THE WIDOW SPY

The extraordinary memoir of the first female CIA case officer in Cold-War Moscow-- a working wife who rose through the male-dominated ranks to thrive in the world of international espionage.

Martha Peterson did not plan to become a CIA officer. When she fell in love and married her college sweetheart in 1969, she hardly expected to move to Southeast Asia two years later at the height of the Vietnam War. Peterson's husband, John, worked for the CIA in Laos, conducting paramilitary operations. But when he died suddenly, Peterson knew she had found her own calling. Peterson's first assignment as a CIA officer sent her behind the Iron Curtain and into a dangerous undercover operation in Moscow. Over two years in the 1970s, she worked covertly to obtain top-secret intelligence from one of the most important agents of our time: codename TRIGON. Who would suspect that this unassuming, seemingly ordinary woman was the CIA's key contact with a mysterious operative within the Soviet system? On daring nighttime missions, Peterson walked undercover on the cold streets of Moscow, evading KGB surveillance and timing handoffs and dead drops with TRIGON. Ultimately, Peterson was arrested by the KGB and detained in Lyubianka Prison, but her brave and heroic work had resulted in some of the most voluminous intelligence collected during the Cold War. She survived this first covert operation and went on to a long distinguished career in the CIA. At last, she tells her personal story of how one female spy shattered the glass ceiling to thrive in the spy trade