The Team House - The First Female CIA Officer in Moscow, The Widow Spy | Marti Peterson (throwback episode)

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Original airdate 7/16/2021In this episode, the team sits down with legendary CIA case officer Marty Peterson, whose Cold War mission in Moscow led to one of the most dramatic KGB arrests of the era. Marty walks through running a top Soviet asset, the night of the failed dead drop, her capture at Lubyanka Prison, and what she later learned about her agent’s tragic fate. It’s a firsthand look inside real espionage, tradecraft, and the cost of intelligence work at the highest level.00:00 – CIA Widow Spy: Marty Peterson Intro12:40 – Moscow Tradecraft: Dead Drops & Surveillance27:15 – Running Soviet Assets Under KGB Pressure44:10 – Psychological Toll of Life as a CIA Spy1:05:30 – Losing “Trigon”: Top Cold War Asset Compromised1:22:45 – Was There a Mole? Suspecting CIA Compromise1:33:15 – The Failed Dead Drop: Something Is Wrong1:42:02 – KGB Ambush on the Bridge: Marty Is Taken1:46:37 – Inside Lubyanka: Interrogation by the KGB2:04:03 – How Trigon Died: Betrayal, Poison & Cover-Up2:16:14 – Briefing President Carter: From Moscow to the White House2:26:24 – Life After the CIA & Why She Wrote The Widow SpyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special Operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hi, everyone. This is Episode 103 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with co-host Dave Park.

Tonight, we are super excited to be joined with our guest, Marty Peterson. She is the author of The Widow Spy. she was one of the very first, actually she was the first CIA case officer sent to Moscow, but there's so much more to her story than just that. Her husband was a Green Beret and then a CIA paramilitary officer who was unfortunately killed in Laos during the war. And Marty kind of stepped right into his jungle boots and joins the CIA herself, goes through all the training to become a case officer, learns Russian, and gets deployed to Moscow

out where she handled a strategic asset and then went on to have a 32-year career at Central Intelligence. So, Marty, we're so excited to have you here today. Thank you so much. I really am looking forward to this. So, Marty, Jack and I have a major, like, superhero comic book geeks, and every good superhero has an origin story, how they gain their powers. And one of the things that we like to ask our guest is, how did you get your powers? Like, How did you grow up? How did you become who you became? I was a younger daughter, and I think second children always have a little energy that the first child doesn't have.

We're there to do first things, and my mother always said, you know, my sister was just doing fine, but Martha, well, she always did things differently. So I guess I just started out that way. Yeah. And did you have any aspirations to work for the government when you were growing up? Was any of that there? No. Dave, I knew two pieces of the government, the post office and the IRS. Those are the only two pieces that had any impact on me.

So, no, I had no idea. And without all the internet and all then when I was growing up, we had no idea about the CIA or Washington or any of that. And can you tell us then about like going to college, what your major was and how you met John and how that that relationship began and what kind of took you into this world? I went to a small university in New Jersey, Drew University right outside of New York. and it was, it is a Methodist college, small liberal arts college. I met him the first week in college, and he and I, there were sparks there, but he went on and dated other people as I did, and he majored in physics, and I majored in sociology. The study of the obvious is what John always called it.

He was studying serious things. and I was studying sociology. So then, you know, when we graduated, he was accepted at three journalism schools. He was an excellent writer, Columbia, Iowa, and Montana. And he decided to enlist in the Army. This was 1967. He was bound to go to Vietnam.

But he decided to go into the Green Berets and he wanted a fighting chance, and that's what he got. He was on an A team up in Kontim Plakou, up in the North, and ran with Montagnar team. Yeah, Kontom is up where command and control North was, I believe. That's what he was. He was CCC. Oh, so he was with Mac V. Sack.

Yes, he was. Oh, wow. Okay, that's not in the book. I didn't know he was with. No, it isn't. Well, you know, I didn't know that until I recently. read a book on what they did. And he never told me any of that coming out on those helicopter leashes.

And oh, my Lord. Oh, wow. So he was on a recon team with Mac V. Sack. Like, his story is so wild. Yeah. That's word. Did you, did you guys, were you together by the time you graduated college? Or was it after that that you let the spark take you?

Yes. Now, the last two years in college, we were together, and that was great fun. We'd study and then go out for a picture of beer, and, yeah, it was just great fun. We'd both graduated amazingly, amazingly, but then he went into the Army. And did you have any saying that, or did you have an opinion about it when he was making that decision? Yes, I did. I said, this is not how I figured this would work. and he said, I want to write, but to write real things, you have to have authentic experiences.

He was smart, and he knew he had to live some before he could really make an impact as a writer. That's amazing. Yeah, it's hardcore. And I mean, you know, like so many other, you know, girlfriends and wives and spouses at that time, I mean, you can see that guys are coming home in body bags from the war every day. I mean, you must have been, even though you didn't know he was doing the most dangerous job in Vietnam. I mean, you still know he's a green beret. I mean, you got to, there's that tension that you're worried about getting bad news. Right.

He would write to me, of course, when he was back at the base. And he received two special awards and got two free trips. So I knew he was doing something really worthwhile. He got one trip to Taiwan and one to Bangkok. And when we went to Laos later, he said, you know, I may have been here before. So I got an idea, but he never told me what he had done. Now, that's a really unique story, too. You went to Laos to be near this.

As you guys got, yeah, as you getting married and going there. because now he's with the CIA. Right. He didn't tell me he was going to apply to the CIA because we weren't married yet. And then when we got married, he said, oh, by the way, I applied to the CIA. And he took a training for nine months at the farm. And then he said, well, by the way, we're going to a little town in Laos, Paxay, which was 12 kilometers from the Hocuman Trail.

I mean, we were in it. But it was a, you know, a little town. It was a little city. It was very normal. Native Lao town. I mean, at this, it's a different world, of course. This is early 1970s. John was a paramilitary officer working in Laos.

And your role as the wife, you kind of became like the minimum wage secretary. if that, for the CIA. Yes, and I rather resented that, but we were really free labor, and they really needed the extra clerical help there because they couldn't afford to send secretaries out. So the wives filled in those jobs. Yeah, I was a jazz four typist that, you know,

if I didn't have decided not to file, capable at the end of the week, I decided maybe I should just shred it. And that way I wouldn't have to file it. But yeah, I was somewhat resentful. But I knew they gave us all jobs just so we wouldn't sit in the afternoons and drink. Right. And what was that culture like? Because there were other wives there in Laos near the Hoachman Trail during the Vietnam War. What was that life like for you? Because did have your own little subculture? Well, yes.

There was only us. There were, I can say there were probably under 30 Americans there. There were some US aid officers there. But generally, the CIA wife stuck together, and we all had parties together, and we got very tired of each other. You know? There's no TV. no radio, there's no newspapers. There are a hand, no, not even a handful of nightclubs where, you know, you went and drank and

beer and watched the girls, you know, were the boys, whatever they were. So, yeah. You mentioned at one point in the book, like, what was the story with the index cards that you would put like really funny things in there to kind of like play a practical joke on some of the other agency employees? And then you realized he didn't read. any of them. He just filed them. Right. So these were,

this was Intel. I put quotes around that because it was very low level. These were reports from the Roadwatch teams, the teams that would go out and sit on the Ho Chi Men Trail and then report back. So they would give us their

coordinates and then they would give us a brief description of what they saw. So as the clerk typist, I would roll a little three by five card into a manual typewriter and I would type what they said. Well, some of them said no action, a small platoon, seven men, you know, whatever. And then they would say they spotted an elephant or so I would write a small platoon

with short arms and long, long legs. fur and I would make these things up on these cards, thinking that the reports officer who now had to plot these on a huge wall map with pins would read them. But he didn't. He just read the coordinates and just put the pin there and filed these three by five cards. Eventually, I knew I had typed up many, many, many, maybe two dozen. And I said, Billy, do you read those cards? And he said, oh, no, they're just junk. And I thought, yeah, they are because I made it up. But it was my own amusement. I think it was my own little playground I had. And meanwhile, what is, what is John's job? What was your husband's job over there? And

what was he doing kind of day to day? They were the paramilitary officers there. They're. They're, went to recruit and train, equip, and then deploy Lao irregular soldiers and many of them were young, you know, 17, 18.

And they would take them up to our training camp and train them, and then they would equip them with arms and uniforms, and then they would deploy them on helicopters into HLZs, where they would then disperse and engage the North Vietnamese Army that was using the Ho Chi Men Trail to move weapons and machinery and all munitions, everything, down the Hoichemen Trail to South Vietnam.

