Marion Davis Berdecio

Marion Davis Berdecio (1922 - 2006), born Marion Davis, was a recruit of the Soviet intelligence in USA.

Marion Davis Berdecio worked on the staff of the Office of Naval Intelligence at the United States Embassy in Mexico City. She was one of several people recruited to assist Soviet intelligence during World War II by Flora Wovschin, who was Davis's classmate at Barnard College. She was later transferred to the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA) in Washington DC. Her recruitment by Wovschin is documented in three Venona project decrypts.^[1] Russian archives in Moscow also show the KGB querying the Comintern for information on Davis.^[2]

Notes

1. Venona 55, 708, 1714; Klehr and Haynes, Venona 449 fn 73. Davis is referred to in the decrypts as "Lou"; Klehr and Haynes, Venona 199.
2. Klehr and Haynes, Secret World 307.

References

• Klehr, Harvey, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995)
• Klehr, Harvey, and John Earl Haynes. Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)