The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison
America's First Female Foreign Intelligence Agent
Solomon Mogilevsky brought Stan Harding to the same guesthouse where Marguerite Harrison was staying. What transpired next later became an international scandal that would always cast a shadow over Harrison’s career as an intelligence officer. Marguerite later contended that she tried to warn Harding not to come into Russia and that once the British woman …
The evening after the British delegation returned to Moscow from the trip down the Volga, the chief censor met Marguerite Harrison at the Foreign Office in the Metropole Hotel and told her that a friend of hers would be coming to visit. The friend was Stan Harding. Marguerite was shocked. She had not heard from …
In early June, a delegation from Great Britain, including philosopher and writer Bertrand Russell, arrived in Moscow to gather information that might lead to resumption of trade between England and Russia. Mogilevsky told Marguerite she would be with them to keep watch over the delegates. She readily agreed to go, hoping to slip information to …
Continue reading "Harrison accompanies Bertrand Russell into the heartland"
Despite Mogilevsky’s spies, Marguerite managed to take a weekend sojourn from Moscow to a country dacha with Samuel Hopwood, formerly a manager of the Kodak Company, and his daughters. They stayed with a peasant woman, a widow whose son had been killed in the war, near the Moscow River. Marguerite later recalled that they arrived …
Marguerite Harrison had fallen for an old ploy. She naively had thought that she had won the Bolsheviks’ trust by pretending to be a journalist sympathetic to their cause. Instead, they had allowed her access to incriminating information and forced her to acknowledge she was a spy. Mogilevsky was in charge of recruiting international agents …
Continue reading "Seeing double: Harrison pressed into service for the Reds"
The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison 