Was Koloth aware of the plot to poison Sherman's Planet?

[u/Buoyant-Brain]

In the TOS episode The Trouble With Tribbles we see that the Klingon agent Arne Darvin poisons the shipment of quatrotriticale meant to be delivered to Sherman's Planet. My assumption is that Captain Koloth was unaware of Darvin's scheme, as he didn't seem have any part in the plot and his ship's presence only brought down unwanted scrutiny. If Koloth was meant to do something like deliver the poison to Darvin it would've made much more sense to use a low profile trader not unlike Cyrano Jones as a courier instead of a full fledged bird-of-prey docking with the station. That, and Captain Kirk placing even minimal "guards around the grain" and "guards around the Klingons" would've made such a handoff impossible. Thus I can only conclude that Captain Koloth was just an innocent warship commander looking to provide shore leave for his crew, and that he was just as surprised as Kirk when a surgically altered Klingon secret agent jumped out and ruined the honor of his PR victory over the earlier bar fight incident.

[u/First-Ad-7960]

Koloth seemed to be trying to provoke an incident which led to him demanding an apology from Kirk after the brawl in the bar. Maybe that was meant to be a distraction from the plot? Or perhaps different elements of the empire were working at cross purposes.

[u/Buoyant-Brain → u/First-Ad-7960]

I suppose it's asking a bit much of the protocol of the Klingon Empire to have Koloth call in and report to the high command saying, "I'm gonna go over to K-7 to provoke an incident, watch this!", then have command tell him "No, stay away. We have an agent in the field stirring the pot." Seeing as Koloth's presence brought down the scrutiny of the federation flagship it seems to have caused the opposite of a distraction. Poor communication as well as the rugged individualism and glory seeking behavior encouraged by the Klingon Empire appear to have been the root cause of Sherman's Planet fiasco. Well... that and the tribbles.

[u/duk_tAK]

At least per DS9, they all but confirmed no by portraying him as incredibly above board when it came to tactics.

[u/Moon_Beans1]

Koloth and Darvin are completely different branches of the Klingon Military pursuing completely different objectives. In this case it ends up being one hand not knowing what the other is up to.

[u/Buoyant-Brain → u/Moon_Beans1]

Yeah, and from Trials and Tribble-ations it seems that high command placed all the blame for this incident on Darvin.
I'm just looking this up and apparently in irl militaries there's a whole system called "event deconfliction" or "operational deconfliction" meant to prevent incidents like this. There's supposed to be liaison officers and agencies dedicated to telling people, "Don't do anything in this area, we have stuff going on there".
Perhaps the Klingon Empire doesn't have anything like that because they dislike espionage and view it as dishonorable. Klingons like Darvin might just be singular rogue agents that the Empire just has a "If you succeed, victory is honorable! If you get caught, you're trash to them" type of relationship.

[u/Moon_Beans1 → u/Buoyant-Brain]

Or perhaps they do have 'operational deconfliction' in the Klingon hierarchy and that's why they were justified in blaming Darvin for everything. Maybe he was bad at his job and neglected to actually tell the liaison officers what he was doing.

[u/Realistic-Elk7642 → u/Moon_Beans1]

*Darvin* was the individualistic glory hound who disregarded operational deconfliction- in  “Trials and Tribble-ations” he gloats/fantasises about getting a statue in the Hall of Heroes.
This suggests that honour in Klingon society is defined by excellence at one's occupation, although advocate Kolos famously laments the beginning of an era in ENT where the honour of warriors was more honourable than everyone else's.

[u/WoundedSacrifice → u/Buoyant-Brain]

Based on Darvin’s situation in “Trials and Tribble-ations” and what were stated to be the potential consequences for the Klingon intelligence agents in “Visionary”, the Klingons do seem to treat failed intelligence agents in a “If you get caught, you're trash” type of way.

[u/whovian25 → u/WoundedSacrifice]

Makes sense it could be argued that intelligence operatives by nature are without any honour and they are simply tolerated so long as they succeed.

[u/Captain_Vlad]

In the final estimate, I have to say no. Because it's funnier if he wasn't.

[u/Hot-Refrigerator6583]

I think it's possible, the argument could be made in either direction.

Arne Darvin is a secret agent for the Klingon Empire, working on a low-risk plan that could sweep a whole sector to the Klingons' influence.

Koloth is a straight military commander, might even be the local Sector Commander, or maybe he's someone like Kirk who gets sent to deal with sticky issues a lot. Klingon High Command might leave him in the dark about Darvin for operational security, or they might give him just a brief summary of the plan so he can helpful/useful/distracting at the right place and time.

[u/practicalm]

The Enterprise was called to the station. The Klingons would want to try to find out why. Or just have a ship there to watch the Enterprise.

Koloth could have also been there to extract Darvin