The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison
America's First Female Foreign Intelligence Agent
Marguerite’s later account of her Asian travels and her subsequent capture and imprisonment strains credulity. The trip around the edges of Soviet Russia had posed obvious risks, but she later wrote that her capture completely surprised her. She said she believed overzealous local officials in Chita were just taking precautions in detaining an American visitor …
Marguerite hid in the brothel for two days until she and her Cossack companion could catch the train to Chita.. She did not know whether the Communist uprising had been confined to Verkhne-Udinsk or had swept through the entire Far Eastern Republic. Her worries grew when the next night a suspicious-looking man knocked at her …
Continue reading "‘You’re arrested’: Harrison is caught by the Russians again"
Verkhne-Udinsk
Marguerite Harrison found a Russian frontiersman willing to take her from Urga, Mongolia, to Chita, the capital of the Far Eastern Republic. Shrugging off the protests of her friends, Marguerite climbed into his horse-drawn sleigh on a cold November morning and they set off with harness bells gaily jingling. They climbed through steep hills and …
Continue reading "Marguerite crosses the border into the Far Eastern Republic"
Marguerite made the dubious assertion that her reason for traveling to Urga was to investigate Bolshevik claims that they were not interfering in Mongolia, despite its strategic importance in the region. She journeyed to the Chinese city of Kalgan, where she found few foreigners aside from the British and American consuls and representatives of the …
Leaving the Manchuria warlord Chang Tso-lin, Marguerite Harrison traveled to Peking, where donkey carts, rickshaws, and an occasional automobile kicked up the dust of wide city streets. She spent a month there socializing with Americans, Russians, and Chinese. It now was mid-October 1922 and she knew it was unlikely she would to return to the …
After a week in Vladivostok, Marguerite Harrison set out again, this time headed for China. She traveled by a coastal steamer to Korea, where she observed a nascent nationalist movement brewing in opposition to the Japanese rule and glimpsed the work of American missionaries trying to convert the natives to Christianity. Later arriving in Mukden, …
Continue reading "Harrison gathers intelligence for Chinese warlord"
In Vladivostok, Marguerite reunited with Major Faymonville, the military observer, and Edward Thomas, the Chita vice consul, who were anxious to hear about her experiences on the Amur River. American military attaches were keeping watch over the turbulent region, which promised vast business potential despite political instability. The agents asked her to write about her …
Continue reading "Military chief warns of “extreme caution”"
Finally arriving at the Khabarovsk train station, Marguerite squeezed through the crowd, purchased a third-class ticket, and scrambled onto the train. Before the war, the trip from Khabarovsk to Vladivostok would have taken 30 hours. Now it took five days. Fighting still continued along the route, and Marguerite had to pass through three armies to …
The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison 