Marguerite Harrison (1879-1967)

DOSSIER:
Marguerite Elton Baker, daughter of wealthy Maryland shipping magnate, Bernard N. Baker and his wife Elizabeth Elton Livezey, was born Oct 1879 in Baltimore, MD. She died on 16 Jul 1967.

In 1901 she married Thomas B. Harrison with whom she had one child, Thomas B. Harrison II.

CODE NAMES:
None Known

Her husband died of a brain tumor in 1915, leaving Marguerite and her thirteen-year-old son deeply in debt from loans taken out by the father. In an effort to repay this debt, she turned her large home into a boarding house, which did not make ends meet. In 1915, despite having only one semester of college and no appropriate training, she used her brother-in-law's influence to get hired as an assistant society editor for The Baltimore Sun. This brought in an additional twenty later thirty dollars a week. Coming from a society background and having a great facility with languages learned from European jaunts with her family, she proved to be well-qualified for this job and advanced quickly within the newspaper. By 1917 she was writing features about women's wartime labor and exposing the true fact that women work as well or better than their male counterparts.

In 1918, with the U.S. still involved in the war and Europe virtually one large battlefield, she became overwhelmed with the desire to report on the conditions in Germany. As women were not recognized as war correspondents she decided to become a spy. With an introduction to chief of Military Intelligence Division of the U.S. Army General Marlborough Churchill, she offered her services. On her application, she described herself as 5'6" tall, weighing 125 pounds; using no stimulants, tobacco or drugs; and without physical defects. Answering the question "With what foreign countries and localities are you familiar?" she replied:

"The British Isles, France, Holland, Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Northern Italy, Rome, Naples, Tyrol. I have an absolute command of French and German, am very fluent and have a good accent in Italian and speak a little Spanish. Without any trouble I could pass as a French woman and after a little practice, as German-Swiss . . . I have been to Europe fourteen times . . . I have been much on steamers and am familiar in a general way with ships of the merchant marine."

The November 11th Armistice was declared before her official hiring, but Harrison was still sent to Europe though with a new assignment: "Report political and economic matters of possible interest to the United States delegation at the forthcoming peace conference." Only her immediate family and her managing editor at the Sun knew why the War Department was sending her to Germany in December 1918. Unlike wartime spies, she would not be reporting strategic or military intelligence but political, economic and social reporting, and this would not be without risks.

Harrison spied for the United States in Russia and Japan, arriving in Russia in 1920 as an Associated Press correspondent. She assessed Bolshevik economic strengths and weakness and assisted American political prisoners in Russia. She was held captive in Lubyanka, the infamous Russian prison, for 10 months.

While there she contracted tuberculosis, and due to pressure from her influential contacts, including Senator Joseph I. France, she was eventually set free in exchange for food and other aid to Russia. She was arrested again in 1923 in China and was taken to Moscow, but was released before her trial after recognition by an American aid worker.