Born: 1912 (circa), United States (assumed)
Died: 4 March 2007
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
As noted in the book Wise Gals: The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future, this erasure also happened in the field of espionage. Regarding Mary Hutchison, who had initially been offered only a secretarial position despite her significant qualifications, “She was frequently identified as the wife of Captain Gregory L. Hutchison in her reports, and never as Dr. Hutchison, a distinction markedly different than that of the male officers she worked alongside.” She was also working against the perception of being a “contract wife,” a woman hired because she was married to another intelligence officer…
In the early days of the CIA, Mary Hutchison repeatedly warned her superiors about trusting the former Nazi intelligence officer Myron Matviyenko, a known murderer who had worked actively against the United States and its allies. Although ostensibly working with the agency, he was not communicating with his handlers, leaving out vital information. The decision-makers believed her reports and the agency cut ties with him in 1950; the following year, he led a group of Ukrainian nationalists parachuting into western Ukraine, which had been seized by the Soviets in 1939. In collaboration with MI6, the plan was for them to infiltrate and blend in with the Soviets, but his men were immediately arrested, interrogated, beaten, and several were executed. He had been working with the KGB the entire time, and Hutchison’s reports had predicted his betrayal.