FDR’S Female Secret Agent Wore Two Hats

Labor Secretary Frances Perkins gathered intelligence abroad and thwarted Axis and Communist subversion at home

Feb 23, 2023

∙ Paid

MUCH REMAINS UNKNOWN about Franklin Roosevelt’s long presidency, which began ninety years ago next month, because historians have always spotlighted the titanic leader himself, while shedding comparatively little light on some of his closest associates.

One of them was Frances Perkins, FDR’s secretary of labor, one of only four people who served at the…

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A guest post by

Derek Leebaert

Derek won the 2020 Truman Book Award, and, in 2023, published Unlikely Heroes: Franklin Roosevelt, His Four Lieutenants, and the World They Made. He cofounded Harvard/MIT’s journal International Security, and helped launch the Museum of the US Army.