I was a Spy

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I was a Spy

Orange County Public Libraries

Becoming a counter spy for the FBI in 1950s Los Angeles.

My name is Marion Miller Neuburger. My story begins back in 1950. I considered myself an average American housewife and mother who lived in West Los Angeles with my husband, Paul and my two children. One day I picked up the mail and I found an invitation for the Los Angeles Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born. And I asked my husband “Have you ever heard about this?” and he read the letter and turned around to me and said “Marion, I think this is real communist propaganda.” Then I phoned the FBI, I told them about the letter and immediately they seemed very interested and said “Marion may we come out to see you?” I said “Of course.” When he came out and he was tall and very good looking, I could hardly resist it. And he said “Well what we’d like you to do is to go and listen to what is being said at the meeting and if, just, if you can take notes or try to remember everything you can.” I said “How can I do that, I can’t even play poker without people knowing I have an ace in my hand. How can I be able to disguise myself?” He said “Well, I suggest you take your knitting with you, your bag with knitting and just knit and pearl until the meeting is over.” And so I did with great trepidation and just my strange luck I sat next to a woman and she was the executive secretary at that time. While I’m listening very carefully to everything and I hear a lot of things that greatly disturb me, a man stood up and said “I’m Frank Carlson and I’m secretary of the communist party for the county of Los Angeles. We think this is a great organization, we’d like you to join, we’re going to give $50!” And so I excused myself and went to the restroom and took out my pen and pad and wrote down as much as I can remember. When I came back, Delphine said to me she said “Marion do you type?” I said “Yes, I am able to.” She said “We’d like you to come down to our office, we’re very short of help.” When I got home that afternoon, late afternoon I sat down and wrote a long 3 page single spaced copy of what I had heard and what I thought the FBI should know, everything I could remember. They were very, very impressed with that. And I said “You know, they’ve asked me to come down and do volunteer work in their office.” Well, the FBI was just delighted; they said “It would be a great service to us if you could do this.” This was October 1950. President Truman had just sent our troops overseas to protect South Korea. So I thought just because I was a woman I had no right to refuse if I could do something to stop communism at home. I started going down regularly and working in the office and I was able to get information for the FBI. After two years, one of the functionaries came over to our house and said “We want you to join the communist party.” Well the communists thought that I was dedicated and they liked they what I was doing and so everything went along fine. One day I get a call from Washington and the man identified himself as an attorney from the department of justice specifically before the subversive activities control board. He said “We are ready now to hear your testimony.” So I did go to Washington and then I wrote a book and the book called “I Was a Spy in 1961.” Shortly after writing this book, Ronald Reagan called my husband and invited us to come to his home and to have dinner with him and his wife Nancy. He wanted to discuss the possibility of using my story to portray his General Electric Theater. He wanted to portray my husband’s role himself. It was very exciting and thrilling because Ronald Reagan was always one of my favorite movie stars.

California Preservation Service (CAPS)

Neuberger, Marion Miller

Federal Bureau of Investigation

California Digital Library

English

moving image

https://archive.org/details/corcl_000035