[BenLurkin]

The problem was not what Mata Hari said but who she was. She was a woman traveling alone, obviously wealthy and an excellent linguist - too educated, too foreign.

Can't blame them for concluding she was up to no good. She had been recruited by the enemy and they knew it.

As for the feminist victimology -- I say baloney. Boldness and language skills are always the mark of potential spies -- women AND men.

[processing please hold]

She was innocent. Where's the evidence she was guilty?

Please, she liked sex and was promiscuous to say the least and that was her undoing in a puritanical era.

[Enchante]

Well let’s say she had more potential for espionage success than Valerie Plame ever did, but it doesn’t seem like she actually turned over any info to France’s enemies, so far as is known. On the other hand, taking money in time of war for the purpose of espionage..... THAT she did, even if she rationalized it in her own mind as something else. This case is not like a frame-up of some utterly innocent individual who had nothing to do with the criminal activity in question, but OTOH she does not seem to have pursued the life of crime beyond taking a payment. If anyone had cause for complaint it was really Germany, which paid out for services never rendered!!