The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison
America's First Female Foreign Intelligence Agent
The Bakhtiari men ruled harshly over the women, who did most of the work around the camp. While the men gossiped with their neighbors, the women milked the sheep and goats and prepared the meals. Cooper and Schoedsack joined the men, lounging around the tents. Marguerite didn’t work with the women, but she soon found herself busy …
Continue reading "Marguerite tends to ill Bakhtiari, amputating a finger, expelling a leech"
British intelligence officers in Bagdad, including Gertrude Bell and Sir Arnold Wilson, advised Marguerite Harrison, Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack to try filming the Bakhtiari, the same tribe Harry Dwight had suggested a year earlier. The Bakhtiari, who lived west of the Zagros Mountains, each spring undertook an arduous journey in search of grass for …
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 …
Marguerite stepped off the train in Riga still dressed in the clothes she had worn in prison—the crumpled khaki suit she had on the night she was arrested, a man’s shirt that a Jewish aid worker had given her, a cap she had fashioned from a shirt, and men’s shoes that were many sizes too …
Continue reading "Crowds — and old friends–greet Marguerite"
Having apparently appeased Cheka, Marguerite Harrison was released from solitary confinement and placed in a cell with a dozen other women who faced political charges. These inmates included a young peasant girl who was overheard speaking about a new revolution, wives and girlfriends of White Russian Army officers, and aristocrats who had supported the czar. …
The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison 