America's First Female Foreign Intelligence Agent
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 known reports Marguerite sent to the U.S. intelligence agencies while in Asia mostly pertain to economic matters. After spending two months in Tokyo, she traveled north to the Sakhalin Island, a territory rich in oil and coal reserves that was claimed by both Japan and Russia. Khabarovsk Bridge over the Amur River in Siberia …
Continue reading "Eyes are watching Marguerite on the Amur River"
Marguerite Harrison said she traveled to Asia to gather material for her lectures and articles for Cosmopolitan magazine. But the reports she filed with the U.S. Army and State Department offer evidence that she was again on an intelligence mission. And this time she might have indeed played the role of Mata Hari luring unsuspecting …
Continue reading "British and Japanese attempt to recruit Marguerite"
In Japan, Marguerite for the first time began to seriously consider the roles of women in society. She had not advocated women’s suffrage in the United States or fought for equal treatment in the workplace. She had been America’s first female foreign intelligence officer, but it was a position she wanted for herself, not her …
In the middle of June 1922, less than a year after her release from Russian prison, Marguerite Harrison boarded the Canadian Pacific Railway train to Vancouver and days later caught a steamer bound for Yokohama, Japan. As soon as she arrived in Tokyo, the wary Japanese assigned an agent, Dr. Matsujiro Honda, to act as …
