MATA HARI WAS FRAMED, FILES SHOW

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100120015-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: November 23, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/22 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000100120015-5
WASHINGTON POST
23 November 1985
JACK ANDERSON and JOSEPH SPEAR
Mata Hari Was Framed, Files Show
The cynical betrayal of spies by their
governments, so vividly depicted in the fiction
of John Le Carre, is not the product of the
Cold War. Sixty-eight years ago, the archetypal
temptress, Mata Hari, was framed and executed by
the only country for which she spied.
Mata Hari, the woman whose name became a
synonym for the spy who worms military secrets
out of unwary sex partners, innocent?
That's right. French military files, supposedly
sealed in 1917 for 100 years, reveal that Mata Hari
was not a German spy but a free-lance agent who
committed espionage only once-for the French.
The files of her secret trial were opened last year
to American journalist Russell Warren Howe.
Historians have accepted for years the French
government's charge that Mata Hari (a Dutch
woman born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle) cost the
lives of hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers in
World War I by selling the Germans information
she had wheedled out of French and British
officers. The investigative and judicial file-497
items, mostly handwritten notes-was sealed after
her execution in 1917. Here's what Howe learned
from the dossier:
^ Mata Hari's only espionage effort was in Madrid,
and she was working for the French. She seduced a
German military attache there and spent three af-
ternoons in bed with him. But the only information
she got was stale or inaccurate.
^ She did accept money from German intelligence.
But all she ever gave in return were newspaper re-
ports and gossip intended to get the military attache
to talk during their dalliance in Madrid. This pump-
priming was hardly worthy of eight criminal charges
of espionage, for which she was shot.
^ At her secret trial, the French refused to let
Mata Hari call two witnesses who could have proved
her not guilty. Why? France was rife with antifor-
eign sentiment and had recently suffered appalling
losses due to inept generals. A scapegoat was
needed, and a foreigner was the perfect setup.
? Mata Hari's frame-up was deliberately abetted by
the Germans, who thought she had cheated them.
(She considered the payment her just due as com-
pensation for property the Germans had seized ear-
ly in the war.) So they sent messages-in a code
they knew the French had broken-suggesting that
Mata Hari was one of their spies. French intelli-
gence doctored the intercepts to make her appear
even guiltier.
^ The French lured Mata Hari into espionage with
promises of high pay if she could seduce the Ger-
man general commanding occupation forces in Bel-
gium. She needed money for her lover, a 21-year-
old Russian captain threatened with blindness from
a mustard gas attack.
Howe was shown the Mata Hari files at the Cha-
teau de Vincennes, the very place where the 41-
year-old "spy" was executed by firing squad. He was
allowed to take notes on the material in the file, he
told our associate Les Whitten, but was permitted
to photocopy only some letters written by Mata
Hari and some photographs. Howe's book, "Mata
Hari-The True Story," will be published next year.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/22 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000100120015-5