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[train horn] -I arrived in Moscow in November of 1975 during the Cold War. The Soviet Union was the main intelligence target of the U.S., and so this was a big job. The danger of getting identified as a CIA officer would be devastating. [yelling] After I was arrested, the Soviets wrote this about me: "A chiseled, almost ideal, medium-sized figure. She was actually, if not beautiful, then very, very pretty, and very smart too. And Martha loved to drink. In general, if she was not a drunk, then she was amenable. And if not a slut, then a very free-spirited woman."
-If you don't want to be executed, don't become a spy for the CIA. -It was obviously very complimentary to me. I'm not sure about the drinking. I don't know when they would've seen that. [♪ theme music playing] -I never knew my mom was a spy. I never had a clue. She led a normal life. She just was really busy, and if you were to tell me today that, how do I put this? If she hadn't told me back then, and she just let the lie go, not the lie, but the secret,
I should call it a secret. It's not a lie. If she had let it go to today, I still would've never suspected it. [Marti] During the Cold War, working for CIA, I knew it was a very dangerous time in history. And you're taking the ultimate risk. But that was just going to be a fact of my life. It was a very exciting life. I am Marti Peterson. I worked for the CIA for 32 years. People are always surprised because I look like someone's grandmother at this point, and I tell them, people who work for CIA, you know, look like grandmothers eventually, you know.
-Service in the CIA is not easy. You're living a double life, but you are blessed, you are fortunate. Not everybody has the opportunity to serve our country this way. My name is James Olson. I served undercover in the CIA during the Cold War when the United States and the Soviet Union were building up their capabilities and about to destroy the other. Many times over. [Marti] At the time, I really wanted to make a mark of some kind for the world. [James] The Soviet Union was a very, very powerful adversary. So, we had to bring our A-game.
-Being considered for a case officer position was not the norm for a woman. -You have to think about the fact that women weren't even expected to work. My name is Tracy Walder. I'm one of the few women who served on both the operation side of the CIA and the FBI. Women couldn't even have their own credit cards until the 70s. Women couldn't be special agents at the FBI until 1972. [Marti] They said, well, we would love to hire you. We have several jobs as secretaries. And I said, I would like to be interviewed for the officer program.
I found out about a man working with CIA who was looking for someone to go to Madrid, and it became very clear that he was looking for a girl Friday, a little roll in the hay as well. I didn't go. The CIA's patriarchal. The reason was, well, women eventually will get married and have babies. What good are they? I didn't want to be a secretary. I had other skills. They saw that I had potential, and eventually I was hired as a career trainee.
[James] In the CIA, the bread and butter of intelligence is the overseas agent, the source. The foreigner who has access to information that our country needs for its own security. Who knows what their plans are. And so, we were so hungry during the Cold War for Russian sources that getting a foreign service officer anywhere was going to be valuable for us. At the end of 1974, we had recruited this great source down in Bogota, Colombia, Aleksandr Ogorodnik, code-named 'Trigon,' a foreign ministry officer for the Soviet Union. He probably had some disaffection from the Soviet Union.
He lived in the West, so he saw the difference. He saw what a democratic society could look like, and he was about ready to go back to Moscow. But getting that information from Trigon to us was going to be a major challenge because all of our people in Moscow were under constant KGB surveillance. We had to get somebody free of KGB surveillance. We said to ourselves, we know that the KGB does not use women for high-risk operational jobs. They probably assume that we don't either. [James] I got a call one day from a wonderful man, and he offered a job in Moscow as a case officer.
-We had the perfect candidate sitting right there. That was momentous for us, and we said, all right, let's do it. [Marti] I had no experience. I was fresh out of training. I mean, Moscow was the main target of U.S. intelligence, so I knew that this was big time. I just hoped that I, I could do the job. [James] Finally, we had the person who had great access going back to Moscow, and we can handle him, with Marti Peterson.
[Marti] I flew from Florida to Moscow. The flight landed, and I was instantly paranoid. I thought they knew who I was, and it was frightening. [James] The KGB was vicious. It was cruel. It routinely engaged in assassinations, torture. They were a brutal foreign service. -My name is Alexander Vassiliev. I am ex-KGB Intelligence Officer.
[Marti] To most people in the embassy, both my American colleagues and Soviets who worked in the first floor, I was doing a low-level job. And then would go up to the CIA station at noon and at the end of the day. -Our hope was that the KGB would overlook her and that they would then not surveil her. And we told Marti, we want you to be portraying yourself as frivolous, you know, move around town. In fact, she developed the nickname of 'Party Marti.' [Tracy] Being comfortable sometimes with being underestimated can actually be sort of this quiet skill that you have that really works out in your favor.
