The Roosevelt Legacy and The Kent Case

By Tyler Kent

Introduction by Mark Weber

In May 1940, a 29-year-old American code clerk at the U.S. embassy in London was arrested by British authorities in his apartment. Tyler Kent was charged with having violated the British Official Secrets Act. "For a purpose prejudicial to the safety and interests of the state," the charge stated, Kent had "obtained a document which might be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy." He was sentenced to seven years in prison, but was released and returned to the United States after serving five.

Between June 1940 and December 1945, the Kent case was the subject of numerous American newspaper articles. Most were sensational or highly speculative, since reliable information was hard to come by. (At the time, the British press was strictly censored.) Many Americans wanted to know how a foreign government could secretly arrest and put on trial a U.S. citizen who held diplomatic immunity. Congressmen and newspapers speculated as to what the code clerk really knew about rumored secret arrangements between President Roosevelt and British leader Winston Churchill. Many wondered if Kent had been jailed to keep him from talking. But preoccupation with the war and official government statements satisfied the curiosity of all but a handful. When Kent returned to the United States in 1945 from British imprisonment, almost all interest in the case had evaporated in the general euphoria of Allied military victory. For many years the Kent story was virtually forgotten...

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