The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison
America's First Female Foreign Intelligence Agent
Although her mission was to reach Russia, Marguerite Harrison filed reports to the Military Intelligence Division while she was traveling. On the voyage to London aboard the White Star Line’s RMS Adriatic, she encountered Julius F. Hecker, a Russian-American Y.M.C.A. worker who lived in Lausanne, Switzerland. He told her that he had been in the …
Robert Collins Getting into Russia was a complicated matter. The Bolsheviks had stopped allowing most Western journalists into the country as they sought to solidify their power in the midst of a bloody civil war and a blockade was wreaking havoc on the economy. The United States did not have diplomatic relations with Russia, so …
Marlborough Churchill’s decision to send Marguerite Harrison to Russia is testament to the confidence America’s intelligence service directors had in her. Tommy Harrison was co-captain of the football team in Gilman when his mother pulled him out of school to take him with her to Switzerland. Photo courtesy of Gilman School. In the autumn 1919, …
Continue reading "The mission to Russia challenges America’s top spies"
Marguerite Harrison returned to the United States the summer of 1919 went back to work at the Baltimore Sun while she waited for Military Intelligence Division officials to decide on her next assignment. Her superiors had been so impressed with her work, they fought over where she should go next. Colonel Edward Davis, who ran …
Continue reading "Coming and going: Harrison’s next assignment"
Robert Minor Marguerite Harrison’s most publicized espionage success in Germany was her role in aiding the arrest of journalist and political cartoonist Robert Minor. Minor came from a distinguished Texas family and drifted toward socialism in his early 20s. He joined the New York World as a cartoonist in 1911, and a few years later, …
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Stan Harding While working in Berlin, Marguerite Harrison encountered another woman journalist who would have a profound impact on Harrison’s work and reputation. The woman was Stan Harding. She was every bit as adventurous and ambitious as Marguerite, and she would prove to be a formidable enemy. Harding had been born to a well-to-do family …
Continue reading "A fateful encounter in Berlin has lifelong consequences"
Even while working as a spy for the U.S. Army, Marguerite Harrison continued to write dispatches for the Baltimore Sun throughout the spring of 1919. She described living on rations and witnessing the opening session of the Weimar Assembly. But her most thrilling and vivid articles were her accounts of fighting in the streets of …
Alexanderplatz with the downed overhead lines of the tram, 8.3.1919 © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Art Library - Photothek Willy Römer / Willy Römer Only a couple of Marguerite Harrison’s German reports have survived, but they give some indication of how she went about collecting information for the Military Intelligence Division. Fluent in German, Marguerite …
Hotel Bristol, circa 1910. Marguerite Harrison boarded a train crowded with soldiers and workers and head to Berlin. Along the way, she heard that fighting had erupted in the German capital between the government troops and the Communist-backed Spartacists, and she hurried toward the action. It was night when she arrived at the train station …
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Soldiers from the 115th Infantry Division. Courtesy of portraitsofwar.com. Marguerite Harrison’s mission for the Military Intelligence Division had the full support of her editors at the Baltimore Sun, who provided cover for her operation. Harrison traveled with newspaper credentials to France under the pretext that she would write feature stories and show a movie the …
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The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison 