DARIEN, CT — Martha D. Peterson, author of The Widow Spy will be the Darien Library's featured speaker Thursday, September 19 at 7 p.m.
The Widow Spy is the first hand account of a true Cold War spy operation in Moscow, told exclusively by the CIA case officer who lived this experience. She was one of the first women to be assigned to Moscow, a very difficult operational environment. Her story begins in Laos during the Vietnam War where she accompanied her husband, a CIA officer. She describes their life in a small city in Laos, ending with the tragic death of her husband. Then her own thirty year career begins in Moscow, where she walks the dark streets alone, placing dead-drops and escaping the relentless eye of the KGB. Experience her arrest and detention in Lyubianka Prison, as only she can relate it. What she reveals in The Widow Spy has never been told.
Martha D. Peterson was raised in Darien and graduated from Darien High School in 1963. She attended Drew University in Madison, NJ, receiving a BA degree in Sociology in 1967. It was at Drew that she met her future husband John, a physics major. After their marriage in 1969, John was hired by the CIA to be a paramilitary officer. Together they traveled to Pakse, Laos in 1971, where John managed Lao irregular troops as they attempted to interdict North Vietnamese troops and war material headed to South Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh trail. In October 1972, John was killed in a helicopter accident. Marti returned to Virginia and applied to be an Operations Officer with the CIA. Marti's career with the CIA lasted thirty-two years. She retired in 2003 to Wilmington, North Carolina, where she has been a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, Lower Cape Fear Hospice and Life Care Center, and the Wrightsville Beach Turtle Watch.