SENTENCED AS SPY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 56, 4 September 1944, Page 1

SENTENCED AS SPY

CLERK IN U.S. EMBASSY

Rec. 10 a.m. WASHINGTON, Sept. 3. The State Department, in a 2000-word ! statement, revealed that a former, employee of the American Embassy in London, Tyler Kent, whom the British Courts convicted in 1940 of anti-British espionage activities, had in his possession when he was arrested more than 15,000 confidential Embassy papers in addition to unauthorised keys of the Embassy's code room. The State Department declares that the present statement is issued because of "recent inquiries and newspaper reports" in the House of Commons. The Associated Press points out that •a recent dispatch.from London to the "Chicago Tribune" quoted a member of the British Independent Labour Party, Mr. J. McGovern, as saying that Kent had been imposed to prevent a disclosure of an alleged pre-war understanding between Mr. Churchill and President Roosevelt involving an American pledge to aid Britain if the latter entered the war. The State Department adds that Ambassador Kennedy waived Kent's diplomatic immunity when Scotland Yard informed him that Kent was suspected of transmitting documents to Germany It concluded that the question whether the American Government would prefer additional charges against Kent for violating diplomatic secrecy will be decided after he has served his sevenyear term in a British prison.