290 | Migrants, Revolutionaries, and Spies
leading some Americans to call for intervention on humanitarian grounds. But
Mavroyeni was confident that such voices were relatively marginal, and with the
help of his contacts at the editorial desks of several US newspapers he was already
crafting a counternarrative. Anyway, the concerns of one American secret po-
liceman were hardly enough to shake Mavroyeni’s confidence that the political
activities of Armenian migrants in the United States posed a far greater threat.
The agent’s comments, however, reminded Mavroyeni that no matter how
capable the Pinkertons were, this assignment presented unique challenges. While
the agent had been successful in providing information about the activities of a
couple of prominent suspected Hunchaks, his attempts to infiltrate more deeply
into the lives and politics of Armenian migrants had so far borne little fruit. On
several occasions, the agent visited an Armenian restaurant in Boston in an at-
tempt to gauge the political sentiments of its patrons. In a report documenting
one such visit he wrote,
Upon my arrival, I started a conversation with the owner asking him why
he did not open a restaurant for Americans. He said that all the cooks were
Armenians only skilled in preparing Armenian dishes that would not suit the
American palate.... I did not obtain any useful information whatsoever, and
I could plainly tell that the owner did not want me there. I asked for coffee
and milk, but he said he had neither. I could not get the owner to talk, and I
realized that my prior visits to the restaurant had raised the suspicions of the
owner and patrons.The agent’s chilly reception at t he restaurant ser ved as a reminder t hat in t his
space, intended as a sanctuary for Armenian migrants living thousands of miles
from home, he was the foreigner. His attempts to infiltrate more deeply into the
Armenian migrant community were largely unsuccessful and left him with little
useful information to add to his reports. The agent again found his effectiveness
severely constrained by his not speaking the language of the subjects of his spy-
ing efforts. These challenges led the agent to suggest in one report that an infor-
mant with knowledge of the Armenian language would be far more successful in
obtaining detailed intelligence.
Unbeknownst to the Pinkerton agent, this had always been part of Mavro-
yeni’s plan. When he green-lighted contracting the Pinkerton Detective Agency,
he also authorized Iasigi, his consul in Boston, to use consular funds to lure a
local Armenian into informing the embassy on the activities of the Hunchaks
and other Armenian political organizations in the Boston area. Mavroyeni was
confident that Iasigi would have little difficulty finding a down-on-his-luck Ar-
menian migrant who would jump at the chance to earn some extra money, even if
it meant spying on his compatriots. After all, many migrant laborers throughout
the United States were out of work thanks to the continuing effects of a stock