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 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 …
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 …
The circumstances surrounding Marguerite Harrison’s decision to travel to Asia are shrouded in the thick mist of time and the secrecy of the intelligence service. Marguerite later wrote that she decided to go to Asia because she was looking for fresh material for her lectures. She also wrote that she had contracted with Cosmopolitan magazine …
The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison 