The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison
America's First Female Foreign Intelligence Agent
Marguerite knew that it was only a matter of time before Mogilevsky would grow dissatisfied with her reports and order her arrest. The time came on on October 20. She had returned to the guesthouse after working late at the Foreign Office and was getting ready for bed around two o’clock in the morning when …
Continue reading "The game ends: Marguerite Harrison is arrested"
Solomon Mogilevsky brought Stan Harding to the same guesthouse where Marguerite Harrison was staying. What transpired next later became an international scandal that would always cast a shadow over Harrison’s career as an intelligence officer. Marguerite later contended that she tried to warn Harding not to come into Russia and that once the British woman …
The evening after the British delegation returned to Moscow from the trip down the Volga, the chief censor met Marguerite Harrison at the Foreign Office in the Metropole Hotel and told her that a friend of hers would be coming to visit. The friend was Stan Harding. Marguerite was shocked. She had not heard from …
In early June, a delegation from Great Britain, including philosopher and writer Bertrand Russell, arrived in Moscow to gather information that might lead to resumption of trade between England and Russia. Mogilevsky told Marguerite she would be with them to keep watch over the delegates. She readily agreed to go, hoping to slip information to …
Continue reading "Harrison accompanies Bertrand Russell into the heartland"
Marguerite had been in Moscow a few weeks when a frail-looking man in a sheepskin coat knocked on her door. He was Francis McCullagh, a British intelligence officer who had been left behind at Omsk when British troops retreated from Siberia. After a harrowing, three-week journey, he had arrived in Moscow without documents and was …
Throughout late February and early March 1920, Marguerite Harrison interviewed numerous Soviet officials, including some powerful women. Today is International Women's Day, so it's fitting to acknowledge these female revolutionaries. Among those was Angelica Balabanova, the secretary of the Third International, the organization of Communists from around the world. Balabanova and Harrison had much in …
Today marks an important milestone in the history of U.S. foreign intelligence. On Feb. 21, 1920, Marguerite Harrison, the nation’s first female foreign intelligence officer, arrived in Moscow to take up her mission for the U.S. Military Intelligence Division. Posing as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun and the Associated Press, she set about gathering …
The day after she reached Moscow, the Foreign Office informed Marguerite Harrison she would be allowed to stay in the city for two weeks. She radioed the Associated Press to report her arrival. Over the next several days interviewed a number of Bolshevik officials, including Felix Dzerzhinsky, the dreaded head of the Cheka. At the …
The winter of 1920 was brutal in Moscow. An economic blockade imposed by Western countries and the upheavals of revolution and civil war left the people cold and starving. Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva placed her children in an orphanage because she was unable to feed them, but the younger child, not yet three, died of …
Marguerite was betting that the guards on the frontier would find her an interesting diversion and so not shoot her. Her hunch proved to be correct. The guards were shocked to discover an American female reporter who told them she wanted to go to Moscow to report on the great Bolshevik experiment. But while they …
Continue reading "Harrison provides diversion to bored troops"
The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison 