Mrs. Shipley's Ghost: The Right to Travel and Terrorist Watchlists

Chapter Five: Origins: The Extraordinary Mrs. Shipley

97 Chapter Five Origins: The Extraordinary Mrs. Shipley To describe Mrs. Shipley’s career is to restate the legal history in chapter 4 in human terms. It is also to tell the story of a remarkably talented woman who rose to great power in male-dominated corridors of power. Ruth Bielaski was born in 1885 in Montgomery County, Maryland, the daughter of a Methodist minister, and the granddaughter of a Civil War hero and friend of Abraham Lincoln.1 She had a high school education and what was then called “business training” before she took a competitive civil service exam at age eighteen to qualify for a position copying assignments of patent rights in the Patent Office.2 She began there in 1903, where she worked as a clerk until she married in 1909.3 She spent several years in the Canal Zone, where her husband held a government post. His ill health returned them to Washington, but it was the ill wind blowing through Europe in August 1914 that landed her in the State Department’s Passport Division. Mrs. Shipley was appointed a clerk on August 25, 1914, just as World War I was beginning in Europe.4 Thus, her career began just as modern travel controls did. She seems to have quickly become the protégée of then Second Assistant Secretary of State A. A. Adee, whose portfolio at the time covered passports.5 In time she became Assistant Chief of the Office of Coordination and Review.6 In 1928, Mrs. Shipley was appointed Chief of the “particularly prickly” Passport Division; a job known in Washington to be “full of responsibility, open to the constant critical attack of an impatient public, it was said to have killed one man who was formerly its chief.”7 She held that position for twenty-eight years, during which time she made “a record outstanding in the annals of the Department.”8 In figure 4, Mrs. Shipley is shown receiving an award from Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.9 In describing this steep career trajectory, it is worth pausing to remember the special difficulties official Washington presented for women. Women in 98 ◆ Mrs. Shipley’s Ghost high office (considered at that time to be any civil service position salaried at over $5,000) were such a rarity that Mrs. Shipley’s elevation was viewed as precedent-setting.10 She became part of what was known as the “women’s cabinet”—the small cohort of other women in positions of power.11 Even after arriving as Chief of the Division, Ruth Shipley had to contend with condescension unimaginable for her male counterparts. The New York Times described her as the “slender, dark-haired head” of the Passport Division. In a Sunday feature on “The Women Who Man Our Ship of State,” the Times marveled at the rise of career professionals sharing “a common sex which has aroused curiosity ever since Eden’s gates were shut.”12 Even after five years on the job, at least one congressman congratulated the Secretary of State on “the efficiency shown by the Chief of your Passport Division, Mr. R. B. Shipley.”13 A woman in such an important position was hard for many to fathom. Fig. 4. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles presents the Distinguished Service Medal to Ruth B. Shipley, Diplomatic Reception Room, Department of State, April 28, 1955. Origins: The Extraordinary Mrs. Shipley ◆ 99 Notwithstanding these difficulties, Mrs. Shipley’s career was a glorious success.14 As this chapter reveals, she laid the groundwork for future government controls on travel that she scarcely could have imagined (but would not have hesitated to use). Mrs. Shipley rose to become the No Fly List of her day. 1. World War I When Ruth Shipley first joined the State Department, all hell was breaking loose. War trapped many Americans in Europe. Since passports were not required for travel, few possessed them. Now they were desperate for documents that could return them home.15 It was during the “hysterical days of 1914” that Mrs. Shipley was assigned to help “locate American citizens marooned abroad, whose relatives were frantic to get them back to safety.”16 Ironically enough, Mrs. Shipley began her career working to facilitate travel. While many Americans lacked passports, putting great pressure on the State Department to issue them quickly for safe voyages home, a mirrorimage problem emerged in the form of...