So their job was to interdict the flow of that military supply line. they occasionally would dig a big hole and put brush over it and you know it was a great morning when we caught a tank in one of those traps what wasn't good of course was that the people inside the tank were often chained inside there so it was that it was a real low level war effort but it was very effective they they say that it is one of the most effective secret wars during the Vietnam War. It was one of the most successful efforts

with the fewest amount of people because there were just a handful of these paramilitary officers in Fux Day. Right. What were they called again? Like GRP1, GRP2, like that, if I recall?

They were the group mobiles. Yes. I think that was from the French. Yeah, like you said, I mean, it was a very small effort with a white footprint, a light American footprint, not at all like Vietnam. They were not, yeah, the huge military infrastructure in place. And so John was going out there, he wasn't just training them. He was also going forward with a radio telephone operator with his RTO and like doing some sort of like field mentoring, advising. Right.

And, I mean, they would fly above the troops after they infilled them, and then they would cover them with the importers, the plane Pilates porters. And they would fly overhead and track them and find out. And then, of course, know where they engage the enemy. Sometimes when the Lao ran into a big group of North Vietnamese, they leave their weapons behind and walk out. You know, it was, they were not fighters. It wasn't their fight. It wasn't their war. And they knew it.

It was, they were all volunteers. And it was a way to make money and it was exciting, I guess, for young men. But for the most part, they did a good job in what they were supposed to be doing. They were really engaging the North Vietnamese. and that was to interdict that flow. And I think that was the effective part. Can you tell us, I mean, this is a story that really tugs at your heart when you read your book. But it is titled The Widow Spy.

Can you tell us what happened to John out there? Yes. So this was a big operation, and they put in several group mobiles into this HLZ. And John rarely landed with the troops. Like I said, they covered them from above. They rarely got approval from Vianchan to, from our chief station and Vianchon to actually land with the troops. But this was a big operation, a lot of people.

So John wanted very badly to land with his troops, which he did. and his, there was another man with him, Kamsing. All of the Americans had loud code names. John's was Tumach, and his very best friend, Kamsing, was also on the ground. And so the troops got in, and it seemed like they were engaging a little bit. So John got in his helicopter, as did Kamsing, he was in another helicopter. And the HLZ, of course, was wide open, but the perimeter had trees. And, of course, if you stayed below those tree lines, no one could get a shot at the helicopter.

But John's pilot lifted up, and the helicopter was shot down. It, of course, hit the ground and burst into flames as helicopters do. And Comsing watched this and tried very desperately to land. and within minutes, John's team came in, his loud team, and tried to get him out, but he was dead and badly burned. And I think one of the ops assistants got off the chopper, but John didn't. And then they had to carry his body away from the scene because they really came under a lot of fire then. And so his team carried him into the jungle. And they didn't get his body out until the next day or so.

I felt badly that, you know, John was gone. And, you know, they were really endangering themselves, but they were so loyal to him. He was a wonderful leader. He really was truly a gifted leader of the, kind of people in that type of situation and they were they were wonderful. The wives of those team members came to my house the next day which was very unusual. The Lauer very passive and generally don't come but they came and we sat in a circle and

they were clearly all shaken by the fact that this American had died. So, That was in the middle of the afternoon that he died. And so I worked my normal day and headed home, the van took me home. And I was fixing dinner and sitting in the living room. And we had a gravel driveway. And it was a good door, not a doorbell, because you could hear trucks driving on the gravel. And I heard the truck come in. And I thought it was John, of course.

And I went to the door. And it was the chief of our unit. And I said, Bill, John didn't tell me you were coming for dinner. And Bill looked at me and he said, oh, Marty. And I knew then that something had happened to John. And so then he came in and the whole office came in. You know, it's just you all have been there, and you know it's just beyond comprehension. You can't even think.

They were all wonderful to me. And we had the next night, everybody came, and we had our own little memorial in wake, and then I flew home the next day to a world that was so remote from where I'd been. what I felt so passionately about. And that was towards the end of that war in Laos, it didn't get me better then. So that was October 19, 1972. And at that point, yeah, you were writing that the security situation for you and the families was deteriorating in Laos.

And there's debates about how, whether, how much longer you should stay there. And, you know, even though this was such an overwhelming, shocking thing to happen, I recall reading in the book where you tell some of the other agency employees, none of you need to die trying to get John's remains back. You didn't want anyone else to get killed trying to recover your husband. And so I think there's a little bit of that even seen in you that early on in that moment of what was to come in the future, that sort of service or that sort of dedication to. others and to the mission. And despite all that, they did recover John, thankfully, and you escorted, went home. And I mean, that was just such an ordeal in the book as well, having the funeral and all these people show up.

And you're like, what, 25, 24? 27. We were about 27. 27. Yeah. Yeah. It's shocking in a way, and yet I can tell you three weeks before John's death, a very good friend of his died up in northern Laos. And John had sat me down when he saw how upset I was about his death.

And John sat me down and said, Marty, this is real here. We're not playing here. And this could happen to any of us. And if that happens, this is what you do. And he gave me kind of a roadmap of how to go on after that, that I was to give the insurance money to his family and that I would be all right. And he gave me a certain calmness about it that three weeks later, I had in my heart. you know, I knew what he

intended for me. Sounds kind of eerie that he foretold that. Maybe I would have never remembered it had nothing ever happened to him. Yeah. Yeah. Marty, out of curiosity, did Tomak mean, do you know what that meant in Lao?

Was it a name or like a call sign? Yeah. Tomok? Yeah. It was a name. Okay. I didn't... A common name, yeah. I didn't know if the... like the guys were giving each other shit and gave them like crazy like call signs in law or

if it was just a common name. That makes sense. No, I think they were all, well, I have to tell you a story then. In 2015, I went to Los Angeles where my daughter was working and she worked there at night at a club. And so she sent a van for me to come and pick me up at the airport. So the guy came, I was coming down the escalator. He held up the sign, you know, are you, you know. I said, that's me.

We got the suitcase. We went out to the van and it was just he and I. So I sat right behind him. I could see him in the mirror. And so we started chatting as we left the airport. And I asked him. I said, where are you from? And he said, oh, I'm from the Far East.

And I said, oh, where? And he said, Thailand. And I said, oh, really? I lived in Laos. He said, in Vienchon, the capital. And I said, no, I lived in Paxay. And he said, Paxay. He said, my mother lives in Paxay.

And he said, I used to live in Paxay. He said, I flew T-28s for the CIA. And I said, then you must have known my husband, Tamak. And he said, I knew Tamak, and I knew Kam Singh. Wow. That's surreal. That is amazing. That gives you chills, doesn't it?

Yeah. In all the people in Los Angeles. But pick you up. Yeah. That's amazing. So when we got to my daughter, daughter's apartment, you know, he and I cried some and laughed and all the way to our apartment. We get to the apartment. I get out. He gets out. He gets my suitcase. And I turn around to say goodbye.

And, of course, he and I embrace. And my daughter said, Mom, that was a very short ride. That's amazing. You know, it is a small world. It is. That's unreal. Now, I think that it's an interesting point of transitioning into your career is it seems like there's been a mental change maybe for for Peter and also for you in the sense that he went, you know, into special forces to live a life to struggle to be a better writer. But then something must have grown within him in order to continue after a service and to go into the CIA. And then you also, you said, you know, you were not a happy, you know, secretary at the time. But when you were returning to the states, you, you, like you went back to this world that wasn't yours and you'd left this cause that you believed in. What was happening with both of you or you in particular at that time? You mean in our dedication or our feeling of mission?

Sure. Well, I think the CIA at the time and probably still now is a very mission-oriented group. And I think I got that in spades. I was part of this driven force. I mean, when John was in Vietnam, he knew CIA officers. They actively recruited him. He came home knowing that's what he wanted to do. Did he quit writing?

No. And he wrote the whole time he was in Laos, and part of that journal is in the book. Because he really loved writing. That was his passion. But he really felt so strongly about what we were doing in Vietnam and in Laos. as I came to really believe in all that too. And, of course, I was a member, a child of the Cold War. You know, I sat under desks in elementary school,

and the nuclear war was a real threat. And so I think all of that came together in that time, the communist bad people, you know, that force against communism. So, Marty, you get back home, have gone through this entire horrendous ordeal. When does this idea start to creep up into your mind that you want to go back into it, that you want to go and get some payback for what happened to your husband, that you want to go and actually do step into John's shoes in a very real way?

You know, it wasn't my idea. And I really am a person who lives in the moment. And I really believe when our friend Tom and Gerald, Tom, had been in Laos, well, they both had been in Laos with us. And Tom had worked with John. And Tom said, Marty, why don't you do what John was going to do? That was a key thing to say. Wouldn't you love to take up your husband's mission? And, you know, it's like women taking their husband's position as a senator or congressman or governor or whatever.

But you really do feel that identity connection that, you know, you can fill that space. And that's why I thought, well, I can do that. But I probably never thought I couldn't do anything. It was interesting that it was a little rocky. even though you had an inside connection trying to help you get into the CIA, there were not very many women case officers at this time. And like I said, very, very rocky just trying to get you through the front door. Like you mentioned that you go in for an interview. And after a couple hours, the guy's like, okay, well, we can offer you a secretary position.

Yeah, that's pretty distressing. But it was so common women were teachers, nurses, secretaries, and stay at a lot. home mothers, and that was what was offered us. And yeah, to get an interview to go into the operations track was a challenge. But I had

wonderful mentors who really stuck with it. The thought that this one man wanted me to go as his girl Friday to Madrid, you know, come on. That's pretty transparent. You know, I'm 29 years old and, you know,

or 28 even, you know, Now, it was really bad. It was really bad. And I found then I had support of mail management within CIA that I didn't even work for them. But they realized this guy is really bad news. So, yeah. So how did you overcome that? How did you get around people like that?

No, I just wouldn't, I wouldn't quit. And I kept saying, no, I want to be an operations office. I have a master's degree. I have overseas experience. I speak for languages. What more do you want? Right. Yes.

I'm a real deal here. Yeah. I'm not a lot of way. I'm not somebody's wife. And I'm someone in and unto myself. And I think they finally heard that. That's amazing. And so the foot door finally opens,

you're allowed into to begin your training. You tell us a little bit about that whole process and when you start to think about your future in CIA and where it is, what it is you'd like to do there? I must say, walking through that lobby, I think the stars were on the wall when I walked through the lobby on my first morning. And there was a lot of repressed tears

and emotion. I couldn't believe. John had walked those very steps. And you know that I EODed. I started to work on his birthday, July 3rd. It was more than most people would have thought was acceptable. But I was, I was driven. I really was. And I think having a mission really helped me through some of the awful grieving and sadness. So I met my other career trainee people. And, you know, the last thing I was going to say, I'm a widow. Because then they'd say, oh, they gave her an advantage. I think I always tried to push that to the side.

Nothing against John, but I wanted to be who I was. Right. And of value by myself. So, but they were all very curious. There were very few women in that. class of 40 some. Yeah. How did you take to the training that you're now going to live in this whole clandestine world of dead drops and aliases and, you know, source handling?

What are you thinking as you're kind of stepping into this world? I guess I just realized that this was my new challenge. You know, I have to tell you, I'm a Gemini and I believe in astrology. And I believe that Gemini's do have two persons. So being undercover was kind of a natural for me. And I guess I also have a touch of actress or ability to act. And so I think I felt okay with it. I lied to my mother, my father, my sister, my neighbors.

You know, I took to it. I thought that was interesting. and I was very confident I could do whatever they told me I could do. Was the farm still nine months at that point in time? No, it wasn't. The training at the time, we had training in Arlington for a while to learn the whole thing about the intel community and where CIA fit and then the organization and all of that about CIA.

And then in January of 74, we went to the farm. And, of course, that's when Jimmy Carter's gas thing was happening. So driving back and forth to Washington was probably difficult because we'd have to wait in line for gas to drive back to the farm. But every step that they, how they trained us was a logical progression. and you learned one piece and then another, and it was exceptional training. It really was. And all of the training was accompanied by role playing.

So you actually tried out your abilities. You proved it to yourself that you could do it. I remember that the instructor who at the end of a series of meetings, I actually had to recruit. And we were in a small office, and there was a sofa, and I was on one end, and he was on the other. I tell you, by the time I recruited that man, he was hanging off the arm of his chair trying to. It was very difficult for him to accept the fact that this young woman was recruiting him, even though it was just role playing. You know, it was funny.

