In2HiDef
04-18-2012, 09:25 AM
Resident recalls days of working for CIA in Moscow, dramatic KGB arrest
By Ben Steelman (http://www.starnewsonline.com/personalia/bsteelman)
[email protected]
Published: Sunday, April 15, 2012 at 12:30 a.m.
http://www.starnewsonline.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=WM&Date=20120415&Category=ARTICLES&ArtNo=120419846&Ref=AR&MaxW=250&border=0 Paul Stephen
Martha Peterson, local resident and retired CIA case officer whose eventful career includes being arrested by the KGB in Moscow, has penned the book 'The Widow Spy.'
On June 13, 1978, Martha D. Peterson was world famous.
She didn't like it.
There she was, on the cover of the Washington Post, photographed in Moscow's Lubyanka Prison, sitting beside a State Department representative, charged with spying for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Izvestia, the Moscow newspaper, had broken the story, clearly on orders from the Soviet government, detailing how Peterson had been arrested by agents of the KGB, the Soviet spy agency, on a railroad bridge in Moscow.
"I watched all the news channels," Peterson recalled. "It isn't a good place for someone who doesn't want to be in the spotlight."
The Widow Spy'
In a 32-year career as a CIA case officer, Peterson deliberately avoided the spotlight. She stepped back into the shadows after the affair blew over, serving quietly in increasingly responsible positions until her retirement in 2003.
Now, however, she tells her side of that moment on the bridge in a memoir, "The Widow Spy."
Peterson and her husband, a retired Foreign Service officer, relocated to Wilmington after retirement on the advice of friends, noting the low tax rates and pleasant climate.
"It's a good place to create a life," she said.
It doesn't take much, though, to take her back to Red Square or the Lenin Hills, which she learned well as the CIA's first female case officer to be posted to the Soviet capital.
"It's hard work and a lot of long hours," she said.
Even for a foreigner with diplomatic privileges and a car, Russia was a tough place to live under Communism. Moscow winters were cold, and the nights were long. Stores had long lines for the few goods available. Most vegetables disappeared from the stores during the winter; Peterson had to make do with cabbage and the occasional frozen dishes the U.S. embassy could ship in.
Telephones would ring in the middle of the night, with no one on the other end. Americans suspected it might have been a harassment technique. The Soviets bombarded the U.S. embassy with microwave radiation, apparently to jam American electronic devices. Many of Peterson's colleagues later developed serious cancers and died, possibly as a result of high exposure.
Social contacts were limited; one of Peterson's few refuges was the Marine Guards' bar at the embassy.
"We knew, if World War III broke out, we were toast," she said.
The road to Moscow
Reaching Moscow had been a long, twisting road for a girl who grew up in Darien, Conn., the daughter of an Avon executive. Her childhood had been taken up with Girl Scouts, skating and piano and ballet lessons.
At Drew University in the 1960s, she met John Peterson, a charming physics major who dreamed of becoming a journalist. With the Vietnam War on, however, John chose to enlist in the Army and to volunteer for Special Forces. While he served his tour, she earned a master's degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, then taught at a community college near Eden, N.C.
The couple finally married on the day after Christmas 1969, but the war wasn't quite over. Not long after the wedding, John Peterson signed up with the CIA, which deployed him to Laos as an "adviser," leading Laotian militia troops against North Vietnamese supply lines into the south.
On Oct. 19, 1972, he died in a helicopter crash while on a military operation. He was 27.
Now a widow, Marti Peterson had to rethink her life. In Laos, with little else to do in a remote, provincial town, she'd done clerical work part-time in the regional CIA office. Friends in the agency encouraged her to consider working for the CIA full-time. On July 3, 1973 her late husband's 28th birthday she entered the agency's Career Training program.
The '70s could be hard for career women. At first, a CIA recruiter tried to steer her into a secretarial post. Another middle-aged officer tried to offer her a post as "girl Friday." Despite a master's degree, she started at a lower federal pay grade than younger male recruits fresh out of college.
In Moscow, however, sexism played to Peterson's advantage. All American embassy employees grew used to being tailed by mysterious Russians wherever they went. The minders seemed less intent on following Peterson, apparently dismissing her as low-level clerical help.
"I got away with murder," she said with a grin.
"The FBI agents got really belligerent when I talked about this at Quantico," she added. "They said, Oh, they were there. You just couldn't see them.'?"
Peterson knew differently, though and she noted, with a little satisfaction, that her experience made some in the FBI rethink their own procedures for following suspected foreign agents.
By Ben Steelman (http://www.starnewsonline.com/personalia/bsteelman)
[email protected]
Published: Sunday, April 15, 2012 at 12:30 a.m.
http://www.starnewsonline.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=WM&Date=20120415&Category=ARTICLES&ArtNo=120419846&Ref=AR&MaxW=250&border=0 Paul Stephen
Martha Peterson, local resident and retired CIA case officer whose eventful career includes being arrested by the KGB in Moscow, has penned the book 'The Widow Spy.'
On June 13, 1978, Martha D. Peterson was world famous.
She didn't like it.
There she was, on the cover of the Washington Post, photographed in Moscow's Lubyanka Prison, sitting beside a State Department representative, charged with spying for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Izvestia, the Moscow newspaper, had broken the story, clearly on orders from the Soviet government, detailing how Peterson had been arrested by agents of the KGB, the Soviet spy agency, on a railroad bridge in Moscow.
"I watched all the news channels," Peterson recalled. "It isn't a good place for someone who doesn't want to be in the spotlight."
The Widow Spy'
In a 32-year career as a CIA case officer, Peterson deliberately avoided the spotlight. She stepped back into the shadows after the affair blew over, serving quietly in increasingly responsible positions until her retirement in 2003.
Now, however, she tells her side of that moment on the bridge in a memoir, "The Widow Spy."
Peterson and her husband, a retired Foreign Service officer, relocated to Wilmington after retirement on the advice of friends, noting the low tax rates and pleasant climate.
"It's a good place to create a life," she said.
It doesn't take much, though, to take her back to Red Square or the Lenin Hills, which she learned well as the CIA's first female case officer to be posted to the Soviet capital.
"It's hard work and a lot of long hours," she said.
Even for a foreigner with diplomatic privileges and a car, Russia was a tough place to live under Communism. Moscow winters were cold, and the nights were long. Stores had long lines for the few goods available. Most vegetables disappeared from the stores during the winter; Peterson had to make do with cabbage and the occasional frozen dishes the U.S. embassy could ship in.
Telephones would ring in the middle of the night, with no one on the other end. Americans suspected it might have been a harassment technique. The Soviets bombarded the U.S. embassy with microwave radiation, apparently to jam American electronic devices. Many of Peterson's colleagues later developed serious cancers and died, possibly as a result of high exposure.
Social contacts were limited; one of Peterson's few refuges was the Marine Guards' bar at the embassy.
"We knew, if World War III broke out, we were toast," she said.
The road to Moscow
Reaching Moscow had been a long, twisting road for a girl who grew up in Darien, Conn., the daughter of an Avon executive. Her childhood had been taken up with Girl Scouts, skating and piano and ballet lessons.
At Drew University in the 1960s, she met John Peterson, a charming physics major who dreamed of becoming a journalist. With the Vietnam War on, however, John chose to enlist in the Army and to volunteer for Special Forces. While he served his tour, she earned a master's degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, then taught at a community college near Eden, N.C.
The couple finally married on the day after Christmas 1969, but the war wasn't quite over. Not long after the wedding, John Peterson signed up with the CIA, which deployed him to Laos as an "adviser," leading Laotian militia troops against North Vietnamese supply lines into the south.
On Oct. 19, 1972, he died in a helicopter crash while on a military operation. He was 27.
Now a widow, Marti Peterson had to rethink her life. In Laos, with little else to do in a remote, provincial town, she'd done clerical work part-time in the regional CIA office. Friends in the agency encouraged her to consider working for the CIA full-time. On July 3, 1973 her late husband's 28th birthday she entered the agency's Career Training program.
The '70s could be hard for career women. At first, a CIA recruiter tried to steer her into a secretarial post. Another middle-aged officer tried to offer her a post as "girl Friday." Despite a master's degree, she started at a lower federal pay grade than younger male recruits fresh out of college.
In Moscow, however, sexism played to Peterson's advantage. All American embassy employees grew used to being tailed by mysterious Russians wherever they went. The minders seemed less intent on following Peterson, apparently dismissing her as low-level clerical help.
"I got away with murder," she said with a grin.
"The FBI agents got really belligerent when I talked about this at Quantico," she added. "They said, Oh, they were there. You just couldn't see them.'?"
Peterson knew differently, though and she noted, with a little satisfaction, that her experience made some in the FBI rethink their own procedures for following suspected foreign agents.