-My first job was to determine whether I had surveillance. In the beginning, I thought, well, I just wasn't seeing it. I also invited other secretaries with me to take trips around town. And I had reason to turn around and look with other people with me, and nobody seemed to be following me. I would go into the station, of course, and say, I didn't see any surveillance, and the men doubted the fact that I could actually spot surveillance. -There were some old male chauvinist curmudgeons back at CIA headquarters that said, "She's just not seeing it, because it's there."
We needed to know for sure if Marti was being followed. -KGB was using a certain type of radio transmission among their surveillance teams. What was, uh, discovered was, we can intersect those communications. I'm Robert Wallace. I was Director of the Office of Technical Service and the Director of Science and Technology. In Moscow, that technology was absolutely critical for the operation itself to be accomplished. [Marti] They gave me a receiver, the SRR-100. [Robert] Our agents would be able to hear now the communications of surveillance teams who were tracking them.
[Marti] So if we made a move on this street, we could hear that in our ear. So, when the men went out, they could hear. -When I went out, this is what I heard. [radio static] There was no one following me. Ever. [James] Marti was our ace in the hole. [Marti] I had a way to operate in Moscow that everyone else didn't. [James] Marti became the handler for Trigon, and that was historic. For the first time ever, we were handling a source inside Moscow. And also, this was the first time we'd ever
used a woman in an advanced operational role, a high-risk, dangerous operation. It was life and death what she was doing. [Marti] I had been in Moscow about two and a half months. We needed to know what was going on in the Kremlin. [James] The White House was relying on us because it was so important that we provide our policymakers with good inside information on the Soviet Union. [Marti] I knew there were a lot of risks, but this wasn't the first time that I had fended for myself in a dangerous place.
My first week at college, I met my husband, John Peterson, and he made the choice in 1967 to go into the Army, to enlist. He became a Green Beret in 1969. To me, of course, that was going off to sure death. You know, that's how we thought about Vietnam. But he survived. And then he told me he had applied for CIA. I was shocked, I was. I didn't know anything about CIA. John said, I got my notice of my first assignment. It's Pakse, Laos, and you can come along.
I said, yes, absolutely. This was an adventure we were going to take on. That's John in Pakse. After we got there and he's getting ready to get on a plane to put his troops into the field. His business was war. I worked in the office; he worked in the field. John and I always looked at life as partners, and I was part of his team. It was him and me. Often, when I would be coming home from work, I would hear a big explosion. It made a metal taste come to your mouth. That is tremendous fright. So, it became right up front and very personal that there was danger there.
I had been out on the street so much and had logged many hours, and never had surveillance. -Because she could slip away and was not followed, we sent Marti out to do what we call dead drops. A dead drop is classic CIA tradecraft. -Dead drop means leaving a package at a certain area, and in this case, our Russian diplomat, Trigon, will come at a later time and pick up that package. [James] These packages are concealed, but inside that concealment is a cavity for us to have whatever materials are being transmitted through the dead drop.
It can be instructions, of course, it can be money, it can be medicines, it can be a camera. Anything that the agent needs to carry out his or her business. [Robert] Say just a very nice rock laying along the side of the road someplace, but inside is a major cavity that an agent could use. [Tracy] The tech person in the field is crucial. There's no book telling them what to do. They're some of the most gifted people in the world, because they're constantly thinking quickly and making do with what's available to them.
-One of the classics is a dead rat. You have a nice little cavity. Perhaps you want to put a small camera, not likely to be picked up by anybody except the intended agent. [Robert] Treat it with a little Tabasco sauce. Because cats hate Tabasco sauce. [Marti] Originally, Trigon had taken pictures of documents with a 35 mm camera. But that was very risky, taking the camera into the embassy. So, we realized that he was a good candidate for this very unique miniature camera hidden within a fountain pen.
And this was my first dead drop. We told him where it would be and how it would be disguised, that it was concealed in a Soviet cigarette pack. He would take the top off, hold the pen over a piece of paper with his elbows up, and that was the right focal distance, and then he would plunge this top down, and it would take a full-page picture. Dead drop deliveries always make you nervous. Usually, you would pitch the package out of the car window. The problem was we didn't know whether the camera's mechanism would survive, so at the last minute, the station decided that I would deliver
the package on foot. I drove my car for two hours looking for surveillance. When I determined that I had no surveillance, I went into the Soviet subway system, I rode three stops. I got out and changed to another subway line and walked to the site where the package was to be delivered to Trigon that night. My heart was going a million miles an hour. I was really alert and terrified all at the same time. As I approach the dead drop site, I pause, take a Kleenex out of my bag, and blow my nose, and at the same time, I take the package out of my purse.
And I spend an hour walking. Trigon is supposed to come and pick up my package, but when I return, I look down, and my package is still there. And I'm horrified to see several blocks away, a man in the shadows, watching. They caught me red-handed. [Marti] When I saw that man at a distance, my huge concern was that was a KGB officer. I didn't want to be known as the woman who got caught.
I didn't know who he was or why he was there, but I glanced back to see that man has disappeared. So, I recovered the camera in the package and went on my way back into the subway. I go in the next morning and report what has happened. After much discussion, we realize that man in the shadows was probably Trigon watching for a car, and of course, he hasn't seen a car. Ultimately, the next month, I was able to deliver the camera in the pen to Trigon.
I knew that I could put a package down on foot and then leave the area, and then return and pick up Trigon's package. [James] And what was crucial for us, Trigon was assigned to the communication center, and that's where the cables came in from Soviet ambassadors overseas reporting back to Moscow of what they were doing, what their policy recommendations were. Trigon had access to that. [Marti] Over time, you get more confident, and you realize the agent is going to be there to pick up that dead drop, and that mutual understanding gives you a, a good feeling. And so, we began to receive his intelligence,
and we learned he is a very capable agent. He became so adept at this. [James] He had access to frontline high-level intelligence, on arms control, but also on foreign policy in general. The intelligence that was produced, thanks to Marti, was going right to the president's desk. -One of the most pleasant surprises that I have had has been the quality of work done by the Central Intelligence Agency. [James] The intelligence was pouring in. One of the major players in US-USSR relations was the Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin.
-I hope that relations between our countries will develop. [James] And Kissinger was meeting regularly with Dobrynin. Kissinger loved the Trigon reporting because he would have the meeting with Dobrynin, and then he could see how Dobrynin was interpreting it back to Moscow, or misinterpreting it back to Moscow. And a lot was going on. We were in the middle of the SALT 2 negotiations. We were trying trade negotiations. The Russians were deploying cruise missiles. It was gold for us. We'd never seen intelligence like that before.
-Over time, I felt such a connection with Trigon, even though I have never met him. He and I never exchanged a word. But I had a feeling of, we're in it together. We are a team. And of course, keeping him safe and alive is the most important thing to me. [Tracy] The relationship between officer and asset is critical, because the reality is, is you have someone's life in your hands, period. The end. Because they are committing a crime. They are committing a crime by giving you information that they shouldn't be giving you. In our country, that's called treason.
[James] Trigon knew that if he were caught, that his fate would be horrible. His fate was sealed as soon as he fell into KGB's hands. -KGB investigated all their citizens, especially those who had been overseas. He told us in his packages to us that he had undergone a security check, and each time he was deathly concerned, because they could uncover what he was doing. And that means torture and the bullet to the back of the head. [Alexander] Trigon was a traitor. Traitors, all of them were executed.
[Tracy] If you think about the gravity of what Trigon was doing in 1975 Russia, for him to be willingly providing us with information was a death sentence if that information came out. [Marti] Trigon is under incredible stress. If anyone went and searched his apartment, it could be the end for him. [Marti] Then, end of April, 1977, we received a package from Trigon, and when our tech opened the package, he realized that there were some differences in his photography. [camera clicks] -Maybe in his stress, he'd become careless. He'd become reckless.
-This stress was causing him physical problems. He had stomach problems; he had breathing problems. Eventually, Trigon requests that he be provided with a means to commit suicide in the event that he is caught. -We didn't want to encourage a potential asset to kill himself. So, we said no. And only over time, with persistent requests, we felt that it was a moral responsibility to answer his request. [Marti] The CIA determined that the best concealment device would be the same pen that Trigon had the camera in, and now it contained an ampoule of poison in the barrel where the ink was, and this would cause instant death.
I was able to deliver the pen to Trigon. I just hoped that he would never have to use it. On October 19th, John kissed me goodbye and headed to work. I worked all day. I came home, and I was working in the kitchen, and I heard the truck drive into our driveway, which had gravel. It was kind of like our doorbell. I went to the door expecting John to be there, and it was the chief of our unit. I said, Bill, John didn't tell me you were coming for dinner, and Bill just looked at me.
He said, "Oh, Marti." And I realized in a second that something had happened to John. I was told his helicopter should have taken off below the tree line, but his pilot, for whatever reason, lifted up too high, and the North Vietnamese got a good angle. There was a man in a second helicopter. John was his very best friend, so he tried to turn around and go back, but there were too many enemy in the area. And that night, sitting there, he said, Marti, I tried to get to him, I tried to get him out and,
and it was impossible. The next day, his soldiers, they kept telling me we're getting the body out, and I thought, it's just a body. He wasn't there. I just knew that he wasn't coming home. When I was offered a position in Moscow, the agency said, we think that you are the right person to go. You have had difficult life experiences, so we know you could withstand the difficulties.
June 28th, 1977, I went into this park where Trigon and I had exchanged packages before. I had a log with his new schedule and resupply of the pen and cartridges. I walked down the wooded path and put the package at the base of the lamppost. After an hour, I saw on the road, a small paneled van. I had never seen any car parked in that park. And it had its dome light on, and the windows were steamed over, and I thought, either this is an ambush, or it's Lover's Lane. And then all of a sudden, a man appeared in front of me.
We almost collided, and I stepped off the side of the path. I stood there for about 20 minutes. And then I decided to cross the road. The van was no longer there, and there on the ground by the lamppost was the log. Trigon hadn't been there that night. All my alarms went off. I knew there was something wrong. I realized this was not coincidence. There is no such thing as coincidence in espionage. So, I drove my car by the signal site the next morning.
A signal site is a location where an agent would come and make a mark. -When one of our case officers, sees that mark, we know the dead drop has been loaded. [Marti] The child crossing sign was the actual signal site that we had described to Trigon. I wasn't very close to it when I could see the signal that he made. It was like it had been stenciled. This was bright red. It looked like an artist had drawn it carefully so we wouldn't miss it.
Trigon never made signals like this. Even though we had all these red flags that indicated there was a problem with Trigon, we never aborted an operation when an agent's life was on the line. We had to know whether he was okay or not. I worked my day job. It was very difficult to concentrate. At six o'clock, I went up to the station, and my colleagues were all there. They had the package packed. It was a piece of asphalt, and it contained all the elements that we knew Trigon needed. The camera in the pen, equipment, documents, rubles in low denominations.
I put it in my bag and began a long surveillance detection route. I continued on to the river to where the site was located on the top of a railroad bridge. I took the piece of asphalt out of my purse and slid it into a narrow window. I turned around and came back through the tower and started down the stairs.
I was about the fourth step from the bottom when these three men came at me across the street. [Marti] A van came from underneath the bridge, and men got out. This was the moment that I was arrested by the KGB. I remember the moment so clearly. I attached this receiver on my bra using Velcro, which they had no idea about, and they had a real problem getting it undone 'cause they didn't know you had to pull it apart.
When they have your, their hands inside your blouse, you know, it's pretty bad. Yeah, pretty bad. I realized at that moment I did not know what has happened to Trigon. Whether he's being held in a cell, brutally tortured, or he is already dead. They took me to Lubyanka Prison. [Alexander] Russians suspected of being spies. They were sent to Lubyanka Prison, and they were executed. She was interrogated, and she was an American. You know, America was an enemy.
Is enemy number one. I knew to say absolutely nothing. The chief interrogator asked his technical officer to open the package. They began taking out all the equipment and the documents in the package. They got to the pen, and the chief interrogator said, don't touch it. Lay it on the side, nobody touch it. And it was at that moment that I realized he thought that pen had poison in it, and I knew it was just a camera.
And the only reason he would be afraid of that pen was if he had been there and seen Trigon use it. So, I knew that something really awful had happened to Trigon, something he wouldn't survive. -We knew that if Marti was ambushed, that Trigon was already dead or would be dead soon. That was devastating. I'll never forget that. That was one of the lowest moments in my CIA career. [Marti] The chief interrogator was so angry. I thought something violent was going to happen to me, but after many hours, the chief interrogator said to me, you may go.
Most people think that's odd that they would let me go. But I had diplomatic immunity. When I arrived back at the embassy, I went up to the CIA station, and as I came through the door, all my colleagues were there waiting for me. The chief, who had only newly arrived, said to me, "Oh, I'm so glad you're back." And on the blackboard in his office, he had written, "Our little girl," and I told him, I am nobody's little girl. Even though I knew Moscow better than anyone ever would, I think he believed that if a man had gone out, this wouldn't have happened.
-The Soviet Union said that Martha Peterson, an American Vice Council, was expelled from the Soviet Union last July as a spy. -I left Moscow the next day and flew back to Washington. I came back to CIA headquarters, and I began working again in Washington. But I had this thought in the back of my head that it, it was something I had done and that somehow, I had made a mistake. For the next seven years, I kept myself busy. I got married; I began a family. And it was in 1984 when they finally arrested the man who had caused Trigon's death.
-A former employee of the CIA was arrested in New York City today and charged with spying for the government of Czechoslovakia. He's identified as Karl Koecher. [James] We learned from a source, a CIA translator had been working secretly for Czech intelligence and through Czech intelligence back to the KGB. [Marti] Once the KGB knew that someone in the Soviet embassy was being targeted by the CIA, they began an investigation of all those who had worked in the Soviet embassy and returned to Moscow.
-There's nothing more despicable to us than someone who betrays us from within. Karl Koecher, without any question, was not only a traitor, but he was a killer. He murdered Trigon by giving the KGB that information. [Marti] After Karl Koecher's arrest, we learned the details of what had happened to Trigon. He was in his apartment, and they were watching him. They saw him take out normal everyday things from the bookshelf, a flashlight, some batteries. But then they watched as he opened a secret compartment and took out pieces of paper.
They realized he was preparing for another drop. They barged through his door. They stripped him down and told him that he should confess, and he said, I will write a full confession. He saw his pen laying on the table. He picked it up, and he began to write. As he saw that they weren't watching him, he put the pen in his mouth, bit down, and immediately became unconscious. They tried to revive him, but he died. That was a week before I saw the van in the woods. Losing John, and now Trigon, I was horrified.
I was so sad. I deal with grief head-on. I acknowledge what's happened. I realize that life goes on. You have to continue on the path. I'm affected by it, but I don't dwell on it. It's part of my own place. [Alexander] Trigon's fate was, uh, pretty tragic, but if you decide to cooperate with any intelligence service, including the Russian Intelligence Service, you put your life at risk, and I wouldn't recommend anyone to do that. -I felt so sad and yet so relieved to know that it wasn't something that I had done.
-I think it brings up a bigger issue. It's, it's not necessarily the case officers who are compromising the identity. A lot of times, our assets have been discovered because of double agents and moles. [Marti] He had used that pen and that poison as he had intended. He avoided the torture, all the brutality, and the bullet to the back of the head. After my husband John died, I got a call from CIA headquarters that I had to come sign some insurance papers. I flew to Washington, and I was met by very dear friends who were in Laos with us. And they said to me, Marti, why don't you consider joining the CIA and being a case officer like John would've been?
I realized that maybe that was a plan. I started work on July 3rd, and that was John's birthday. It was a very satisfying career, but it was at a certain time when I realized that I was going to have to tell my children who I worked for. I had given them a story. -That's my mom. Me and my sister were off for the day of school, and we get a phone call from my mom saying, "Hey, I need you to meet me at this time." And that's all she kind of left us with. -I drove them to headquarters, and we went into the front lobby. -My mom showed her badge, and we just pulled right on into the CIA.
I ended up just blurting out, "Mom's a spy," and we all started laughing, but it was like a nervous laugh. There is a memorial to all the CIA officers who have been killed in the line of duty, and among them was the star for John Peterson. It was then that I told them about John and all that he gave to our country, and I told them about my long career and how John was so responsible for my career with CIA. [Tyler] And then she showed me his star, and she just pointed straight to it and said, that's John's, with absolute conviction that was his.
It still gives me goosebumps. I'm literally sitting here with goosebumps right now just thinking about that wall. But you never see anything to hint that mom ever worked at the CIA or that wall would ever mean anything to her. I think she was relieved to give up that secret finally to us and be able to share that with us. I am literally coming to terms still every single day with the life that she had versus the life that we knew. [James] Marti Peterson is an inspiration to all of us. Marti became one of our trainers. She was a role model; she was a mentor.
-If women want to pursue careers in these industries, then they absolutely should, and it's really because of people like Marti and the women who came before her that it's made it into a more mainstream career for females. [Marti] Despite all the hard moments in my life, the tragedy, the disappointments, the fear, the concern that maybe I made a bad mistake, all of that, I would do it again.
