ABSTRACT
MI5's original information implicating Jakob Kirchenstein had come from a letter found on Robert Koling, a Soviet courier, which indicated that he had been active in Britain as a spy, and had first entered the country in 1922, posing as an American citizen and using the All-Russian Cooperative Society Limited, Arcos, as a convenient commercial cover. Kirchenstein, according to his MI5 dossier. He was found in the Photostat Department, carrying incriminating letters, when Arcos was raided, and his personnel fle showed he had been recommended for employment by the ‘Secret Department’ in 1925 by Kirchenstein, Karl Bahn of the Russian-Norwegian Shipping Company, S. K. Melnechuk and J. Jilinsky. In the middle of September 1925 MI5 identified the author of the mail from France as George Solcombe, the Daily Herald's Paris correspondent and also the manager of the FPA's Paris branch.
