The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison
America's First Female Foreign Intelligence Agent
Marguerite Harrison, Merian Cooper, and Ernest Schoedsack kept the Middle East mission secret their entire lives. They wrote books and articles, and they gave lectures and interviews about the expedition. But they never revealed that while documenting the epic journey of a Persian tribe’s search for pasture, they were gathering intelligence for the U.S. Army. …
Continue reading "A mission and a mystery: Harrison in the Middle East"
Marguerite hoped to put Harding scandal behind her. She moved into an apartment in midtown Manhattan with her son, Tommy, now twenty-two, and resumed her lectures and writing. She told herself that this time, she would settle down for good. Her family was wary. “I do not know that I will ever unravel the mysteries …
While Marguerite Harrison was in Asia, British journalist Stan Harding began a public campaign for justice. She gave interview to British newspapers accusing Marguerite of betraying her to the Bolshevik authorities. She blamed not only Cheka, but Marguerite and the American intelligence services for the suffering she had endured in Soviet prisons and she demanded …
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As mysterious as the reasons for Harrison’s release were the conditions she faced one she left Lubyanka. In 1921 she was given just minutes to catch a train headed to Riga. At that time, she left her belongings at Lubyanka. and a Cheka car raced her to the station just as the train was about …
Continue reading "Harrison reveals surprising details of her interrogation"
Harrison was unexpectedly taken to Novonikolaevsk in Siberia. Despite facing the accusations of espionage, Marguerite Harrison was not treated as an enemy of the state. According to her account, the commandant told her the cells in the prison were crowded and uncomfortable, and so he instead placed her a small room behind his office. A …
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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Dec. 2, 1918---The signing of the armistice treaty and a flu outbreak in Baltimore were temporary setbacks to Marguerite Harrison’s quest to become a spy. With the end of fighting in Europe, Marguerite feared she had lost her chance to become a spy. But Military Intelligence Division Director Marlborough Churchill had other ideas. He wanted …
A week after writing to Marlborough Churchill to express her interest in becoming an Army spy, Marguerite Harrison met Col. Walter Martin in the lobby of the Emerson Hotel in downtown Baltimore for an interview. She impressed Martin by speaking German so fluently that he wondered where she had learned it. She laughed off his …
The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison 