The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison
America's First Female Foreign Intelligence Agent
Marguerite Harrison felt both relief and regret when she learned that Solomon Mogilevsky had been killed in a plane crash in the Caucasus Mountains. When she left Russia in 1923 she knew that she would never see him again, and she sensed that his death had been no accident. As with Robert Imbrie, rumors swirled …
Continue reading "Mogilevsky dies in mysterious plane crash"
Marguerite wrote two accounts of her second Russian imprisonment. In both, she described being interrogated repeatedly by a man named Roller, who tried to make her confess that she was spying in Siberia. He told her that she would be tried in secret and, if found guilty, she could receive the death sentence. In her …
Continue reading "Was Marguerite really on a secret mission?"
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 …
After a week in solitary confinement, Marguerite appealed to Mogilevsky to end the torture. She told herself that he was not a cruel man and did not want her to suffer. After all, they had had pleasant conversations discussing French literature and political philosophy. He had shared his story of growing up in a provincial …
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 …
Marguerite knew the Reds suspected her, but she tried to tell herself they had no evidence against her. Then one night in early April as she walked from work at the Foreign Office, a soldier stopped her in the street and demanded her name. When she told him, he replied, “You’re arrested.” The soldier led …
