Kitty Harris

Kitty Harris (died 6 October 1966) was a Canadian-born Soviet secret agent and "long-time special courier of the OGPU-NKVD foreign intelligence during the 1930s and 1940s." Although mentioned by name in Walter Krivitsky’s book I was Stalin’s agent, Harris was identified only in 2001 when her code name "Ada" or "Aida" was found in declassified files from the Venona project. This was a counterintelligence program initiated by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service (later the National Security Agency) that ran from February 1, 1943 until October 1, 1980.

Career Catherine (the earliest spelling is Katherine) Harris was born to a poor Polish Jewish family, probably in London, Ontario, sometime between 1893 and 1902. Her father was a shoemaker from Białystok, in the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Poland). The family migrated to Winnipeg, Canada in 1904-1905. She began to work, first in a cigar factory, then in a clothing factory as a seamstress in 1912. She joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or "Wobblies") union and was a leader of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. Between 1919 and 1923, Harris moved with her family to Chicago.

In December 1937, Harris had applied for and received Soviet citizenship. When she retired from active service, she received an apartment in Riga. There, problems with alcoholism and mental illness surfaced. Harris died in Gorky in 1966. She is buried there in the Marina Roshcha cemetery with a grave marker that lists her date of birth as 24 May 1902.