◆ SpookStack

~af By a strange windfall the Yale University library acquired & transcript of the trial record, a, it is incomplete because the Embassy refused to pro- duce hundreds of documents which might have helped Kent to establish the patriotic purity of his motive. The British court embraced téchnicalities which nullified, but only for this particular instance, the ancient immunity of Ambassadors and all Em- ,bassy staff from prosecution. But the same court re- fused to apply the same innovation to the documents which Kent asked for. They were inviolate. The son of a minor American diplomat, Kent had lived most of his years abroad and had been in Mos- cow until he was transferred to London. He then tried to get another transfer to Berlin, but prosecution made little out of that except probably to tnfuriate the jurors against Kent. Kent had met a young woman, Anna Woikoff, the daughter of an Imperial Russian admiral. Pos- sibly she sought him out. She and her father were naturalized English citizens, but Anna hated Com- munists and joined the British Fascist movement and introduced Kent to some of its members. It ap- peared that she did communicate with Lord Haw- Haw, the American from Brooklyn, whose mocking broadcasts from Berlin infurlated the British so badly that they hanged him in London after the wer notwithstanding his American cltizensnip. But Kert did not communicate with Haw-Haw and moreover |the United States was neutral throughout his active dities in London. As the trial ended Kent complained that the court had not allowed him to put in a letter from the Crown admitting that the prosecution did not intend to claim that he had any part in Miss Wol- Koftf's commiunications with Germany. The justice then Jet him read a copy of such a letter and read it him- self. But this was_after the verdict and It was not yead to the TUry. wo bell FU And it was conceded that none of the documents gave military or naval information which would have been useful to Germany. Joe Kennedy's variable attitude toward. Reose- velt and his war remains a mystery. He openly pro- fessed to loathe Roosevelt after his Embassy hitch. But his treatment of Tyler Kent drew a-permanent iron curtain across a conspiracy to involve the United States In a war which was none of our business—as Kennedy often said at that time. en) Copyright, 1960. King Features Eyndicata, Las.