The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison
America's First Female Foreign Intelligence Agent
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 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 …
The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison 