think that is significant. It is not gossip, it is official, and there-
fore I feel it my duty to call it officially to the attention of the
Congress of the United because it is a reflection on the
integrity of the Government of the United States, whatever the
British people may think of their present Prime Minister."
For the message that Kent had been obliged to send that day read,
in effect:
"I am half American and the natural person to work with
you. It is evident we see eye to eye. Were I to become Prime
Minister of Britain we could control the world."
(Letter from Mrs. Kent to Senator Bridges, N. H., and
to Members of the Lower House, March 15, 1943.)
* * *
Franklin Delano Roosevelt replied six weeks later in the "unbreakable
code."
6
THE CASE IN ESSENCE
FOUR and a half years later, Senator Shipstead was to ask "how
Mr. Churchill obtained possession of our code?" To this day we do not
know. But we do know that this American code was made use of by a
man who was to be head of the British government when, according to
General Marshall's testimony before the Pearl Harbor committee, that
government flatly refused to give our Government anything more than its
"conclusions" from their de-coded enemy messages. To quote the General,
the British were "afraid there'd be a leak."
But Franklin Roosevelt replied to Churchill, in that "unbreakable
code," six weeks after that message. What was said, we do not know. We
do know, however, two things. Both are important. One is very important.
( 1) We know that Franklin Roosevelt was telling us "again, and again,
and again" that American boys "will not be sent into any foreign wars,"
and '
(2) We know that our American Chief Executive is the elected public
servant of 140,000,000 citizens of a Republic (not subjects of an Empire);
that he is responsible to you and me, through Congress, and is not a being
superimposed in mighty eminence over and above the sovereign people
of this Land.
The President is at all times responsible, through Congress, to our people.
That is in our unique Constitution. Upon taking Office, our elected Chief
of State voluntarily takes the following oath:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully exe-
cute the office of President of the United States, and wiIl, to the
best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States."
Events of recent years, we submit, call for a close accounting, full,
complete and accurate, TO OUR PEOPLE, of this stewardship. Such
accounting is ours of right. And the Roosevelt-Churchill cables are a part,
a very vital part, of that accounting. In this game of death and war, they
may prove even more vital than those other secret messages on the opposite
side of the world, the Pacific side, that preceded the disgrace and disaster
of Pearl Harbor. And, we permit ourselves the hope, these messages will
not turn up (llost."
According to one account, there were 468 direct
messages. According to another (Churchill in Commons, April 16, 1945),
there were 1,700 exchanges in all.
What was said, both ways, in those messages that may have spelt the
tragic fate of a lost generation of men? Let us quote Mr. Joseph P.
7
Kennedy, then United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James':
"Churchill had given me a very frank and complete picture
of England's unpreparedness, of her military and naval power
and military placements, the status of her industries and week-
by-week developments for forwarding to President Roosevelt."
So far, so good. That is one version. There is, however, another version.
On November 12, 1941-- twenty-five days before Pearl Harbor a
reputable Washington correspondent, Mr. Arthur Sears Henning, wrote in
the Washington Times-Herald that, according to this second version, the
Lend-Lease Act, the Johnson (no foreign loans) Act, and the Neutrality
Act were all discussed in those cables. Further, that, according to this
second version, there was the possibility that Franklin Roosevelt had
encouraged William Bullitt and others to egg France and Poland to war.
This version has supporters. In the British Parliament itself, in June
of 1944, independent Labourite John McGovern took the floor and stated
that Franklin Roosevelt had promised Churchill even before Britain entered
the war that America would come to her aid. -"The Prime Minister (who
was then not yet Prime Minister: Ed.) was soliciting military aid in the
event this country was going to war." He, Churchill, "still was carrying
on this campaign behind the back of his Prime Minister ... in order to find
out the strength of American support and whether America could be depended
uppn to come into the war." These are direct quotations from this Member
of Parliament, datelined London June 16 (1944), and passed by the British
censors in time of war.
Now, if true, this second version is of supreme importance. A copy
the Henning article (Nov. 12, 194-1), was finally gotten to Kent himself. It
took two and a half years to do it. And Tyler Kent made two replies, one
by cable and the other by letter. By cable dated May 15, 1944, Kent
termed: the Henning article "essentially correct." By letter dated May 20,
1944, Kent said the article "requires extension in detail."
Version No.1 is a "week-by-week report." Version No.2 takes in Lend-
Lease, the Johnson Act and the Neutrality Act, together with the implica-
tions of Mr. McGovern, M.P.
Thus the die is cast, for, if the latter be the truth, these cables would
have--as John O'Donnell said on May 21, 194-5-"foreshadowed
which Franklin Delano Roosevelt had already determined that this Nation
should play in the European War." The European War, where
American men lost part, or all, of their lives.
There, in essence, is the Case of Tyler Kent.
* * *
8
KENT'S ARREST; HIS TRIAL
"I
F ANY person for any purpose prejudicial to the safety or
interests of the State--obtains or communicates to any other person any
sketch, plan, model, article or note, or other document or information which
is calculated to be or might be, or is intended to be, directly or indirectly
useful to an enemy; he shall be guilty of felony and shall be liable to penal
servitude for any term not less than 3 years and not exceeding 7 years."
(Taken from Chitty's Annual Statutes of British Law,
Vol. 17, Pt. 1, p. 78-9. British Criminal Law Offenses
Against the State. Official Secrets Act of Subsec.
lC, Act 1911.)
So reads the British statute under which American citizen Kent was
arrested, tried, convicted and sent to jail.
"Yet nowhere," writes Mrs. Kent in her petition to Congress, October
1, 1944, "has there been any allegation that my son ever handled a single
British document." More. On July 21, 1942, in a letter to Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, Mrs. Kent, stating she was quoting a responsible member
Britain's Embassy in Washington, repeated: "We did not particularly
want to try this case, but under the circumstances there was nothing else
to do."
In this same letter to Franklin Roosevelt, Mrs. Kent refers to Captain
Ramsay, M.P. (who will appear later in this narrative). Of Capt. Ramsay
she says: "Of course Mr. Churchill had to put this gentleman in solitary
confinement as soon as he became Prime Minister at the same time he
apprehended my son and some 600 British leaders opposed to his policies."
There was parallel here at home, in those citizens who were witch-
hunted day and night, brought thousands of miles for a farce of a trial,
or obliged to live 300 miles removed from military areas; in those citizens
of this Republic only now being freed from confinement-without charge
or trIal-in the otherwise-beautiful Hawaiian Islands.
Back to Kent. To enable the British to arrest, then try, this American
citizen, it was necessary for our own Department of State to waive his
diplomatic immunity. This, Ambassador Kennedy did and under circum-
stances that will be described. If he had not done this, said the ex-Ambas-
sador after three and a half years had passed, "It could have developed
into a nasty mess." One can possibly discern a subtle meaning, now, in the
words of the trial Justice, that Kent had discovered information that "neither
the British nor the American governments would like to have divulged."
The "governments" would not-but perhaps the peoples would.
9
A "ROBERTS REPORT" FROM THE ATLANTIC
W HEN the Japanese physically attacked a
command at Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt responded to
by appointing Mr. Justice Roberts-an avowed internationalist-to head a
Commission to report the facts. A doctored version from this "fact-finding"
Commission was given to our (catapulted-into-war) people on January
25, 1942.
This version was published in the New York Times of that date. Synopses
were carried in the press throughout the Country. From it, and before
140,000,000 self-respecting and stunned citizens, Admiral Kimmel and
General Short stood convicted of "dereliction of duty"-with neither open
hearing nor trial.
Such was the Roberts Report from the Pacific.
* *
*
Now, to be completely fair to the Executive Branch of our Government
-the elected and appointed public servants of our people--suppose we read,
then examine, the State Department's report on the Kent affair.
This report, officially released to the press on September 2, 1944, follows,
verbatim and in full:
Department of State,
September 2, 1944.
(For the press) No. 405.
The Department of State has taken note of recent inquiries and newspaper reports
regarding the case of Tyler Kent, formerly employee of the American Embassy at London,
and the Office of Foreign Service Administration has been instructed to review the matter
thoroughly and prepare a comprehensive report. The following is the text of the report:
Kent, American citizen, an employee of the American Foreign Service assigned
to London, was tried and convicted under the Official Secrets Act (1911) of Great Britain
before the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey, London, in October, 1940. The
charges against him were the obtaining and delivering to an agent of a foreign country
(Germany) copies or abstracts of documents which might have been directly or indirectly
useful to the enemy, and which were, at the same time, prejudicial to the safety or
interests of Great Britain. Incidental to the proceedings against him, it was brought out
that he had violated the Larceny Act of 1916 of Great Britain by the theft of documents
which were the property of the Government of the United States in the custody of the
American Ambassador, London. The above mentioned were found proven by a jury on
the basis of evidence produced during the trial. Kent had worked through a confederate
who was allegedly anti-Jewish and pro-Nazi.
The background of the case and the circumstances leading up to Kent's arrest and
trial were as follows: Kent, at the age of 22, had entered the Foreign Service as a clerk.
his first assirnment having been to the American Embassv at Moscow. He was later
10
transferred to the American Embassy, London, arriving there in October, 1939. He was
assigned to the code room as a code clerk, where his duties were to encode and decode
telegrams. Before entering the service he had attended Princeton University, the Sor-
bonne (Paris), the University of Madrid, and George Washington University. He had
acquired several foreign languages, including Russian, French, German and Italian.
On May 18, 1940, a representative of the London Police Headquarters at Scotland
Yard called at the Embassy to report that Kent had become the object of attention by
Scotland Yard through his association with a group of persons suspected of conducting
pro-German activities under the cloak of anti-Jewish propaganda. Prominent in this
group was Anna Wolkoff, a naturalized British subject of Russian origin, the daughter of
a former admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy. Miss Wolkoff had resided in Great
Britain since emigrating, with her father, from Russia following the Bolshevist revolution,
had been hospitably received and had made a considerable circle of friends among
Londoners of standing, 'some of whom had assisted in setting up the Wolkoff family in a
small business. After the outbreak of the present war the British police had become
interested in Miss Wolkoff's activities, believing that she 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 was 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.
Kent had been observed by Scotland Yard as having been in frequent contact with
Anna Wolkoff and in touch with others of a group known to her. Among other things,
it had been noted that Kent and Miss Wolkoff were sharing an automobile and that
Miss Wolkoff frequently drove the car, using gasoline allegedly supplied by Kent.
Scotland Yard was now convinced that Anna Wolkoff was receiving confidential informa-
tion from Kent, and stated that she would be arrested on May 20. The police added that
on the same day they considered it highly desirable to search the rooms occupied
Kent. In reply to an inquiry made the British authorities, Ambassador Kennedy,
with the approval of the Department, informed such authorities of the waiver by this
Government of the privilege of diplomatic immunity. Scotland Yard thereupon indicated
that a search warrant would be issued and that Kent's rooms would be searched on
20, 1940.
The possibility that an employee of the Embassy, having access to the confidential
codes, was making improper use of the material entrusted to him in the course of his
work was of the utmost concem to Ambassador Kennedy and to the Government of the
United States. Preservation of the secrecy of this Government's means of communica-
tion with its establishments abroad is a matter of fundamental importance to the conduct
of our foreign relations. In the circumstances described it was imperative that Ambassador
Kennedy ascertain, and ascertain immediately, whether Kent was guilty of a violation
of trust. There was every reason, in the interest of the American Government, for the
waiving of diplomatic immunity and for allowing the British authorities (who alone
had the means of obtaining the evidence) to proceed in an effort to prove or disprove
their suspicions. In this connection it may be noted that it is well established in inter-
national law that the so-called immunity of an employee of a diplomatic mission from
criminal or civil processes may be renounced or waived by the sending state at any time.
The search of Kent's room was conducted according to plan, an officer of the ~ u . u ..~ , )
being present throughout. It revealed that Kent had in his possession copies of Embassy
material totaling more than individual papers. He also had two newly made dupli-
cate keys to the index bureau and the code room of the Embassy, these being unauthorized
and in addition to the keys furnished him officially for his use as a code clerk. He
explained that he had had these keys made so that in the event he should ever be
11
transferred from code work to another section of the Embassy he would still have access
to the code room. Also found in his possession were two photographic plates of Embassy
documents believed to have been made by confederates for the purpose of endeavorin
to transmit prints thereof to Germany, and certain printed propaganda material
was prejudicial to the British conduct of the war. The police also established that some
of the papers found had been transmitted to an agent of a foreign power.
An examination of the documents found in his room indicated that Kent had
classifying the material by subject, but this work was far from completed. They covered
every subject on which the Embassy was carrying on correspondence with
the Department of State. As may be supposed, they included copies of telegrams embody-
ing information collected bv the Embassy which otherwise would not have been per-
mitted to leave Great Britain without censorship. As may be likewise supposed,
contained information which would have been useful to Germany and which Great
Britain would not have permitted to reach Germany. It is of interest to note, in this
connection, that Kent had, during his service in London, written to the Charge d'Affaires
of the American Embassy in Berlin his assistance in arranging for his
transfer to Berlin. When questioned as to what he would have done with the documents
in his possession had he been transferred to Germany, Kent replied that he could not
state what he would have done with them; he regarded the question as a hypothetical one.
Regardless of the purpose for which Kent had taken the material from the
he had done so without authorization, in violation of the most elementary principles
the rules for the preservation of the secrecy of the Government's correspond-
ence. his own showing he had, while occupying a very special position of. confidence
within the Embassy, displayed a shocking disregard for every principle of decency and
honor so far as his obligations toward the United States were concerned. The removal of
so a number of documents from the Embassy premises compromised the whole
confidential communications system of the United States, bringing into question the
security of the secret ciphers. It was obviously impossible to continue his and
Kent was dismissed from the Government service as of May 20, 1940. Thereafter the
question of diplomatic immunity naturally did not arise.
So far as the British police were concerned, the evidence found in Kent's room was
such as to convince them of the necessity of detaining him at Brixton prison pending
investigation of the use he had made of the documents in his possession and the true
implications of his connection with Anna Wolkoff. Ambassador Kennedv. with the consent
of the Department of State, agreed to Kent's detention.
On May 28 a representative of Scotland Yard infornled the Embassy that investiga-
tions were proceeding, that the case became progressively more complex, and that it
could not be cleared up quickly. It was believed, however, that there would be a case
fo:- prosecution against Kent and Anna Wolkoff under the Official Secrets Act of the
United Kingdom.
Kent's trial eventually commenced August 8, 1940, and was attended by the American
Consul GeneraL It was held in camera because of the harm:ful effects to British counter-
espionage efforts' which were to be anticipated if certain of the evidence became public.
Prior to the trial the American Consul General in London had called upon Kent (July
31, 1940) at Brixton Prison. The Consul General informed him that he would be taken
to court the following day and formally charged with offense under the Official Secrets
Act of the United Kingdom, obtaining documents for a purpose prejudicial to the
. safety or interests of the United Kingdom which might be directly or indirectly useful
to an enemy. The Consul General inquired whether Kent had a lawyer to represent him.
to which Kent replied that he had not, and that he had not given the matter any thought.
12
The Consul General advised him that he should be rerlrei5ented
to assist in getting in touch with a suitable solicitor. Kent was
touch with a lawyer, whom he engaged to represent him during the triaL
On October 28, 1940, the jury found Kent guilty of violating the OffIcial Secrets
Act. The sentence was postponed until completion of the trial of Anna Wolkoff. On
November 7, 1940, Kent was sentenced to 7 years' penal servitude and Anna Wolkoff was
sentenced to 10 years. Kent's attorneys applied for permission to appeal. On February
5, 1941, this application was rejected by a panel of judges which included the Lord
Chief Justice.
In reviewing the Kent case it is important to bear in mind the circumstances sur-
rounding it. At the time of Kent's arrest and trial Great Britain was at war and the
United States was not. The case involved a group of people suspected of subversive
activities. The evidence relating to individuals of the group was inextricably mixed, and
the activities of no single suspect could be separated from the activities of the others.
The interest of Great Britain in such a case, at a time when it was fighting for its exist-
ence, was therefore preeminent. Deep as was the concern of the Government of the
United States over a betrayal of trust by one of its employees, it is hardly conceivable
that it would have been justified in asking. the Government of Great Britain to waive
jurisdiction over an American citizen in the circumstances described. Kent was within
the jurisdiction of the British courts, and all the evidence, witnesses, etc., were available
to the British courts. Moreover, it was, as has been mentioned, in the interest of the
United States to have determined immediately on the spot, where the evidence was
available, whether or not one of its employees in a position of trust was violating such
trust. The question whether the United States will prefer additional charges against Kent
will be decided after his release from imprisonment in Great Britain and he again comes
under the jurisdiction of our courts.
(End of the State Department official press rolease)
This release might very well be called the "Roberts Report" from the
Atlantic.
*
* *
The 2,OOO-odd words of this release could be subjected to a very interest-
ing analysis. Careful reading will make this apparent. Its very verbosity
is suggestive; it juxtaposes a Mata Hari-like narrative, suspicions and beliefs
with known and proven facts. It speaks of Embassy material in exact
quantity to the allegedly stolen cables. It brings in decency and honor but
it nowhere so much as remotely hints that Kent had sold his Country out
for cash. By strong implication, Kent is made guilty of far more than the
military "dereliction of duty" of Admiral Kimmel and General Short. Thus,
the "Roberts Report" from the Atlantic.
Certain items, however, emerge as State Department sponsored facts.
Briefly, these are:
( 1) Kent "had violated the Larceny Act of 1916 of Great Britain by
the theft of documents which were the property of the Government of the
United States" ;
13
(2) "Scotland Yard was now convinced that Anna Wolkoff was receiv-
ing information from Kent";
(3) Diplomatic immunity was waived "with the approval of the De-
partment" ;
(4) "There was every reason . '.' for allowing the British authorities
... to prove or disprove their suspicions";
) In searching Kent's rooms "an officer of the Embassy (was) present
throughout" ;
(6) "Kent in his possession copies of Embassy material totaling
more than 1 papers." Kent publicly denied this on his return to America;
The 1 ,500 "official records," or Embassy "material," have been
publicized, it being stated they were unearthed in a "strong
box" in the rooms. Kent denies this;
( 6b) Conspicuous by its absence is the widely reported telephone
call, assertedly from the Italian Embassy, during the search of the
rooms. This phone call "was enough to confirm their worst suspicions,"
writes C. S. McNulty in the Auckland (N. Z.)Weekly News of Sep-
tember 12, 1945. If true, the Italian Embassy would have stood revealed
as curiously naIve by such action. Embassies just don't call up spies
over Embassy phones. Tn any case, Kent publicly denied this call on
returning to the United States;
(7) "He also had two newly made duplicate keys ... these being un-
authorized and in addition to the keys furnished him officially." Kent, in a
public interview upon his return, stated these keys were issued him legally
officially;
(8) "Also found in his possession were two photographic plates of
Embassy documents." This possibly refers to the "two rolls of microfilm
containing coded messages" which an allegedly convicted Nazi spy had left
in a nearby photo studio. The Auckland article already cited states that
Anna Wolkoff was seen to enter that studio. By implication, Anna Wolkoff
was that spy. Kent flatly denies possession of such film;
(9) "The police also established that some of the papers found had
been transmitted to an agent of a foreign power." Kent, on his return,
denied sending documents to Germany or Italy in the diplomatic pouch;
(10) "... indicated Kent had begun classifying the material by subiect,
but this work was far from completed." One remarks that a system of
espionage is singularly childlike to permit a source of information to
its own classifying. (And yet, according to Gen. Marshall's own testimony
in December of 1945, that is precisely what our own top echelon permitted
14
the British to do after Pearl Harbor. Or was Kent, like the British later,
"Afraid there'd be a leak"?);
(11) That Kent sought transfer to the Berlin Embassy of the United
States. The fact is that Kent had not wanted to go to London from Moscow,
had specifically objected to such transfer, and the complete State Depart-
ment files will so show. The first request for a Berlin transfer was made,
by Kent, while he was at Moscow, not London. The implication "as to what
he would have done with the documents had he been transferred to
Germany" is an implication that simply does not state the full facts. At
the time of his original request for the Berlin assignment he had, obviously,
never even heard of "the documents";
(12) Kent "displayed a shocking disregard for every principle of
decency and honor so far as his obligations toward the United States were
concerned." But Mrs. Kent, in her letter to the 1944 Democratic Con-
vention, suggests "the strange irregularity of a foreigner's (Churchill: Ed.)
having use of our Country's confidential code." But again, "Tyler asks me
to tell you to go to the Senate," writes Mr. F. Graham Maw, British attorney
for Kent. Surely this is an odd request if a man is guilty as implied in this
press release. Here again are those two diametrically opposite points of view;
(13) "Kent was dismissed from the Government service as of May 20,
1940" and
( 14) "thereafter the question of diplomatic immunity naturally did not
arise." This reads well, and is seemingly conclusive. However, thousands
of members of the United States Foreign Service will read those words with
some alarm. Just why, will be developed in this narrative;
(15) "Ambassador Kennedy, with the consent of the Department of
State, agreed to Kent's detention" in Brixton prison. Same comment;
( 16) "It was believed (by Scotland Yard? Ed.) that there would be
a case for prosecution ... under the Official Secrets Act of the United
Kingdom";
(17) The trial was held in camera "because of the harmful effects to
British counterespionage . . . if certain of the evidence became public";
( 18) The Consul General had seen Kent in Brixton prison and, inquiring
if he had a lawyer for his defense, "Kent replied that he had not, and that
he had not given the matter any thought." We will pass, as subjective, any
comment on this remark;
(19) "The interest of Great Britain . .. was therefore preeminent." We
mildly observe that we had been led to believe that a diplomatic corps was
maintained for the preeminent interest of its own country;
15
(20 "it is hardly conceivable that it (our own Government: Ed.)
would have been justified in asking the government of Great Britain to
waive jurisdiction over an American citizen in the circumstances described."
As for any jurisdiction the British government might have had to waive, a
subsequent Chapter will discuss that briefly. As for the "circumstances
described," we gently suggest the parallel with the Roberts Report on
Pearl Harbor. There, "in the circumstances described," only the careful
reader would conceive that Kimmel and Short were not guilty of the
"dereliction of duty" therein stated. Further, now that we have Justice
Roberts' own statement ( Chicago, January 17, 1946) that three of the
original five copies of his Commission's report were burned, we feel quite
entitled to ask just how many of the original Kent documents have been
consigned to the flames as well;
(21) The press release conel udes with a hint of prosecution upon Kent's
final return. Whether this would constitute double jeopardy we do not
know.
* * *
"In the circumstances described," then, three years and ten months
before this press release, sentence had been imposed on Tyler Kent. Behind
locked doors, in a court room whose glass had been covered with heavy
paper, the majesty of British law had sat enthroned throughout the trial.
On November 7, 1940, at the famous Old Bailey, London, British Justice
Sir Frederick James Tucker had faced the American accused to say, in
part:
"Tyler Gatewood Kent, you have been found guilty by the
jury of five offenses of obtaining and communicating documents
which might be of use to the enemy for a purpose prejudicial to
the safety and interests of the state .... You have also been
found guilty on one count of stealing one of those documents ....
The sentence upon you, on the five counts under the Official
Secrets Act, is that on each count you be kept in penal servitude
7 years, on the count of larceny the sentence is 1 to 12
months' imprisonment. All those sentences are to run concur-
rently."
(165 Law Times Reports, N.5. 382, Rex '11. A.B.)
* * *
Thus was an American citizen, his diplomatic immunity waived by. the
American Government, tried before a British judge, before a British jury,
and in a British secret court. Thus was that citizen given the maximum
penalty for a conviction under the laws of an alien land at war, a land
whose "interest" "in the circumstances described" "was preeminent."
16
Such, in brief, were the circumstances of the trial. Kent was not charged
with treason, or with misprision of treason. He was not even charged with
a "treasonable offense" as our public have been widely led to believe.
Under these "circumstances 'described," perhaps one can understand the
feelings with which Mrs. Kent was to write to the 1944 Democratic Con-
vention: .,
"Details of this astounding British procedure are enough to
make any decent American's blood boil."
* * *
JUST WHAT IS THE TRUTH?
KENT has admitted both knowledge and quondam possession of
the Roosevelt-Churchill cables. We can easily go into the realm of con-
jecture, and entertain ourselves with hypothetiGal queries as to what he
intended to do with them. We are not, however, in the realm of hypothetical
conjecture. We are in the realm of cold fact, reality and chaos; of world
imperialism and power-politics viciously attempting to retake their blood-
soaked empires; and of world Communist civil war.
We are in the realm of tragic domestic strife. Our people, and peoples
throughout the world, are realizing their disillusion, discontent and despair:
Politicians, with their impassioned words of global peace, have failed us.
We, the People, have paid the awful price of "victory," a victory that is
never ours.
From this world of disillusion, discontent and despair, an aroused
American People could lead humanity to the hope of a new-found peace. A
peoples' peace. A peace through fearless courage and stern conviction that
in them lies that right.
Let us examine the matter.
Messages of elected, and appointed, public servants should of right
point toward the preservation of the "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Hap-
piness" of mankind. The world today failure in such assumed intent.
It shows failure if, indeed, such has even their intent. Of right, we the
sovereign People, should examine every angle that may reveal the
causes, personal or impersonal, of that ....v.'v"""....
In December, 1945, the greatest foreign correspondent of them all, Karl
von Wiegand, reports from Madrid that documents, in possession
of the Soviet, might prove embarassing to other nations represented at the
Nuremberg trials. Several Justices resign. Shortly thereafter, under cir-
cumstances not dissimilar. the entire staff of counsel at the Pearl Harbor
17
probe-resigns. These two events, strikingly similar, occur all but simul-
taneously, and three thousand miles apart.
Where, and what, are these secret messages of an elected Chief Executive?
What are these documents that may embarass a State? Are they more lethal
than the weapons which dealt out death to millions of Christian men?
At the 1945 Pearl Harbor investigation, Ambassador Grew testified that
the Japanese Konoye cabinet would fall (said Konoye) if Franklin Roose-
velt were to refuse to meet the Japanese Premier in Honolulu. Roosevelt did
not meet Konoye. The Konoye cabinet fell. Tojo took over. History records
the ensuing Pearl Harbor, and war. But documents turn up "missing" and
scores of pages are found "deleted" from reports.
Strikingly similar, again, is the case of Tyler Kent. Here, too, the con-
tents of pre-war messages are still unknown. Here, too, questions arise in
Parliament strikingly parallel with those in and around the Senate caucus
room where an utter disgrace, Pearl Harbor, stood half-revealed, on
At that Pearl Harbor investigation, General Marshall testified the British
had refused to give the sources of, or the originals of, their top secret enemy
information-fearing an American leak-but had confined themselves for
months to (their own) analyses and deductions from same. And yet the
First Lord of the British Admiralty had been using the "unbreakable"
American diplomatic code.
While the incidents of the "American Legion," the "Kearny" .and the
"Reuben James" were occurring in the Atlantic, attack suddenly came from
the other of the world. We are publicly told that Roosevelt "foresaw"
attack. And yet, in the ofJicial State Department book "Peace and War"
(Government Printing Office, 1942), we read (pp. 119-120) that on July
24, 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt received the Japanese Ambassador,
Nomura, and said to him-to quote this 0 fJicial document-that if Germany
were to win in Europe "it was entirely possible that after some years the
Navies of Japan and of the United States would be cooperating against
Hitler as a common enemy." Thus did Franklin Roosevelt in 1941 parallel,
in effect, the understanding Theodore Roosevelt had made thirty-seven years
before. (Sc. p. 31.)
Yet, weeks later, Franklin Roosevelt was to meet Winston
what became known as the Atlantic Conference. Of con-
ference, Britain's Winston Churchill was to say in Commons, on January
28, 1942:
"It has been the policy of the Cabinet at almost all costs to
avoid embroilment with Japan until we were sure that the
United States would also be engaged . ... On the other hand,
the probability since the Atlantic Conference, at which 1 dis-
18
cussed these matters with President Roosevelt, that the United
States, even if not herself attacked, would come into the war
the Far East and thus make the final victory assured seemed to
allay some of these anxieties, and that expectation has not been
falsified by the events."
Thus did Britain's own Prime Minister refer to that event so candidly
foreshadowed by author Sidney Rogerson and editor Liddell Hart, back in
("Propaganda In the Next War.")
Returning, now, to the State Department's "Peace and War," we have
a public document purporting to acquaint its employer-master-the People
of this Republic-with the American-Japanese negotiations that finally led
to war. But at the Pearl Harbor investigation, three years later, it is brought
out in testimony that document after document, message after message, had
been completely left out. While, in that same year of 1945, General Jonathan
Wainwright was to say:
"We were in a war for which we were no more prepared than
a child is prepared to fight a cruel and seasoned pugilist."
Of the eventual physical victory-won entirely by our American men-
he would say:
"That moment of surrender in Tokyo Bay was bought with
the blood of more than a million Americans who died or were
wounded in the struggle.
"Billions of dollars and countless hours of work by Ameri-
cans at home were required to bring that little band of Japs
to the 'Missouri's' deck."
Yes, that is true. Pertinent, to you and me-and to the loved ones of
those who are gone-is the N. Y. World-Telegram headline after its inter-
view with Tyler Kent on his return. (Front page, Dec. 4, 1945.) That
headline reads:
"KENT HERE, SAYS HE CAN HELP ANSWER PEARL
HARBOR RIDDLE."
* * *
Kent did not say precisely that. He say that he help solve the
riddle of the origin of this war.
And that is more pertinent still.
Kent himself lost little time. After several days with his mother, he
wrote to the Senate. He wrote to Senator Alben Barkley, chairman of
Pearl Harbor committee. He said, in this letter, that he had believed he
19
"had a moral right" to copy those secret messages; he said he "believed
they contained information the Senate should know of, relating to foreign
relations"; he said, "I shall gladly submit any of the facts with which I
happened to become familiar in Europe, and because of which, to prevent
my imparting them to the American Congress in 1940, I was secretly tried
and imprisoned in England"; and, said Kent, these facts were offered "not
on the Pearl Harbor phase but as regards America's entry into the war."
* * *
Here is the way of courage, and of truth. This way, perhaps, through a
People's knowledge of the truth, there would come again that "Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness" that is our Constitution-given right.
It is a question we must ponder well-and answer.
* *
*
INQUIRY
SOMEWHERE there is a very large fly in some very sticky ointment.
No happiness has followed victory in this war. The Estonians, the Finns,
the Latvians, Lithuanians, Bulgars, Serbs, Poles; the Chinese, the Javanese,
the Thailanders. None of these is happy; NO ONE is happy.
This is not victory. This is defeat. It is defeat for everything for which
we were told we were fighting. It is defeat for all our human, and American,
traditions induding, as Samuel Crowther observes in October of 1945, "the
tradition that the United States is a Christian Nation."
It is time that we, and the freedom-seeking peoples of this world,
that includes, certainly, Western civilization), took that fly out
of its ointment, and dissected piece by piece. Under a powerful micro-
scope.
We, in America, can do this. We can begin by fearlessly reasserting the
right-as, under our unique Constitution our forefathers fought for and
then retained that right-of making our elected and appointed men the
public servants of the free and sovereign citizens of this RepUblic. We must
force the truth, and the whole truth, no matter where it lies. It is the way
of courage. And courage is the way of people-everywhere.
Let us begin with reasoned inquiry.
* *
*
Kent was convicted on a charge of larceny, not of espionage. "There
were no grounds to prove he had communicated with the enemy so he was
charged with stealing State documents ... two of the secretaries (of the
American Embassy) giving, under very evident pressure, testimony of
20
doubtful veracity and very unfavorable to Mr. Kent." Thus writes F.
Graham Maw, attorney for Kent, and quoted in Mrs. Kent's letter to the
Congress, March 15, 1943. Such comment is, to be sure, not unnatural from
an attorney for the defense. But-bear in mind-this particular attorney
is British and his country was at war.
Here, then, is a question we may ask: Who, if they exist, are these "two
of the secretaries" who testified under such "very evident pressure"?
Senator Wheeler stated in the Upper House, June 19, 1944: "I cannot
understand how an American citizen could be tried in a British secret court.
I understand that our State Department paid a lawyer to help defend him.
But our State Department, in so doing, was hiring someone to defend the
boy against the charge of having done something against the American
Embassy.... What would happen," asks the Senator, "if we should arrest
a member of the British Embassy here and endeavor to try him in an Ameri-
can secret court? Of course, the British Government would immediately
protest, and we would not try him in a secret or a public courL"
A month later. the Chicago Tribune was to editorialize (July 1944 ) :
"The Roosevelt Administration not only turned him over to British juris-
diction but acquiesced in subjecting him to a trial in secret, a proceeding
impossible under our Constitution. Whatever his offense may have been, the
violation of his constitutional rights was clear and heinous."
Now, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has for
some time been Senator Tom Connally, of Texas. Senator Connally replied
to Wheeler's speech of the 19th of June, 1944. He said: "The State Depart-
ment says that the British government before prosecuting submitted the
documents to the United States Government, and before the prosecution
was begun our Government examined the documents and concluded that
Kent ought to be prosecuted and waived his diplomatic immunity."
This is as may be. But we submit, for consideration, an extract from
that "Roberts Report" of September 2, 1944 (two and a half months after
Senator Connally spoke). It reads:
(c Kent was dismissed from the Government service as of
May 20, 1940. Thereafter the question of diplomatic immunity
naturally did not arise."
As that was the very date of Kent's arrest, Senator Connally's next
succe.eding sentence now becomes understandable. It reads:
"If we had desired we could have invoked diplomatic im-
munity in this case and perhaps have prevented it from being
prosecuted in the British courts."
21
Quite apparently, "we" did not desire. Why not? Representative Hoff-
man, of Michigan, had already seen the point. On October 26, 1945, he had
asked:
"Is the State Department more British than American?"
That was a very pertinent question.
You will recall Kent's statement, on his return, that he could help solve
the riddle of the origin of this war. You will recall Mr. Henning's article
suggesting that Lend-Lease, the Neutrality Act and the Johnson Act were
discussed in the Roosevelt-Churchill messages, together with Kent's observa-
tion that this article merely "requires exterision in detail." You will recall
the charges in Parliament by Member John McGovern along the same
Identical lines, lines that would lead us unerringly into war.
If these hints and charges are true, if here at last is the fly in the
ointment, then we, through our elected Representatives in Congress, should
know.
And that is why, on October 1, 1944, Mrs. Kent wrote to Congress
herself, saying to those men:
"... therefore you should be fully cognizant of steps dearly
provocative of war."
Surely we have the right to know what Kent has known since 1939.
That is why, in that same letter of October, Mrs. Kent has said:
"Tyler Kent was jailed to keep him silenced-jailed to keep
him from imparting to you, Members of Congress, information
which you had a right to know."
But Senator Tom Connally had felt that McGovern's remarks in the
British Commons were just hearsay. "I am talking about the official records
as disclosed by the Department of State," he said.
"If the Senator will pardon me," Senator Wheeler pointedly remarked,
"that is what I should like to see--the official records."
IMPRISONMENT
FOR nine months Kent was confined in the British "gaol" at Wands-
worth while awaiting trial at the Old Bailey. Nine months, for a citizen
of the United States, whose Constitution guarantees one the right to a
"speedy and public triaL" (Art. VI, Bill of Rights.)
"So severe was his treatment at first that I made an hysterical
appeal to the British Embassy here to alleviate his lot, and in the prison
22
my son's SpIrIt broke and he refused food until he was tinally placed m a
" So wrote Mrs. Kent, in Washington, to Franklin Delano
Roosevelt in the White House, July 21, 1942.
Kent was ultimately transferred to Camp Hill Prison, Newport, Isle of
Wight. He was at Camp Hill when his mother wrote to the Democratic
National Convention, 1944, that he had been sentenced "nOot because he
did anything criminal, but because of what he knew." He was at Camp Hill
when in October Oof that same year, the British Home Office refused the
Associated Press an interview with him in
He was in prison when his British lawyer, F. Graham Maw, entered a
plea with the Home Office to deduct from the 7 -year term of sentence the
nine months he had served before his trial; in prison when his solicitor
cabled, March 1, 1945: "Regret inform you my efforts secure Tyler's
. earlier release unsuccessful."
On the 16th of May, 1945, Home Secretary Herbert Morrison revealed
that all but one political prisoner of the war had been released, but Kent
was still detained because convicted in a civil court.
By November 11, of Armistice-Kent had already been
confined ten mOonths over his allotted time after deductions for "goOod be-
haviour." On the 16th of that November, Secretary of State James F.
Byrnes wrote to Chairman Sol BloOom (N. Y.), of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, that his Department had made no protest against Kentis
detention and added that it had no information that his citizenship had
been revoked.
Perhaps this is understandable for, in October, both the State Depart-
ment and the Department of Justice were reported in the press as having
no further interest in Kent since he had been dismissed from the service.
DEPORTATION
W HEN Britain's new Prime Minister of national socialism took
office, Mrs. Kent lost no time in making request for the release of her son ..
Here, and officially, is shown the original British intent in regard tOo Kent.
Kent received the following reply:
August 23, 1945
Under Secretary of State,
Home Office, Whitehall
Madam, No. 838,997/31
I am directed by the Secretary of State to inform you that
letter of the 1st of August, addressed to the Prime Minister
behalf of your son, Tyler Gatewood Kent, has been forwarded
23
to the Home Office for attention and to say that he has carefully
considered your representations, but he regrets that he would not
feel justified in recommending any interference with the normal
course of the sentence which the Court thought it proper to
Your son is subject to a Deportation Order made by the
Secretary of State on the 23rd May, 1940, and it is proposed to
enforce this Order sending him back to the United States of
America as soon as possible after he becomes eligible for release
on licence on his sentence of penal servitude.
Mrs. A. H. P. Kent I am,
2112 Wyoming Ave., N. W. Your obedient Servant,
Washington 8, D. C. Francis Graham Haines
(Signatllre illegible)
Here for the first time was revealed the issuance of a Deportation Order
done exactly five years and five months hefore. Here, and officially, is
shown the original British intent in regard to Kent.
Conjectural as it may seem, this phenomenon does lend a certain cre-
dence to the idea that "We did not particularly want to try this case"; that
"neither the British nor the American governments would like to have had
(the information) divulged"; that "the English courts could not have found
firm ground to convict him had they not heen helped hy the American
Emhassy"; and that "high sources" had heen influential in pressing for
Kent's waiver, trial and imprisonment.
For a simple Deportation Order, in Britain, means no more than
someone is persona non grata to the British Crown.
This Order had heen issued exactly three days after Kent's arrest, and
nine months before his trial.
* * *
On Novemher 21, 1945, Kent was escorted aboard the British freighter
"Silver Oak" and on Decemher 4 he docked at Hohoken, New Jersey. His
sailing had heen postponed four times. This was the British version of "as
soon as possihle after he hecomes eligible for release."
* * *
Meanwhile, Britain's professor Harold J. Laski, of the London School
of Economics, Executive Member of the Fabian Society, powerful voice
in the Labour Party now in power, had come to New York to tell assorted
thousands of peculiar "Americans" that our kind of government is finished
and that we should all join hands in a World Soviet Republic.
This sanguinary Utopia of 1946 has an odd backing. President Truman,
hefore Hiroshima was bombed, made an address in Kansas City. In that
address, this successor to Franklin Roosevelt had said: "It will be just as
24
easy for nations to get along in a republic oj the world as it is for us to get
along in the Republic of the United States."
This is odd company, is it not? It is company somewhat carefully
explained in "America-Which Way?" Such sanguinary Utopia is pre-
cisely what Pope Benedict XV referred to when, on July 25, he warned
the world against
"The advent of a Universal Republic, which is longed jor
by all the worst elements oj disorder, and confidently expected
by them."
At any rate, Britain's Harold J. Laski came to New York by plane.
Also meanwhile, that great ecclesiastical exponent of Communism, Dean
Hewlitt Johnson of Canterbury, England, had come to America for a lec-
ture tour-and proceeded to tell credulous segments of an American clergy
about the honeyed paradise of the Communist creed. He was photographed,
smiling, with an equally smiling President, Harry S. Truman, in the White
House.
Britain's Hewlitt Johnson came by plane.
Tyler Gatewood Kent arrived on a British cargo boat.
AMBASSADOR TO THE COURT OF ST. JAMES'
MR. Joseph P. Kennedy has distinguished himself, so far in this
life, for many things. He has recently blasted Communism in our schools;
he has taken a resounding crack at Britain's professor Harold J. Laski. As
the United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James' he achieved, with
his numerous family, a wide and immediate popularity among the subjects
of the Crown.
Late in 1940, he was widely reported to favor American non-participa-
tion in the war. The Ambassador's newspaper popularity in Britain then
took a sudden turn for the worse. He made a hurried trip to America. We
were given to understand he had arranged to make a nation-wide broadcast,
here, against our involvement inthe war. Ambassador Kemiedy, before that
scheduled broadcast, spent some hours in close conference with FDR. When
the broadcast was made, however, it was sufficiently pro-British to soften
the ire of the London press and much of his British newspaper popularity
was regained.
Just what did this Executive-appointed representative have to do with
the case of Tyler Kent? To the limit of our knowledge, we shall report
it here.
You have read what the State Department had to say in its "Roberts
2S
Report" release. Mr. Kennedy has since, however, chosen to make certain
public statements regarding Kent. Kent has categorically denied some of
those statements. Here, then, are versions so at variance that public interest
should demand a showdown. And again, no matter whom or where it may
reach.
Let us pass over the intervening years-while Kent was in the British
"gaol"-and come to September 5, 1944. This was, recall, just three days
after the State Department release. On that date, from Hyannis, Massa-
chusetts, the ex-Ambassador gave a telephoned interview to the Associated
Press. (The A.P. could interview Joseph P. Kennedy; it could not inter-
view Tyler Kent.) In this interview, the A.P. directly quotes Me Kennedy,
as follows (excerpts):
"Italy, you remember, did not go to war until after Kent's arrest."
Kent "was no mediary between Roosevelt and Churchill," he is quoted, but
"Kent had seen all the messages between Roosevelt and Churchill," which
came in "the unbreakable code." "After Kent's arres,t, we could only
assume that the same despatches had been sent to the Germans." (Fifteen
months later, General George Marshall was to testify before the Pearl
Harbor Committee that the Germans had tapped our wires!) Nonetheless,
the Washington Times-Herald quotes Kennedy as having immediately
phoned to Franklin Roosevelt saying our top secret code was out. "Our top
secret code is no good, anywhere-any more" are the words attributed to
him in the Auckland Weekly News.
('If we had been at war, I wouldn't have favored turning Kent over to
Scotland Yard or have sanctioned his imprisonment in England. I would
have recommended that he be brought back to the United States and shot,"
the A.P. quotes Me Kennedy, adding that he presumed Germany, Italy and
also Japan now had the unbreakable code. If he had not waived diplomatic
immunity, "It could have developed into a nasty mess."
Kennedy went on dramatically, says this special article, and quotes him:
'(The British sentence that put him on the Isle of Wight for 7 years was mild
beyond measure." "The only thing that saved Kent's life was that he was
an American citizen and that we were not yet at war."
Now, there are a number of things that we could discuss about this
interview. We could, for instance, point out with equal truth that Japan did
not attack Pearl Harbor until after Kent's arrest; we could point out that
to "assume" that enemies of the British had received these despatches is
scarcely a tenable legal position upon which to send a man to penal servi-
tude; we could suggest that whereas the State Department's own press
release claims immunity "may be renounced or waived by the sending state
at any time," Mr. Kennedy's use of the word "sanctioned" opens an
entirely different view; and we might observe that if the offense were so
26
great as to have justified shooting (which means treason), surely the State
Department and the Department of Justice have taken a curious position,
late 1945, in expressing "no further interest" in the case.
We will pass those points over. Pertinent, however, to those who would
demand the whole truth from their failure-laden public servants (global
war, global civil war, global chaos, tragedy and despair), is the reply of
Kent himself.
Kennedy's interview was sent to Kent. Kent, from prison-and through
the British censorship-cabled his mother:
"Kennedy's statements false."
This cable was sent on September 14, 1944, and those three words were
included in Mrs. Kent's petition to Congress on the 25th of that month.
Here, as you see, are two positions, each diametrically opposed to the other.
Kent, from prison, now cabled his mother authorizing a suit for libel
against the ex-Ambassador, who had reportedly called him a {'traitor."
From prison he, Kent, now applied to the British Home Office for the per-
mission to sign such action required under British law. This permission was
not granted by the British Home Office. (\Vhat that same Home Office did
when the position was, so to speak, reversed, will become apparent further
on.)
Kent amplified his cable later, and wrote on December 8, 1944, to his
mother, stating: "Kennedy's statements are arrant lies. The Department of
State (press' release of September 2: Ed.) is a bit more careful and states
only half-truths and insinuations ...."
Mrs. Kent herself is more lenient with the ex-Ambassador. She states
that Mr. Kennedy would very likely have acted differently had he known
the contents of the cables. On the other hand, in her petition to Congress,
October 1, she says: "Actually, it was the duty of Ambassador Joseph P.
Kennedy far more than that of my son, a subordinate employe, to report
to the American Congress any such secret arrangements as are stated in
Mr. Henning's article." The "secret arrangements" referred to are the
possible modifications of the Johnson Act, the Neutrality Act and the
asserted outlining of Lend-Lease, already reported herein.
In contrast to this public interview is Mr. Kennedy's reaction to a
letter from Senator Wheeler to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, copy of
which was sent to him. In referring to this on the floor of the Senate, June
19, 1944, Senator Wheeler said:
"I received no reply from Mr. Kennedy although he did
call me on the telephone."
27
On the following- day, the N. Y . Times quoted Mr. Kennedy's reply: If
Kent'ha,sanything to would interest the peopleo thepnited
. Sfates ... now is' the time' for him: to speak out, because the restrictions that
h,ealleges e;istedcertainly do not exist now that hels back in the UnIted!
States." ." .. '.'
So here, as elsewhere, we have tWQ statements, each in violent contrast
to the other, with 140,000,000 questioning people in between the two. For
Kent's written offer to Senator Barkley does exactly what Kennedy
gests;anch-to the proper .public servants. Now, if these public servants .. will
notgive us a full and complete report, it is up to us to elect men and women'
who Will.
Whisky Rebellion - 1945
On June 9, 1945, citizen NageneCampbellBethune sent a 'series.
q!,lestions to Members of both Congress. We list some oithese
prejudice and without comment: .
What, if anything, was the "whisky import' clause"of Lertd,.Lease and
thef'secret phase" of Lend-Lease "to use Sir Arthur Creech Jones' own
'. .'
"Under what agency of the Administration is it working?"
.. "Who are the principal officers of any c6mpany connected with the
reception and distribution of this liquor?'" .
What part, if any, did Joseph P.Kennedy and whisky play in "reverse
Lend"Lease:?"
.., What quantities .of. whisky, .if any, were imported under the "Secret
clause" referredto by Sir Arthur Creech Jones? (Editor's note: Sir Arthur
Creech Jones,M.P. since 1935; Parliamentary Private Secretary to 'Ernest.
Bevin; very active inlabor,educationaland union affairs; Executive
per of the Fabian Society; Chairman of the Fabian Colonial Bureau, etc.
Source: BritishJV:ho's Who, 1945.)
Is thet:e a monopoly and, if so, by whom is it controlled?
"What Jf at;ly, would the 'Somerset Importing Corporatipl1'have
:;Cluldin any negotiations whose purpose was the import Of whisky.into,the!
[:United States underany Lend-Lease transaction?" .
28
Mrs. Kent, in her reply to editor Georges Seldes dated January 26, 1945,
has made the statement that James Roosevelt is interested in the Somerset
company.
* * *
Such are the murmurings of a possible Whisky Rebellion today.
THE STATE DEPARTMENT
THE growing power of the Executive Branch of our Government
and its increasing independence from Congress are all too apparent for
more than passing reference here. When the arrogance of such power, how-
ever, reaches the point where the elected Representatives (Congress) of a
sovereign people increasingly face faits accomplis (whether a pip line project
into Saudi Arabia or some fantastic gift of billions of our people's money) ;
when the constitutionally-mandatory powers of legislation progressively
dwindle to those of merely investigating that which has already been done,
it is, in the pertinent title words of Samuel Crowther's book, "Time To
Inquire.':
. is time to inquire into the case of Tyler Kent. It is high time, we
think, when citizen Ann H. P. Kent can write to Congress, as she did on
March 15, 1943, and state that "1 was hampered and misled in every
possible way by the State Department officials"; it is high time, we submit,
when Senator K,enneth Wherry of Nebraska offers a Resolution to investi-
gate that State Department, and the United Press can directly quote Senator
Tom Connally as saying, about that Resolution, "It is lying calmly on my
desk"; and it is more than that time when the situation has reached the
point where a representative of the People, the Hon. Alvin F. Weichel of
Ohio, introduces a Bill that bluntly says:
"Be it enacted, etc., That the Department of State and the
President cease negotiations, activities, and attempts to give
away the rights of the people . ..." (December 20, 1945.)
A month before that Bill was introduced (to lie dormant for lack of
knowledge and support), yet another Resolution was quashed, this
one on November 16, 1945. On that date, the House Foreign Affairs Com-
mittee (Chairman, Sol Bloom, N. Y.) reported as follows:
"The Committee on Foreign Affairs, to whom was referred
the resolution (H. Res. 382) requesting information from the
Secretary of State with reference to Tyler Kent, having con-
sidered the same, report thereon without amendment and recom-
mend that the resolution do not pass."
It is time to inquire when Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, November
29
U, 1945, writes to Chairman Sol Bloom in reference to the 8 questions em-
bodied in that resolution, and says:
"Mr dear Mr. Bloom:
I have received your letter of October 30, 1945, trans-
mitting for such comment as I may desire . ..."
To just what state, one asks, has the master, Congress, arrived when it
"requests such comment ((as I may desire" from its own servant, the
Executive Branch of the Government of this Republic?
One year and five months before this letter, on June 19, 1944, Burton
K. Wheeler told the Senate he had written to another Secretary, Mr. Cordell
Hull, and asked the why and the wherefore of an American citizen being
tried in camera before a British court. (This was the letter, copy of which
went to Mr. J. P. Kennedy and brought the latter's phone call.) Mr. Hull,
as well, did not directly reply, but sent the Department's Mr. Shaw. He,
.says Senator Wheeler, "told me that they were very much worried because
of the fact that the Russian woman had obtained the information which
the boy had decoded . . . there is still no answer to the question as to why
he should have been tried in a British secret court," continued Wheeler.
On September /1944, came the "Roberts Report." As the release itself
admitted, "The Department of State has taken note of recent inquiries and
newspaper reports regarding the case of Tyler Kent ... and the Office of
Foreign Service Administration has been instructed to review the matter
thoroughly and prepare a comprehensive report."
Two days after this report was made public, Mrs. Kent wrote directly to
Secretary Hull: "Very few persons besides his mother are interested in
Tyler Kent per se," she wrote, "but 130 odd million Americans are vitally
concerned to learn whether or not it is true that in time of peace, one year
before the Lend-Lease bill and other measures were put before the Senate,
they had been planned 'between the American President and the British
navy head'."
A pertinent question. In the same letter, Mrs. Kent quotes the words
'Of her son, brought to her from England by the man she had employed to
go there, Mr. Ian Ross MacFarlane. These words, quoted from Kent, said:
"At times I was almost nauseated at the part I had to play." Subjective
,evidence, yes, but Hull did not reply, and the State Department is now "no
longer interested" in the case.
quoting from her emissary in this letter to Hull, Mrs. Kent says
that American Consul Roy W. Baker, stationed at Bristol, England, referred
to "Our boy whom they crucified." Subjective evidence again, but Consuls
just do not say such things unless they feel pretty sure of their ground.
30
Mr. Baker further stated, she wrote, that he would be unable to visit
Kent, as Kent was outside his consular district. Mrs. Kent, who for twenty
years had been the wife of a member of the diplomatic now bluntly
asks Secretary Hull: "/s this a new regulation in foreign countries to
we must bow?"
WAR AND POLITICS -19041946
BACK in 1904 a little known commitment was made on behalf of
our American people. Russia and Japan were then at war. Our President
at the time was Theodore Roosevelt. Mr. Theodore Roosevelt secretly
committed us to that war in the event certain things took place. Our
Nation, committed by Theodore Roosevelt, would then have fought (after
the proper publicity buildup )-on the side of the Japanese.
Following 1904 and the Portsmouth Treaty between Russia and Japan,
even to this day few people know of the commitment-in time of American
peace-that Theodore Roosevelt had made. Why?
It wasn't long before the Old World was at it again. This time, people
were more alert. Even so, thirteen years were to pass after the "peace"
of 1919 before C. Hartley Grattan, in "The Nation" of July 27, 1932,
revealed to the citizens of this Republic that another President, Mr. Wood-
row Wilson, had secretly committed us to fight in Europe's wars. Date
of the commitment, March, 1916. Source: Intimate Papers of Wilson's
Col. House, Vol. II, p. 175. Text: "The solution I suggested was that at
regular intervals I would cable Sir Edward Grey, in our private code,
offering intervention."
That is the sort of lie and deceit that was going on behind the "Atlantic
Charter" 0/1916 which read: "Make the world safe for democracy."
Eight months after that March commitment, Wilson was reelected on
another slogan: "He kept us out of war." And less than a half a year from
then, a hundred and thirty millions of us learned that the "M" of that
March commitment was a small "m." General John J. Pershing, and two
,million of our best, were on their way to France. Such was the march
commitment of early 1916. Why?
Following 1918 and the Armistice, propaganda (including the film
"Wilson") has largely succeeded in covering up this second peacetime com-
mitment to put our Nation into foreign war. While, buried deep in the
Intimate Papers of Colonel House (Vol. I, p. 249) is his wire to Wilson, '
May 29, 1914:
"Whenever England consents, France and Russia will close
in on Germany and Austria."
Why?
31
Then, in 1932, Mr. Grattan would speak prophetically the use of a
president's power. He would say:
"There is no reason on earth why the power could not
used again. . . . Years later they (the People) woul4 discover
that they had really fought because they had previously been
committed to such a course by a President who took full advan-
tage of the terrifying powers available to 1.: __ "
This time, 1946, the question was being discussed even before the war
was over. This time, 1946, much evidence has already been brought out.
This time, 1946, on that "Why?", our Nation is already divided into two
sharply conflicting camps.
Camp 1 says: "Roosevelt and his cabal were not responsible for getting
us into war."
Camp 2 says: "Roosevelt his cabal were directly responsible."
In the hearings on S.2 7 5 (Lend-Lease), back in February of 1941,
(pp. 388-90) we find interesting testimony before the Senate Committee.
General Robert Wood quotes Winston Churchill. There was no one else
present when these words were assertedly said, so, says the American General
Wood, "all I could give the Senators is my word as a gentleman." Wood,
according to his testimony, had been a luncheon guest at Churchill's London
flat, and Churchill had made the following remark:
((Germany is getting too strong-we must smash Germany."
That is as may be. Perhaps it was the beginning of the "four freedoms."
But certain it is that Churchill, upon American entry in this war, publicly
stated:
"That is what I have dreamed of, aimed at, and worked
for, and now it has come to pass."
Certain, too, it is that Britain's eminent biologist and birth-controllist,
Julian Huxley, landed in New York-for another British lecture tour-on
December 5, 1941. Certain it is that he gave a front-page interview to the
N. Y. Journal-American, with picture. Here are Mr. Julian Huxley's own
directly-quoted words:
"/ hope Japan will not back down and that you will be at
war with her next week."
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor just 36 hours later.
Where there is so much smoke, we submit, there is very apt to be some
fire. Perhaps those Roosevelt-Churchill cables will reveal it. We do not
know. And that is just the point-we do not know.
32
A part of Kent's defense was the counter-allegation that Roosevelt
was helping to overthrow the Neville Chamberlain government, install
lay a chain of events inevitably draWing us into war. True
or not, it very closely parallels the course of events in the Pacific when
Roosevelt did not meet with Konoye. (Grew testimony, Pearl Harbor.)
Mrs. Kent herself, writing to Franklin Roosevelt on July 21, 1942,
directly refers to events "prior to your reorganizing the British government
by making Mr. Churchill Prime Minister in the spring of 1940." The
recipient of this letter, FDR, did not reply. A copy was sent to Mrs.
Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt did not reply. This was the letter in which
Mrs. Kent appealed to an elected President "even as in ancient times the
ordinary citizen was permitted to reach Caesar."
this same letter, Mrs. Kent expressed her wish
we in the New World let the whole nasty, fighting mess of the Old World
wear itself out, while from Hudson Bay to Patagonia we would guard
jealously against the spread of the disease to these shores."
And here, in July of 1942, we find a citizen of this Republic (Mrs.
Ann H. P. Kent) writing to the elected Chief of State (Commander-in-Chief)
that her son hadn't known "that you have the power to bring any war to a
victorious conclusion, to police and then evangelize the world along the
Anglo-American plan."
Even though, says this letter, "one third of our people are ill-fed, ill-
and ill-housed." He, her son, hadn't known that "To have our
own easy-going people behind you, you had to explain gradually and
patiently, by fireside chats, by press and radio and film, our God-imposed
World Mission."
That is what Mrs. Kent wrote to Franklin Roosevelt on July 21, 1942.
She told him, in that letter, that she was sending a copy to Mrs. Roosevelt,
"hoping that in the kindness of her heart she may call the matter to your
attention. "
There was no reply.
But almost two years later, Senator Connally would say (June 19, 1944),
strike hands with the leaders of all the other United Nations, God bless
their purpose to "set up a rule of law and rectitude, as against
the cruel and mighty forces of tyranny and military despotism." Thus, the
man who later represented the Senate and People of this Christian Nation
at San Francisco.
Again, the Balkan peoples, the Baltic peoples, the Poles, and all the
other 1946-oppressed peoples of the world, including the Javanese, the Thai
and the legitimate inhabitants of the East, look reproachfully at those
on high.
33
Do these matters seem removed from the case of Tyler Kent? Do they
seem removed from an "Atlantic charter" that was, then wasn't, then
was? Or are you inclined to believe, as does this writer, that some pairs of
good clear American eyes are needed to search out the too often "missing"
documents of our recent strange regimes? We might just find out why so
many millions of human beings, speaking scores of languages and yearning
for Homelands as dear to them as is ours to us, why they are where they are.
"After all," writes John O'Donnell on November 7, 1945, "the betrayal
of Teapot Dome was a matter of cold cash; Franklin Roosevelt's part in
Pearl Harbor was paid off in American blood." O'Donnell emphasizes "the
for publication of Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence
before Pearl Harbor. And this is an even hotter topic than
Pearl Harbor " That data "may well fix the
making blow that FDR secretly desired-the attack that
Nation into the European war as an out-and-out belligerant, a possibility
which the great majority of the citizens of the Republic opposed from the
bottom of their hearts."
In the "interchange of messages between the late President Roosevelt
and the politically deceased ex-Premier of Britain," concludes O'Donnell,
"and what those coded messages secretly pledged back in the days of
Europe's 'phony war' of 1939 and early 1940-lies the story of how this
Republic was, in the bitter words of Representative Clare Boothe Luce,
'lied into war'."
* * *
SMEAR
I T IS a sad commentary on the times when, in a document devoted
to affairs of state, a chapter must be given to such a subject. Smear, that
spares neither the private citizen who attends the "wrong" meeting, nor
a Douglass MacArthur attending to a war with minimum American casualties
the East. The Army War College Library, bulletin of February 10, 1
p. 16, all too ample testimony of smear in this hilZhest of
quarters, and on one of its highest Generals. And smear
on Kent.
Kent has been called "culprit," "traitor" and "renegade." He been
treated artfully by a State Department (release of September 2, 1944) and
brutally by a national detective magazine. This latter has referred to Mrs.
Kent as "the criminal's mother." (True Detective, May, 1945.)
Mr. Walter Winchell refers to Kent in his own inimitable style.
Kent has been called a "spy" and guilty of "espionage"-he was tried
for, and convicted of, larceny. Some papers would have the G.O.P. using,
34
the case to besmirch the untouchable reputation of FDR. The N. Y.
Herald-Tribune editorializes on a "weak young fellow named Tyler Kent,"
whose sentence was "about as light ... about as forebearing, as (it) could
possibly have been without encouraging other young simpletons to go and
do likewise." This "infatuated simpleton" has been accused of liaison with
the Russian, Anna Wolkoff, who herself has been termed the "Mata Hari"
in the case. The British solicitor refutes any thought of such a liaison in
one of his letters to Mrs. Kent. Anna Wolkoff, writes Maw, was known about
town as the "ugliest and wittiest woman in London." She was 45. Briefly,
the lady does not appear to be exactly like the "Russian girl," or the "beau-
tiful Russian" that our more sensational press has described. Even Ambas-
sador Kennedy, quoted by Mrs. Kent, says "I never heard a word to that
effect."
When columnist John O'Donnell wrote on Kent, Marshall Field's PM
headlined that O'Donnell "LEAPS TO TRAITOR'S AID," and went on to
describe what "impelled him (Kent) to send to the Wilhelmstrasse complete
information on British military and naval affairs." We forebear to remark
that such "sending" apparently was never proven, but confine ourselves to
the simple words of the trial Justice, Sir Frederick Tucker, who said:
"the documents, highly confidential as they were, did not
relate to naval or military movements."
George Seldes, that eminent editor of "In Fact," states that Kennedy's'
interview "describing how Kent had betrayed American secretly coded
messages to the Nazis," and the thought that Kent should be shot, appeared
in more than 1,000 papers. That assertion was made in Seldes' issue of
December 25, 1944. It was editor Seldes' Christmas gift to Mrs. Kent.
So much for what we will call destructive smear.
The smearors have a second kind. We might call it constructive smear
-from the smearors' point of view. Upton Close (hated by the smearors),
writes in his weekly "Closer-Ups," November 26, 1945, that it was his own
public reference to the Kent case that got him off the air. It "brought the
heaviest crackdown on N.B.C.," he writes, though such crackdown was
"against the protest of the sponsor." Simple protest means just nothing
~ the smearors. They wanted Close off the air, and they got him off the
air.
Anyway, that is constructive smear-from the smearors point of view.
And when our people hear from Kent, they will find this smear, again,
at work.
* * *
In preparation for this coming campaign, we cite the following in
rebuttal:
35
"Tyler asks me to tell you to go to the Senate," writes his British
attorney, Maw. (An odd place to go, we repeat, if one is afraid of the
truth.)
"After many long talks with Mr. Kent, I am convinced that he never
intended any harm to England." Same source, and quoted by Mrs. Kent in
her letter to Franklin Roosevelt.
"It is a case nothing short of tragic," writes this same British lawyer.
"I wanted to inform the people of the United States, who, I considered,
should know ....": Kent, interview on his return.
"Tyler did nothing reprehensible but he went at it the wrong way." Thus
is quoted Mr. Consul General Erhardt, stationed at London at the time.
This quote appears in Mrs. Kent's letter to Franklin Roosevelt. And Consul
General Erhardt certainly attended all the hearings before the trial.
* * *
CAPT. ARCHmALD HENRY MAULE RAMSAY, M.P.
CAPTAIN Ramsay was graduated from Sandhurst, the British
equivalent of West Point. He was severely wounded while serving in the
Coldstream Guards in 1916, and was decorated for gallantry in action. He
married the daughter of the 14th Viscount of Gormanston and his home is
at Kelli.e Castle, Angus, Scotland. In 1931, he was elected to Parliament.
His place in this narrative is his connection with the case of Kent.
He is connected. Rightly or wrongly, Kent discussed those cables with
Ramsay. Ramsay was arrested by the British police and clapped into jaiL
He was never charged or tried in any way. His governmentsimply put
into jail.
Ramsay was a member of both the Link and the Right Club. Kent
belonged only to the latter. The name, "Right," had a political meaning;
it was opposed to the leftist tendencies of those in political power. The
stated objectives of both organizations was peace and friendship with
Germany. Rightly or wrongly, whether "front" organizations or no, Ram-
say belonged to both and Kent belonged to the one. The Right Club's
insignia was an eagle carrying a viper in its beak.
Before Sandhurst, Ramsay was a graduate of Eton-a school on whose
playing fields, said Wellington, Britain's battles were won. Ramsay fought
his own concept of those battles. He fought against what he conceived to
be the gradual abolition of the human rights for which his ancestors had
fought when they wrested the Magna Carta from an unwilling king. That
had been at Runnymede, back in 1215. He fought the Political Economic
36
Planning group. Of this group, American citizen Nagene Bethune was to
petition Congress, June 9, 1945, asking:
"What ties, if any, existed and still exist between the Political
Economic Planning group known as the P.E.P. of Britain, with
at its head Israel Moses Sieff and Leonard Elmhirst and the
New Dealers of the Roosevelt Administration?"
What, indeed? Mr. Sieff, of Britain, was prominent here (behind the
scenes) in that remarkable agency known as the O.P.A. (Those with time
are directed to the hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Pt. 1, statement by the Hon. Leon H.
Gavin of Pennsylvania, p. 485; and to the statement of Mr. Israel Moses
Sieff before the same Committee, Pt. 2, p. 628.)
So Captain Ramsay, M.P., who had fought such people in his own
country, was arrested under Sec. 18b of the Defense of the Realm Act.
This deals with persons "recently concerned with acts prejudicial to the
public safety and the security of the realm." The so-far American counter-
part of this law is S.805, about which we shall have something to say.
After Ramsay was put in jail, a N. Y. Times article referred to him in a
way he did not like. Ramsay sued for libel. Ramsay, bear in mind, was
in jail, just as was Kent when the latter wanted to sue Joseph P. Kennedy
on a similar charge. Ramsay had to, by law, make the same application to
the Home Office as did Kent. He made it. There was one difference. The
British Home Office granted his request. Ramsay sued, and he won his case,
against the N. Y. Times, in the British courts. That was in the Summer
of 1941.
We will pass over this sample of British justice. It was all, perhaps, just
a part of reverse Lend-Lease.
The news article that gave rise to this suit had been based on a series
of articles by Col. (world espionage force) William J. Donovan and Edgar
Mowrer. The series had been released, as part of the national defense pro-
gram, by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox.
Ramsay's suit is of interest to us here for two reasons. These reasons
are: (1) the fact that the British Home Secretary would give Ramsay per-
mission to file, but would not give that same permission to Kent, and (2)
the following sidelight on the trial:
In spite of Ramsay's birth, his publicly fine career, and the position of
his wife and family, the British judge openly called him a "traitor"
and an "associate of thieves and felons." Without prejudice, we report the
quiet retort of this friend and confidant of Kent:
til would not doubt, your Honor, but that I am a better
English patriot than you are."
* * *
37
Captain A. H. M. Ramsay, M.P., was freed one full year before citizen
Tyler Kent.
DEATH
THERE had been a second American living in London at the time .
of Kent's arrest. Oddly enough, he was engaged in research on the trial of
Mary Queen of Scots. He became interested in the case of Tyler Kent.
For a long time he tried to secure an interview with the prisoner. In this
he failed.
Like Kent, this man was put in a British jail. Like Kent, he was made
subject to a Deportation Order. But unlike Kent, this man was freed. His
family, we are informed, did not agree with his views but would get him out
of the country. At any rate, he was released from iail in order to board a
plane for the U. S. A. (Kent, upon release, could
The plane was grounded in Nova Scotia. This man, together with sev-
eral of the passengers, went to a nearby restaurant. He was broke, but his
fellow-passengers bought him four cups of coffee. (The British-possibly
under reverse Lend-Lease-allowed you just 10/-, or $2.00 at the pegged
rate of the Pound, when you left their
Transportation was arranged, and two of the men found themselves on
the same ship. They talked. They were interested in the same case, the case
of Tyler Kent. In due course their ship docked at New York. One man
proceeded to his home in Baltimore, later to report his findings to Mrs.
Kent. He had been sent to England to interview the prisoner and report
on what he found. He had seen the prisoner. He now reported to Mrs.
Kent. He reported, says Mrs. Kent, that the second man had said, "I am
going to make my life's work the exposure of the Kent case." The name of
the emissary who made the report was Ian Ross MacFarlane.
Meanwhile, the second of these two men had gone directly to his New
York apartment, at 23 West 9th Street. That was in November, 1942.
Less than two months later he was found dead.
*" * *
This man had been born in Denver. He was a graduate of the University
of Wisconsin on a scholarship, won at writing, from the University of Vir-
ginia. Following that, he had been on the stage and was modestly known
as an artist and a writer.
At 3: lOon the morning of January 3, 1943, his next door neighbor in
New York's Greenwich Village heard what she described as a loud thud.
She investigated, and called the police. Dr. William Carr, of St. Vincent's
Hospital, was called and established the fact of death. But, says the N. Y.
38
Times pf that date, "Because of bruises on his head and face and fresh
blood, Detective John Maguire listed death as suspicious and (ordered)
an immediate autopsy performed.)}
Assistant Medical Examiner Milton Helpern duly performed the autopsy.
He pronounced death to have been due to natural causes and "general con-
gestion of the viscera." The body was formally identified, and claimed,
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lehman, of Park Avenue, N. Y. C. Both the Times
and the Herald-Tribune carried the story.
On the other hand, the N. Y. Journal-American recounted that the N. Y.
said the man had died of "an extremely large dose of veronol," and
that death was officially listed as "suicide."
Be that as it may, on July 20, 1944, the same paper carried an inter-
view with Upton Close, famous commentator and historian. The dead man,
Close is directly quoted, "did some talking about the Kent case around
town, apparently trying to get it printed, but everybody was afraid of
... (and) before he could be brought to Washington he was found dead on
January 2 (3), 1943."
*
* *
The deceased's name was John Bryan Owen. He was born John Bryan
Leavitt; his father was William Homer Leavitt; his mother later married
Reginald Owen, who died in 1927; the lady's full name today is Mrs. Ruth
Bryan Owen Rohde.
Mrs. Rohde was born in Illinois. She was a Member of Congress from
Florida, 1928-32, and was on the House Foreign Affairs Committee during
that time. She was U. S. Minister to Denmark, 1933-36. She is widely
traveled and aCtive in social work. Among her degrees, Mrs. Rohde numbers
an L.H.D. from the Russell Sage University, New York.
On August to, 1945, Mrs. Ruth Bryan Owen Rohde's name was pro-
posed, by Representative Hendricks of Florida, for appointment as the
United States women's representative to the U.N.O. As of the same date her
name was submitted, by letter to President Truman, for this appointment.
Mrs. Robert Lehman, of New York's Park Avenue, sister of the deceased,
was the wife of the late adopted son of former Governor Herbert Lehman
of New York. Ex-Governor Lehman is presently Director General of
U.N.R.R.A., that international body about which there has been, is, and
will be, such violent discussion both in and out of Congress.
Grandfather of the deceased was William Jennings Bryan, former Sec-
retary of State.
According to the press, Owen had been writing a letter when he died
at 3: 10 that early morning. (Do you write letters after taking "an extremely
large dose of veronol"?) He was, say the press accounts, actually in the
middle of a phrase describing a minor taxi accident in which he had been
involved some weeks before in the New York dimout. His injuries, he was
writing, were not regarded as serious.
But Owen died, a "suicide," of an "overdose of veronol." There was
talk, and the talk grew. Then, on July 17, 1944, the N. Y. Journal-American
again quoted Upton Close, this time his nation-wide broadcast of the 9th
of that month: Would Mr. Thomas E. Dewey inquire into the Owen death,
((ascertain as true or false" the rumors that were spreading throughout the
Country? "Did the mysterious death," asks Close, "... have a connection
with all this? Will the former fighting district attorney of New York pick
up the thread of that death in Greenwich Village and try to untangle the
snarl of this international scheme?"
We find no record of any reply. Perhaps it was just an unhappy coinci-
dence. "But death," concluded the N. Y. Journal-American, "sealed Owen's
lips a few days after he arrived."
* * *
On September 22, 1945, Mr. Kenneth Dann Magruder (5562 Hobart
St., Pittsburgh 17, Pa.), wrote a letter to Secretary of State Byrnes. In
this letter, Mr. Magruder refers to comment widely circulated both at the
time of Owen's death and later, saying the "subsequent conduct of the New
York Police Department contributed to the suspicions."
Continuing, Mr. Magruder calls the Secretary's attention to the "strange
'suicide'" of a former (unidentified) Foreign Service man from London.
This man, according to Magruder's letter to Byrnes, had resigned immedi-
ately following Kent's arrest in Britain and died, a "suicide," in Eire.
Under the circumstances, we can perhaps understand the insistence
with which attorney Maw has constantly warned of Kent's physical jeopardy
whenever the latter should return to the United States. We can also under-
stand Baltimore's Ian Ross MacFarlane, who is reported "very nervous"
when approached about the case.
Kent himself arrived on December 4, 1945.
THE CASE IN THE AMERICAN COURTS
Diplomatic Immunity
'THE legal position is as peculiar as it is interesting. Two questions
are of major interest:
( 1) Is or is not a member of the diplomatic corps-any member-
40
entitled to an immunity acknowledged for centuries?
(2) employe--any employc'--in that Service entitled
dismissal and consequent loss of his accumulated
This is no more the place to argue these matters than it is to argue the
guilt or innocence, in whole or in part, of Kent. It is, however, the purpose
of this document to give the facts as they are known to the citizens of this
Republic, for such action as they deem fit.
Let us look at the legal position.
Widely held is the belief that the Supreme Court of the United States
has taken action that confirms the guilt of Kent. That is simply not true.
What the Court did, in effect, was to deny the Constitution itself. This
denial took the form of a refusal to hear a plea for writ of mandamus
prayed for by Don Mahone Harlan, of Detroit, attorney on behalf of Mrs.
Kent. The Supreme Court simply refused jurisdiction. It refused in just
27 words. That was on October 16, 1944. This action of the Court effectively
rpmtwprl FDR's 4th-term fears, wrote Willard Edwards at the
The Constitution of this Republic says, Art. III, Sec. 2:
all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers,
and consuls . . . the Supreme Court shan have original juris-
diction."
That clause becomes the subject of legal argument, and it is an argument
that affects everyone of some thousands of employes in our diplomatic
service. Does or does not that clause give to the United States Supreme
Court original jurisdiction in cases concerning all diplomatic officers?
That it does is argued by Mr. Harlan. He cites the decision of John
Marshall in Marbury v. Madison,* which states that this provision of our
Constitution "contains no negative or restrictive words," so "a negative or
exclusive sense must be given them or they have no operation at all." This
seems eminently reasonable to us. Yet the Supreme Court refused juris-
Now just how, we ask, can a court-any court-reluse a
that is constitutionally mandatory upon it? The answer appears very
just change the meaning of "mandatory.;' How change it? Again simple:
change the rules of the court. And that is what the Supreme Court of the
United States has done.
'(1 Crane;' 137. p. 174)
41
The "Big Five"
Rule V of the Revised Rules of the Supreme Court, effective February
27, 1939, now reads (and here are the Court's own words) :
"The initial pleading in any such case may be accompanied
by a brief and shall be prefaced by a motion for leave to file.
. . . Additional pleadings shall be filed as the court dirf?r:ts."
(Italics supplied)
This, we submit, decrees an arbitrary right to do or not to do. In two
instances the Rule is permissive, in the third instance it is directive. It is,
we submit, judicial tyranny.
This clause, on the face of its reading, reverts the right of a free citizen
to the privilege formerly accorded to a subject; it arrogates to the Court the
power to decline to hear; and it reduces the dignity of a free citizen-any
citizen-to the cringing of a "humble petitioner to the Crown."
Rule of the "Big Five," we observe, brings judicial tyranny by
-enabling its own creator-the Supreme Court-to refuse a jurisdiction for
a hundred and fifty years mandatory under our Constitution. Effective in
1939, the Rule was ready-and it was used-in 1944.
This judicial tyranny is in parallel, we further observe, with an executive
tyranny which enabled the Department of State to say (September 2, 1944)
that immunity "may be waived by the sending state at any time." This
executive tyranny was itself based upon a decree issued by one of the former
"Big Three." We refer to Executive Order 8181, again apparently in fla-
grant violation of the law of the Land, and we are going to have something
to say about it later on herein.
Now continuing, Justice Marshall went on to state that such exclusive
sense of the Constitution's clause must include foreign courts under the Law
of Nations which, says Mr. Harlan, is "expressly designed to preserve the
sovereign status of such ministers, not to barter that sovereignty away."
Justice Marshall further argued, in the Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon
(1812) case*, that the Constitution and the Law of Nations "completely
establishes the independency of a public minister."
Harlan himself argues that original jurisdiction always remains with
the "sending" state, i.e., with the state from which the representative was
sent. That is original jurisdiction under the Law of Nations, and vested here
in the Supreme Court, under our Constitution.
Concurrent jurisdiction is jurisdiction co-equal between the highest
court of the sending state and the highest court of the state concerned in
*(7 Crancl, 116)
42
the offense. This, and this alone (it is argued) arises out of any waiver of
immunity by the sending state, with the consent. of the sovereign. Such
concurrent jurisdiction is limited to offenses which are offenses under the
law of the country or state of original jurisdiction.
For offenses malum in se, jurisdiction would be the same for both states ..
(Murder would be an example.)
Such offenses, reasons Mr. Harlan, differ from those provisions of the
British Official Secrets Act, which are malum prohibitum (offenses because
so declared by law), under the laws, in the instant case, of Britain.
As for the larceny charge: At the time of the alleged larceny, no Ameri-
can statute was on the books which made the taking of "copies" an offense.
On the other hand, the so-called Logan Act made "aiding or assisting" a
possible criminal correspondent "looking toward the defeat of measures of
the government of the United States," or toward a change in the adminis-
tration of the foreign state, a criminal offense.
The conclusion is simple: Kent was, by his position, obliged to handle
the messages. If the messages were as alleged, Kent's official duties would,
under the Logan Act,have made him liable to prosecution. He would have
assisted in the establishment of his own crime. By making copies, and then
submitting them to the proper authorities, Kent would have accomplished
two things:
(1) He have protected himself, and
He would have materially assisted in eventual exposure of those
who might be guilty.
A second conclusion is also simple: If the cables are as alleged, (Version
No.2), it would be Franklin Roosevelt, not Kent, who would be shown
criminally guilty under the 1 Logan Act.
* * *
very seizure of the documents is challenged. "Instructions to Dip-
Officers of the United States," issued March 8, 1927 and published
in Feller & Hudson's "Diplomatic and Consular Laws and Regulations,"
Vol. II, Ch. VII, Sec. 4 (p. 1264), states:
"Immunity from local jurisdiction extends to a diplomatic
representative's dwelling house and goods and the archives of
his mission. These cannot be entered, searched, or detained
under process of local laws or by the local authorities."
The regulations of 1941 continue to hold such premises "inviolate."
It would seem that-legally-the Law of Nations had not changed since
4j
the 1812 decision of Justice MarshalL Yet Kent's premises were searched,
"an officer of the Embassy being present throughout"; his immunity was
waived "with the consent of the Department of State"; and in the court
decision confirming the waiver, British Justice Caldecote upheld the British
conviction, itself based upon the waiver by an Ambassador and a Secretary
of State and not by an American citizen with the consent of the sovereign.
Mrs. Kent apparently held to the old American belief. In her petition
to Congress, October 1, 1944, she refers to her prayer for writ of mandamus
from the Supreme Court, citing Art. III, Sec. 2 of our Constitution. This
wriLhad it been granted, would have ordered the President to carry out
the provisions of R.S. 2001, 8USCA 14, as follows:
"Whenever it is made known to the President that any citizen
of the United States has been unjustly deprived of his liberty
by or under the authority of any foreign government, it shall
be the duty of the President forthwith to demand of that govern-
ment the reasons of such imprisonment; and if it appears to be
wrongful and in violation of American citizenship, and if the
release so demanded is unreasonably delayed or refused, the
President shall use such means, not amounting to acts of war,
as he may think necessary and proper to obtain or effectuate
the release; and all the facts and proceedings thereto shall as
soon as practicable be communicated by the President to Con-
gress."
(ltaUes supplied)
"Communicated by the President to Congress." Nothing is mentioned
about "press releases."
But the Supreme Court refused to consider jurisdiction and in the
meantime we had been given a new Secretary of State. His name was
Stettinius. Mr. Stettinius went to San Francisco. He is now helping to bring
global love, light, laughter and happiness through the 1946 Holy Alliance,
the U.N.O. (Testimony may be had from any of the peoples of this worId-
our own included.)
Stettinius confirmed, December 8, 1944, that diplomatic immunity had
been waived "by consent of the Secretary of State," (Le., Hull, his Nobel
peace prize predecessor), and cited as authority for such action Franklin
Roosevelt's Executive Order No. 8181. This Order, issued June 22, 1939,
made it appear that the British had the legal right to try Kent. Executive
Order No. 8181 reads:
"III-I. Diplomatic Immunity. The immunity from the juris-
diction of the country to which the diplomatic representative is
accredited, which is accorded under the law of nations to said
44
diplomatic representative, his official staff and household, and
the exemption of premises occupied in an official capacity, shall
not be waived except by consent of the Secretary of State."
(ltatics sltpplied)
Thus would Franklin Roosevelt, by Executive decree, change the Law
Nations. The Constitution which he had sworn to uohold. reads:
"The Congress shall have power to and punish ...
offenses against the law of nations."
(Art. 1, Sec. 8 (10))
Certainly the Order appears in direct violation of Sec. 1752 of the
Revised Statutes of the United States. Vol. 22, U. S. Code, Par. 132,
proscribes the President from making regulations for diplomatic and con-
sular officers inconsistent with the Constitution or any law of the United
States. Effective in 1939, this Order was ready-and it was used-in 1940.
* * *
are the new, and the old, concepts
days, the "Constitution followed the
diplomatic immunity could only be waived by the individual concerned,
with the consent of his sovereign. In the old days, Art. VI of a living Bill
of Rights meant just what it said:
"In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the
right to a speedy and public trial. ..."
But those were the old days, days before the advent of a man named
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This man would say you could "drive a team
of horses" through the provisions of the Constitution that once sprang from
a free people; this man would say, in writing, to Representative
Hill of Washington:
"I hope that your committee will not permit doubts as to
constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested
legislation" ;
and this man would say that that Constitution belonged to the "horse and
buggy" days.
At that, they were days of relative peace, and not of global war.
* * *
So, on the 22nd of June, 1939, Franklin Roosevelt by Executive Order
8181, would once again remove the state from the control of the people;
would once again set up an all-powerful Executive Branch; would ignore
our Constitution, and would once again set apart that Branch to the un-
touchable majesty of ancient monarchs and kings.
45
Here, from its old-new throne, it could play with the rights of individuals,
rights for which whole peoples had fought since the days of the Pharoahs,
and which our American ancestors had won from the tyranny of a
George III.
Thus would Franklin Roosevelt interpret the rights of a free citizen
under a twentieth century Law of Nations.
* * *
DECISION OF THE COURT OF CLAIMS
KENT tried legally to get out of jaiL On prison stationery he
wrote instructions to his attorney to invoke habeas corpus, under Magna
Carta, and under the laws of Britain. He invoked the good offices of the
American Embassy. He expressed himself as convinced the Department of
State was urging his detention. It was of no avail.
Meanwhile, in America, a committee of sixteen prominent citizens was
formed in the interest of the case. On September 11, 1945, Attorney Harlan,
acting under Sec. 145 of the Judicial Code, filed suit in the U. S. Court of
Claims for back salary and return travel expenses amounting to $11,215.36.
Docket No. 46446. The court ruled negatively on January 7, 1946.
As in the' proposed libel action against ex-Ambassador Kennedy, British
law required Kent to obtain Home Office permission to authorize this action.
Kent was, therefore, obliged to apply for permission, from a Secretary in the
Churchill cabinet, to execute the necessary power of attorney. On April 28,
1945, Kent had wired his mother: "Permission applied for."
This suit is of real interest to the thousands of employes of our Foreign .
Service. Such employes have the right of hearing before dismissal. In the
instant case, although Mr. Kennedy did talk with Kent, the latter was
"dismissed" by simple letter, one day after his verbal dismissal by the
Ambassador.
To this suit for salary the Government, as defendant, filed a demurrer.
Mr. Harlan, replying to the demurrer, set forth that Kent's imprisonment
had "resulted directly from acts of the Defendant, its officers and agents,
in violation of the Statutes of the United States and in violation of the
Law of Nations." (Here the attorney, in effect, challenges Executive Order
8181 and commits legal lese majeste.) The demurrer, continues Harlan's
reply, constitutes "Denial by Defendant, its officers and agents, of Plain-
tiff's rights, privileges and immunities guaranteed him by the Constitution
of the United States and particularly Art III (2), and Arts. IV, V and VI
of Amendments."
This brief, simple and clear to read, is like many others offered in court
46
in those "horse and buggy" days before a Mr. Justice Felix Frankfurter
would say: ..
"The notion that because the words of a statute are plain,
. its meaning also is plain, is merely pernicious oversimplification."
The brief continues: Kent was not recalled for malfeasance in office.
At his salary ($2250 p.a. plus living allowance), Kent was unclassified as
to grade so, under 22US23 (1), Sec. 33 (Act of February 23, 1931), dis-
missal must be "confirmed by the Secretary of State after a hearing accorded
to the officer . .." Kent, continues Mr. Harlan, was never notified of any
charges, he was not given the bonus of 1 year's salary, and he received no
benefits of any Statute explicitly enacted by Congress to preserve the rights
of such diplomatic officers.
Stress is laid, in the brief, on Congress having passed these numerous
Acts for the express purpose of legislatively guaranteeing and protecting
those rights, privileges and immunities explicit and implicit in our
Constitution. These, together with the provisions of R.S. 1740, specifically
require the recall of the accused, from his post abroad, for hearing. There
are no provisions, it is argued, for "summary dismissal" or "surrender to a
foreign government" under any of the provisions of such Acts.
"America, of course, was not then legally at war. The Act of May 24,
1924, 22USC9, Sec. 9, while it does provide a method for suspension of
Consuls and Consuls General, omits any reference to members of staffs of
Embassies. Thus, says Mr. Harlan, the intent of Congress is clear. (In fact,
reading of the pertinent law constantly impresses one with the concern of
Congress for the rights and welfare of our diplomatic representatives
abroad: JHS.)
There now follows, in Mr. Harlan's brief, the argument on waiver of
immunity. For t ~ sake of continuity herein, we have taken the liberty of
transposition. Now, with apologies to the attorney, we will conclude our
summation by again slightly altering the sequence he employed.
The Defendant's demurrer (the Government's, that is), says Mr. Harlan,
is tantamount to allowing Defendant to "write the petition for and on
behalf of the Plaintiff," as it allows "no petition to be filed which disagrees
with the status alleged to exist by the Defendant, though contrary to the
express averments of the Plaintiff's petition."
In other words, the Defendant is to write the case for the Plaintiff.
Then comes, in legal language, the statement that is the key to the
entire case:
Silence in regard to the cables, concludes the attorney,
might permit Defendant to benefit from his own wrongs.
(Tit" brief is ""ritt,,,, and signed, Don Mahone Hl11'la.n)
47
RULE OF SILENCE; RULE OF GAG
SILENCE and gag are not easy to factually report upon. Much is
subjective; we simply do not know. Indeed, that is the very purpose of the
rule of silence and of gag.
Some things, however, we do know. We shall report them.
Capt. Ramsay wa.s arrested under clause 18b of the Defense of the
Realm Act. He was imprisoned without trial by his government and ha.<;
not been permitted to speak since. It has been hinted (Bethune memoran-
dum to Congress, June 9, 1945) that in the British Emergency Powers Act
there was a "secret clause" which deprived subjects of the Crown of free-
dom in a manner long unknown. It would, perhaps, be in bad taste to
inquire too closely into this as it affects Capt. Archibald Ramsay, M.P.
After all, he is a British subject and we in America have not yet officially
adopted Winston Churchill's offer of dual citizenship (which would mean
official "union now.
But where this British law may have affected an American citizen we
may, of right, inquire. And Kent, on arrival here in December of 1945, was
directly quoted that that British law had been "framed in such a way that
you could almost charge anybody with anything." Be this as it may, '18b
certainly makes it appear legal for the British minister of home security
to detain in prison, without trial, any person he suspects of being dangerous
to the war effort. And Kent was so suspected.
Was he dangerous in the manner so implied? Rule of silence says so,
and the rule of gag has so confirmed.
Once again, there is another point of view.
That point of view-correctly or not-can be best expressed by the
man's mother. She has steadfastly maintained that Kent copied those mes-
sages for the purpose of bringing them before the Foreign Relations Com-
mittee of the United States Senate; that the Henning article, and her son's
major confirmation thereof, is true-that the messages revealed those steps
that would drag our Nation and people unconstitutionally and unwillingly
into war; and she flatly asserts that someone did not want those cables
known.
"Tyler Kent was jailed to keep him silenced," she states in her Oct. 1,
1944, petition to Congress, "-jailed to keep him from imparting to you,
Members of Congress, information which you had a right to know." "Did
any Members of Congress know at that time of the existence of these
communications?" the mother asks in this petition. And then she makes
assertion: "I charge that politics jailed my son."
48
Now, such an assertion is very understandable from a mother whose son
has been over four years in a foreign jail. It is highly subjective; it is
"hearsay", as Senator Connally' might aver. But the point persists, and the
point is-is this assertion true?
When Senator Connally termed the quite similar charges of M. P. Mc-
Govern as "hearsay", Montana's Senator Wheeler was quick to point out
that "When the Senator from Texas says the President of the United States
could not give away anything until the Congress of the United States voted
it, I wish to call attention to the fact that he did. He gave away the de-
stroyers. Congress did not pass any act to that effect. All that," Wheeler
remarked, "is water over the dam; it has been done".
It certainly has. It has been a pretty expensive water for the American
payer of taxes. We might add the words of Minnesota's Senator Shipstead:
"I may say that about three years ago Lord Woolton, Minister of .Food in
England, made a very frank report on how Britain had received
$800,000,000 worth of food from the United States, sold it to the people for
and put the money into the (British) treasury".
We might add a further $400,000,000 in cash that (the press now reports
at the end of 1945) Franklin Roosevelt gave to the British before we were
catapulted into war. We might add a lot of things. The point is that our
people knew nothing of them at the time-and very little now.
While we are on this subject, we would like to mention the quaint propo-
sition negotiated by Messrs. Keynes and Halifax late in 1945. According
to the terms for which American citizens are to be taxed, and asked to buy
bonds, another five billion dollars is handed to the British-and the British
do not 'even have to pay "interest" if in any given year it proves inconvenient
for them to make an asserted attempt. At one and the same time, according
to a table inserted in the Congressional Record by Senator Moore of Okla-
homa (December 6,1945; pp. 11714-5), these same unable-to-pay British
hold, directly or individually, securities in "American" companies to the
tune of
According to some authorities, these same unable-to-pay British-as
government or as subjects-own a further five to six billions in dollar assets
in this, our Country. Why are not our people told? This observer thinks we
should take those assets, sell them to bona fide A merican citizens, and credit
proceeds to the account of the various "loans". This observer thinks it
is just about time we in America made it pretty plain that the honeymoon
days of any foreign milking of our resources, are over. And he would in-
clude in that the milking of dividends from all former investments as well.
Further present and, we think, illegal (but oh, how sweet and charitable)
loads on our payers of taxes include New York's ex-Governor Lehman's
49
outfit, UNRRA. This one of the new, autonomous, international agencies
-of which Lehman is Director General-has recently asked for, and got, a
second contribution of $1,350,000,000 from us. The Hon. Jessie Sumner, of
Illinois, foresaw precisely that back in January, 1944. She said then, in
reference to America's first contribution of similar sum: "nobody pretends
this will be the last." "As usual", said the Hon. Fred Bradley, of Michigan,
at the time, Hthis forerunner of what I predict will be many more similar
requests for American largesse, is presented to us not only as a necessity of
war but also as a great humanitarian measure.. "It said the Hon.
Stephen A. Day, of Illinois, "a vicious attempt to us into a
government. "
Were we told that? Or was that another illustration of the rule of silence
and of gag?
Further, and in regard to this stupendous financial load being mill-
stoned onto the backs of our own people, listen again to the words of Rep-
resentative Jessie Sumner:
"Congress has no constitutional authority to force Americans
oj this or any other generation to give money to peoples outside
of America".
(January, 1944)
Have we been told that? No. But it does sound like a voice from those
olden days that were so strongly American, and ours.
Are we a little far afield from the case of Tyler Kent? We do not think
so. Not, we think, when General Hurley, flatly charging an Imperialist-
ommunist sabotage of "policy" in the Far is refused further open
hearing before a so-called committee to investigate. Not when Upton Close
asks ("Closer-Ups", December 17, 1945): "Who is there to tell the simple,
well-meaning people that actually Hurley is a veteran of far more experience
-trusted by more presidents of both parties-than Judge Byrnes? That he
was at the Cairo Conference with Roosevelt and Churchill before Byrnes
became a 'statesman'''. And, we might add, who was a Secretary of War
long before James F. Byrnes was ever heard of.
Who is to tell, we with Upton Close, just why Senator Wherry's
resolution is "lying calmly on my desk"? And now that Kent is back, the
Roosevelt-Churchill messages, and their alleged contents, are buried. They
have not been shown to either House; not to the House of Representatives
(that appropriates our money), nor to the Senate (that gives sanction to our
treaties). While a House resolution (RR. 382), asking a few mild questions
on the case, is reported back with the recommendation that it "do not pass".
The question that arises is obvious: Just what has been, is being, and
50
.is intended to be, done to the formerly sovereign people of this Republic-
behind this Rule of Silence and, of Gag?
* * *
We have mentioned a bill, S.805, as the so-far American counterpart of
Britain's 18b. Let us look at it briefly.
This bill was introduced in the 79th Congress, 1st Session, on June 22,
1945, and again on Sept. 27 of that year. Its reference is S.805, Union
Calendar No. 313. It is called "AN ACT To insure further the military
security of the United States by preventing disclosures of information se-
cured through official sources".
This sounds just fine. It fits a very laudable purpose. Indeed, one
wonders why such a bill were still necessary after the 170 years of inde-
pendent existence of this Republic.
"There is absolutely nothing in this legislation designed to cover up any-
thing or to enable anybody to avoid inquiry", said Administration spokes-
men in introducing the bill. (We reserve comment on such an odd intro-
ductory remark).
We read the bill and we find the bill itself is odd. It deals with codes,
and with information derived directly or indirectly from codes. It provides
penalties, heavy ones. And it provides silence. It provides that "Authoriza-
tions shall be granted only in accordance with regulations prescribed by the
President", and it provides also for the "joint authorization of the Secretary
of State, the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy."
Right there we stop. Wasn't that somewhat familiar? It was. It called
immediately to mind Mr. Attorney Harlan's reply to the Government's de-
murrer to his action filed in the Court of Claims. He wrote, in that reply,
that the Government's position was tantamount to allowing the Defendant
to "write the petition" for and on behalf of the Plaintiff. He wrote that it
allows "no petition to be filed which disagrees with the status alleged to
exist by the Defendant, though contrary to the expressed averments of the
Plaintiff's petition". Here was that exact same thing again.
Now, though S.805 was debated with a pending Pearl Harbor inquiry
in mind, we read that debate in the light of an obvious pertinency to the
Kent affair. "Bear in mind", said the proponents, that S. 805 "deals en-
tirely with the code and not with other types of communications in Govern-
ment files". And the Kent case is almost exclusively one of codes.
The limitless scope of this measure can perhaps be suggested by the fact
that the word "any" occurs no less than 33 times in the 76 short lines of
the bill.
51
"This is one of the most far-reaching limitations ever attempted by the
Congress," Representative Michener of Michigan says. "Why all this effort
under spur and whip to pass inadequately considered legislation?" he asks.
"I cannot conceive," we hear him say, "of a single Member voting against
any measure which in clear, understandable language protects the security
and safety of our Government. Does this bill do that? I am not satisfied
that it does, and it would be very unwise for this House to place upon the
statute books so far-reaching, all-inclusive, yet indefinite and uncertain
a law."
Mr. Michener would like to know "Why all this sudden solicitude for
the adoption of this legislation which is so broad and far-reaching?" Says
he, "I would like to hear the people who have written this legislation. I
would like to have the department or the draftsman describe, sentence by
sentence, paragraph by paragraph, the necessity for all of this particular
legislation at this particular time".
So would we. That debate was centered around Pearl Harbor. But
S.805 would, for instance, have put General Jonathan Wainwright where he
"shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than ten
years, or both" unless, of course, he got the requisite permissions to write
"My Story". And the bill was curiously applicable to the Roosevelt-
Churchill messages in the case of Tyler Kent.
"Is the State Department and the administration trying to cover up the
responsibility for Pearl Harbor?" asks Representative Clare E. Hoffman
the following day (October 26, 1945). "Was that its purpose in rushing
through the Senate and attempting to jam through the House yesterday the
bill making it an offense to reveal the contents of decoded messages? (A
further attempt was made, December 21, 1945, on the very last afternoon
of the Session. The attempt was blocked by the quick and alert action of
several Members: Ed.)
"In this connection, one of the strangest incidents that ever occurred on
the floor of the House since I have been here arose during the roll call of the
vote on the adoption of the rule to make this suppression bill in order.
"On a voice vote, the rule had been defeated by 111 noes to 49 ayes.,
When a record vote was demanded, it was at once apparent that the vote
would be close. After two Democratic Members had voted, they were seen
to go to the Speaker's desk and, thereafter, from the well of the House, one
of them changed his vote from 'yea' to 'nay', and then, when it was apparent
that the rule would be adopted without their votes; that is, that the admini-
stration would win, one of them again changed his vote from the 'nay' to
the 'yea' column, w i l ~ another changed his 'nay' to 'yea'.
"A parliamentary inquiry was put to the Speaker and was answered by
52
does not this morning appear in the
Congressional Record".
Messages mIssmg, pages of reports mIssmg, documents mIssmg. And
now "one of the strangest incidents that ever occurred on the floor of the
House" is reported missing.
Back in September 1944, Kent had sent three cables, two to his mother
one to a then unnamed Senator. The Senator was later identified as
Burton K. Wheeler. The cables to Mrs. Kent were delivered. The cable to
Senator \Vheeler was "missing".
"The American people fought and won this war", says Representative
Hoffman, "They were told that it was necessary to go into it because only
by winning it could the 'four freedoms' be preserved here and carried
throughout the world.
"Freedom of speech was emphasized by the late President, but all
through the war-yes, and prior to our entry into the war-the activities of
officials high in the administration, their sayings and their writings, were
suppressed.
"Now that the war has been won, here at home there is a deliberate
attempt to keep the American people from learning the truth as to the facts
preceding the war, as to the part played by high Government officials in the
events which preceded the war.
"The case of Tyler Kent has become historic. Future generations, if the
present attempt at concealment succeeds, will never know the true facts, the
deciding factors, which may have involved us in this war".
Toward the middle of 1945, letters began to arrive from our American
men still stationed overseas. Pleading letters, angry letters, tragic letters.
They began in hundreds and grew to thousands. They were received in
homes all over this Land. And in the House of Representatives, the Hon.
A. L. Miller (Nebraska) demanded that Congress and/or the President
legally terminate this war-bring those men back home. The Administra-
tion-controlled Congress, and the President of that Administration himself,
to act.
Other reasons, good reasons, have been advanced to legally terminate
the war. Among other things, it would terminate the Rule of Silence that
has been so universally imposed. And that Rule of Silence includes the mes-
sages in the case of Tyler Kent.
53
Again it is. in the Congress that we find-in so many words-the key
question in this entire case:
"As long ago as 1812, we fought a war with Great Britain
when it endeavored to assert the right to search American ships
and seize seamen on the high seas. But in the Tyler Kent case
the United States did not assert itself but failed to protect
own citizen; permitted him to be seized and thrown in a British
prison where he still remains. Why?
"Is it because if he were released we would learn this war
was deliberately planned?"
(The Hon. Clare E. Rqilman, J,,"e 8, 1945)
Kent is back. He is, at writing, safe at home. But on Capitol Hill, the
Administration of our rulers proposes an S.805, and a continued Rule
Silence and of Gag.
*
*
*
*
*
You have now read the available evidence in the case. Where factual,
it has been so stated; where subjective, that has been made clear.
We now bring you, for frank appraisal, Section II of the law under which
the American citizen, Tyler Kent, was seized, then tried and convicted in a
British secret court:
Official Secrets Act - 1911
ARTICLE 2:
On a prosecution under this section, it shall not be
necessary to show that the accused person was guilty 01
any particular act tending to show a purpose preju-
dicial to the safety or interests of the State, and not
withstanding that no such act is proved against him, he
may be convicted if, from the circumstances of the
case, or his conduct, or his known character as proved,
it appears that his purpose was a purpose prejudicial to
the safety or interests of the State. .
* *
*
Thus did the British, in these few legal words, anticipate by nearly thirty
years the "thought-police" of the Japanese.
For that, we fought a war.
54-
WE, THE PEOPLE
FROM the very hour of Kent's arrest, the issues involved in this
case have been bigger than any temporary personal interest, or reputation,
of any public man or men. In both the Branches of our Congress, especially
in the Lower House, voices have been raised-strong, individual voices-on
behalf of a justice they have felt denied. These voices, though strong, have
been drowned in the hysteria of a war, and by the sycophantic silence of the
operators of that political powerhouse known so regrettably as the "New"
Deal.
"New"? It is as old as Diocletian; it is as old as his Edictum de pretiis
rerum venalium, 301 A.D., which fixed maximum prices, wages and fees, and
provided death or deportation for its violation.
Among the voices that rose in protest at the 1940 treatment of citizen
Tyler Kent, a few personal friends of Mrs. Kent spoke up. And here, we
may say, was determined the eventual strength or failure of their position.
Had they made their appeal one of sympathy for the accused they might,
and probably would, have failed.
They did not.
They took a position consistently followed to this day. It may, perhaps,
be best expressed in the words of Mrs. Kent herself:
((Much more is involved in this case of Tyler Kent than the
life and liberty of one American citizen", she wrote to Congress
on October 1, 1944.
That is the theme that pervades every available document in the case.
Petition after petition, memorial after memorial, has come in from indi-
viduals, from groups and from organizations all over the Country.
Tyler Kent? These people do not know Tyler Kent. But thousands of
people have sensed the issues that are involved. On September 25, 1945,
when Kent's departure from Britain had been postponed four times by the
British, after expiration of his (good behavior commuted) sentence, citizens
representing thousands tramped the halls of the Senate Office Building in
Washington, voicing their indignation to Members of the Upper House. The
petition they presented cried Shame, "that this American boy, or any other
American boy" should be so treated. These calls were repeated on N ovemher
19th and whether from this cause is not known, but Kent sailed from Eng-
land on the 21st, on the British freighter ((Silver Oak".
The significance of this case is indicated in the Senate debates. No small
affair, this, that brings forth the following words:
((But we must remain silent, although we are the people who
55
have made it possible for the Russian government to survive
... there is not a more ruthless dictator in the world than
Stalin. 1 think of him as a ruthless dictator ...." That was
said during the war.
Later: "The British press has criticized us, but we in America
must not say anything. If we do, we are looked upon as un-
patriotic. We must not criticize anyone. We must not criticize
the waste and extravagance of Government. If we do, we are
not patriotic". That was said during the war.
Later: "I resent criticism by persons who have been in this
Country only a short time of the patriotism of those whose
people have lived here for generations. 1 resent the activities of
those who are hired to smear Members of Congress because they
do not vote 100 percent with any President of the United States,
no matter who he may be." Senator Wheeler was speaking, on
the 19th of June, 1944.
And, to those millions of our citizens who have been deliberately led to
believe it is some sort of catastrophic sin to love this Country ours, its
traditions and all that its honored future can be, we bring you these thunder-
words from Capitol Hill:
((I say those who love Russi{1 more than they love the
United States and those who love England more than they
the United States, and to those who love Germany or Italy more
than they love the United States, 'for God's sake, go back and
live there'."
Thus, Burton K. Wheeler, on the Senate floor. And what can be said
there, can be said in every section of this Land.
On the same 19th day of June, 1944-that day of global war-there
arose the voice of another much-smeared, much-hated-but also much
beloved-American, the Hon. Clare E. Hoffman, of the sovereign State of
Michigan:
"It is time," he said, on the floor of the House of Repre-
sentatives, "that we had a little lend-lease of refugees. It
might not be such a bad idea, if those who want to establish
here in America a new Russia, were sent back to Russia, to the
land from which they came".
That was just 18 months before Britain's professor Harold J. Laski flew
over here, talked at Madison Square Garden, New York, and advocated a
World Soviet Republic. (Sc. "America-Which Way?," 5). It was just
56
18 months before the "Gripsholm" again arrived, with some 1,500 "repat-
riates"-many of whom couldn't speak a word of our language.
All this has a very great deal to do with the case of Tyler Kent,
precisely as the above words were uttered in Congress in time of global
war, and were scarcely conducive to that "unity" of which we hear so
much, so, precisely, did the mother of Tyler Kent conclude:
"I answer that if truth causes dissension, then the unity so
advocated must be founded on lies".
(Petitio" to Coni/ress, Oct. 1, 1944)
Nowhere in the available documents of this case do we find an appeal
for Tyler Kent per se. But we do find appeals, and petitions, and memorials
revealment, truth and honor.
We find "that the Democratic National Convention of 1944 is honor
bound to help provide the American people with the full facts of this case";
those are Mrs. Kent's words in her memorial to that body.
We find Kent described "As a loyal American, fearlessly patriotic in 1939
and fearlessly so now, (that) he will cooperate fully with all the informa-
that he possesses".
We find that this is our people'S case, a case by which our people, by
forcing it into the open, may ultimately prove world statesmanship to have
been right-but tragically so-or to have been criminally, bestially wrong.
Of the key figure in the case we say, in his mother's words to Franklin
Roosevelt: "God grant that he may be saved for some good purpose".
* * *
To sum up, Mrs. Kent herself shall charge you-jury of our sovereign
American people--in the spirit of this case:
"To the American people I leave all questions as to whether
or not there existed unconstitutional secret agreements between
our government and any other foreign statesmen. Their decision
will be final and right if given the facts and not mere propa-
ganda versions".
(Letler to Seldes, January 26, 1945)
While to Congress she wrote on the first of October, '44:
"Let our honor be as great as our opportunity".
57
CHALLENGE
THIS document is intended to be informative. We trust that it has
been so, as clearly as a complex matter permits, as impartially as a study
of the pertinent data has made possible to this historian.
The question arises: "What are we going to do about it?" We offer a
suggestion, in reply.
As we all know, our Nation is sharply divided into two camps on
responsibility for this war. All thought, and all query, boil down to this one
plain issue. Stated simply and bluntly, this issue is: "Were or were not
Roosevelt and his cabal responsible for America's entry into the war?"
Both camps cannot be right. Nor, we think, can the answer "lie in be-
tween". That is an old dodge, and we are tiled of it. It never prevented war.
The Kent case itself poses many questions, but the main question is-
and so remains-"What were the contents of cables?"
"The Constitution of the United States requires the President from
time to time to give to (Q.e Congress information concerning the state of the
Union. In the beginning of our government a practice obtained according
to which the President communicates this information on the of
Congress in a full and comprehensive annual speech or message, to which
are appended all the important reports and documents which have been
placed by the heads of Departments before the President as the sources and
evidences of the information, to be bv him submitted to Congress . . . .
"Our foreign affairs have, ever since the war began, been a subject of
anxiety as deep as that which is felt in regard to military and naval events.
The government continually depends upon the support of Congress and the
people, and that support can only be expected on the condition of keeping
them thoroughly and truthfully informed of the manner in which the powers
derived from them are executed. Mutual confidence in the people and the
government is a condition of our national life . . . .
"Congress and country . .. had the same right . .. to see any other
portion of the executive correspondence concerning foreign affairs. This his-
tory would be incomplete without that account .....
" ... to withhold so important a portion of the executive correspondence
would have seemed to imply a confession that it was improper in itself, while
to practice reserve on so great a question would be liable to be deemed an
abuse of the confidence which Congress and the people had so freely reposed
in the government . ..."
58
Thus does an honest Government converse with the people whom it
serves. The above is from a letter of Secretary of State James Seward to our
minister to the Court of St. James', Adams. The date, March 23, 1864.
People are entitled to the truth. We will not refer to casualties. We will
simply state that people-that ALL people-have paid dearly enough, over
the centuries, for a "victory" that is never theirs.
This time, it must be REAL.
Haven't we had enough of little men with BIG names? Haven't we had
enough of lies, of deceit, of what are called "commitments" made in secret
by "diplomats", acting allegedly in our behalf?
Haven't we had just about enough, this 1946, of the communism and
corpses they have wrought?
Who are these little men with BIG names who presume to speak for us?
Are they as big as the BIG men with the little names who now lie in count-
less, futile graves?
1946 happens to be election year. We can-if we will-demand of our
~ u l i c servants, before we cast a vote, the promise to go to work and reveal
to us, the PEOPLES of this earth, just what took place that caused this
awful war. That, we know, is dangerous ground. What ground is not?
We can-if we will-organize. Our BIG citizens with the present little
names: our artisans, our labor, our clerks, our smaller businessmen, our
farmers; those who make our Homes-and those who would our
Homes. People-just like these--did it once before; they organized in
1775; they were successful. They were successful for a hundred and fifty
years.
We can-if we will-organize in village and town, in township and
county, in State and Nation-wide. In associations for the truth-in living,
deathless demand . ... for truth.
Truth, from the men and women whom we shall elect to represent us;
truth from those who shall be our public servants once again; truth from
those who will sit on high.
Through fearless courage-born of mankind's ancient heritage of strife
-let us fix our gaze again upon the stars.
That way, through truth and truth alone, can man once more be
~
59
AMERICA
... Which Way?
by JOHN HOWLAND SNOW
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141 pages
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