In 1977, Thompson filed a complaint against her employer with the encouragement of her white male supervisor. Enter Harritte Thompson, a career intelligence officer since 1952. Was hiring solely “on merit” an excuse to not hire women? Perhaps. Women’s lib is open to debate, the law of the land is not.” Government agencies are required by law to treat all employees equally and to hire and to promote them solely on the basis of merit. The real issue is that government salaries are paid by taxpayers, both male and female, black and white. “The women’s liberation movement has raised a lot of controversy, but it is not the ‘gut’ issue for women in the Agency. One document from the 1970s confronted the issue head on: Women complained that they had to work harder to get the same promotions, and that they could not get jobs as case officers. Ironically, as the women’s movement gained broad strength in the ’60s, a Mad Men-style culture took hold at the CIA, according to agency documents. She began her intelligence career in 1942 as a secretary to OSS chief William Donovan. WATCH: Women's History Collection on HISTORY VaultĮloise Page’s ID badge. Her efforts helped destroy the Third Reich, which called her “the most dangerous of all Allied spies.” She worked for the CIA into the 1960s organizing resistance groups behind the Iron Curtain. Then there was Virginia Hall, the CIA’s “Limping Lady.” A Baltimore native with a prosthetic leg (which she named Cuthbert), Hall posed as an elderly farmhand while she worked throughout Europe organizing spy networks and smuggling supplies to resistance fighters. A predecessor there, Richard Welch, had been assassinated three years earlier. Nicknamed “Iron Butterfly,” she would become the CIA’s first female station chief, in Athens. Page rose through the ranks of foreign spy operations after the war, becoming a chief of scientific and technical operations.
#Are secret agents real professional
The agency’s boss Allen Dulles reportedly once said that women make “fine spies.” On August 10, 1953, the agency formed, according to internal documents, a “petticoat panel” of women “to examine the advancement problems of professional and non-professional women throughout the Agency.”Īpparently, the panel was effective (Adelaide Hawkins was a member), as the 1950s saw remarkable female agents emerge on the cutting edge of espionage.Īmong them: Eloise Page, who joined the CIA upon its founding.
They withstand hardships poorly.”Īpparently, American spy officials disagreed, as declassified CIA documents show an extraordinary focus early in the agency’s life to promote the role of women. They are impatient with the strict requirements of security measures. They fall in love easily and without discrimination. When interviewed by American officials, one European intelligence officer said: “An agent should be calm, unostentatious and reticent. In the beginning, espionage officials had to confront the question: Could women be good spies? Not everyone agreed. READ MORE: Secret Agents in Hoop Skirts: Female Spies of the Civil WarĪ painting of Virginia Hall, who was part of espionage operations against Nazi Germany. At times, it mirrors the overall narrative of women in the American workplace. At the time, the Trump administration called it a battle won in “the war on women.” In fact, a short history of the role women have played in the CIA-using declassified CIA and other documents-reveals a startling story.
On May 21, Gina Haspel was sworn in as the first female director of the CIA.
After the war, when the CIA was founded in September 1947, she was among the first of the new spy agency’s high-ranking women.įast forward to 2018. Her real role? Pioneering woman in the field of American espionage.ĭuring World War II, the OSS created the U.S.’s first spy network, and Hawkins managed the agency’s message center in Washington, specializing in secret codes or “ ciphers.” She helped train spies working behind enemy lines in communications. Office of Strategic Services in Washington saying she would “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” Hawkins became an assistant cryptographic clerk at a salary of $1,620/year. On December 16, 1941, nine days after Pearl Harbor, a mother of three from Maryland named Adelaide Hawkins signed an affidavit with the U.S.
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