John Herbert King, alias 'MAG', was a British Foreign Office cypher clerk who provided Foreign Office communications to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

between 1935 and 1937. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison as a spy in October 1939. King was recruited by the Foreign Office as a temporary clerk in 1934 and sent to the British Delegation at the

League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...

Geneva , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...

. There his financial problems made him vulnerable to an approach by Henri Pieck, a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

citizen who was working for Soviet intelligence. Pieck recruited him as a spy, pretending the information he gave was only to be used for commercial advantage by a Dutch bank. King returned to

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

in early 1935. Pieck continued to run the case by visits to London until 1936, when the job of running King was transferred to

Theodore Maly Theodore Maly (1894 – 20 September 1938) was a former Roman Catholic priest and Soviet intelligence officer during the 1920s and 1930s. He lived illegally in the countries where he worked for the NKVD and was one of the Soviet Union’s most effec ...

. King continued to pass copies of Foreign Office telegraphic traffic to Maly until June 1937, when Maly was recalled to Moscow. In September 1939 the Soviet defector

Walter Krivitsky Walter Germanovich Krivitsky (Ва́льтер Ге́рманович Криви́цкий; June 28, 1899 – February 10, 1941) was a Soviet intelligence officer who revealed plans of signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact after he defected to ...

exposed King's name as a spy for the Soviet Union to the British Embassy in

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

. Coincidentally a business associate of Pieck's in London reported suspicious activities by him and described a man like King who had given information to Pieck. King was subsequently interrogated, resulting in a confession. Although the official British archives only implicate King with passing information to the Soviets from 1935 to 1937, information passed on by King is elsewhere credited with giving

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

valuable insight into British diplomatic activities aimed at containing

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

as late as 1939. At times this information was passed on by the Soviets to the German Embassy in London, with the aim of increasing the tension between Britain and Germany. Sometimes as little as 5 hours elapsed between a telegram being received at the Foreign Office and a summary of its contents being transmitted to Berlin.John Herbert King: A Soviet Source in the Foreign Office, Donald Watt, Intelligence and National Security, vol. Ill (1988), No. 4.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:kING, John Herbert British people convicted of spying for the Soviet Union British spies for the Soviet Union Interwar-period spies Year of birth missing Year of death missing