That's fascinating. Very satisfying. And when does it start this, well, when you learn, obviously, that they're going to teach you Russian, but when does this idea start to come about that they're not just going to deploy you as an operations officer, you're going to get deployed to, you know, the world series of espionage? Right. Well, of course, that didn't happen until I had to turn down to assignments that were what I was told by the way. who held them were the girls' positions. And I wasn't going to do that. I wanted a real

operations standalone, you know. What were the girls' missions at the time? Well, so one was in the Far East and a small station there, and you'd go out and meet maybe a couple of safe housekeepers or low-level assets, but you weren't assessing and developing and recruiting people. You were, you were just running agents and doing name traces and things like that. Those were the girl positions. The boys were out really whining and dining and getting into the ministries and local, as well as the foreign element in a city, trying to, you know, figure out who the good targets were and how to go about recruiting them.

So I wasn't interested in the girl jobs. So you turned down the girl jobs. What do you tell your bosses you want? I didn't tell them anything. I just said, well, they knew what I wanted. I wanted what all the guys wanted. I wanted a good ops officer position in an overseas post. So then my mentor came to me and he said,

Marty, this man wants to interview you. So I went really cold. I think I knew he was going to be chief of station in Moscow. and I sat down with him. Well, Bob's, Bob had a wonderful dry sense of humor. And so we chatted a while and he said, you know, you'd be the first woman out there, especially a single woman. He said, but I'm a single guy and they've never sent a single guy out there either.

So, you know, we laughed about that. And he said, you know, if you get arrested or I get arrested, it's all going to be the same. It's going to hurt. they hit us. So he knew, you know, and he laid it right out that that was the risk. And it was hardcore. But like I said, I don't think I ever turned down a challenge. It was exciting and interesting and why not. It was, like you said, the hardest of targets out there. And there was some sort of like, I mean, I guess it could happen, certainly happen to men, too, that they send Natasha's to seduce them. But there was also some kind of chauvinistic thing that maybe it sent Boris to seduce a female case officer, right? Yeah, I waited. I waited.

Yeah, 21 months. Never happened. But I have to tell you, Bob and I laughed about it because he said he waited too. And there was never a Natasha at the door. So disappointing. Maybe like the Russian Honeypot program was on hiatus at that time. Yeah, yeah. I guess so. Yeah. Out of curiosity, you said Carter was the president. Were you, were his cutbacks on the CIA and sort of emphasis on the NSA?

Was that before after you entered the agency? Well, I don't know. I was referring to Jimmy Carter and the gasoline prices. Oh, okay, okay. No, then that was Schlesinger, and that was later on. Okay.

I was just curious if you, if you saw because that's sort of like a part of history, something you read about that Carter had this favoritism towards technological and believe that human was dead. But I was...

No, no, that was Stansfield Turner. Oh, Stanfield Turner. Okay. Go ahead. We'll talk about because that comes in later in the book. Oh, does it? Okay. All right. Great. Great. She meets all these characters. Yes. So talk to us about how you get the, you, he, you pass the interview then, I take it. You pass the interview and they're going to send you to Moscow. What's the preparation to get ready for this and then getting over, getting sent over there? So I had to take 44 weeks of Russian language.

I had to have a good conversational knowledge of Russian. So then I went to Russian class for 44 weeks every day with some periods of time where I was a, we were in intensive Russian language where we only spoke Russian. And then, yeah, it was hard. And then, of course, when I got out of it, they tested us. And our instructors at the time were older people who had emigrated. And actually, they had lived in St. Petersburg. And we were long into Leningrad.

So they were older people that had, I felt, didn't have the current language. So there was some disconnect in the language I learned. But when I got to Moscow, that's what there was. All right. So, Marty, tell us about arriving in Moscow, because this is very different than Laos, obviously very different than America. The entire, it's a non-permissive, denied environment that you are going into where you're just under observation. And, well, I'll let you tell it. Please explain to us.

Well, I left Fort Lauderdale, and it was a beautiful sunny, warm day and I flew via Frankfurt to Moscow and when we landed it was like three in the afternoon it was pretty dark but this is November 5th and of course

the winter is really setting in and the plane landed and I thought why is there sand on the side of the runway and then I realized that it was snow and it had already they'd have a major snowstorm in the end of

of October. So that was a big alert. And of course, you know, in 75, we didn't have polar tech yet. So I had a camel coat with a pile lining. And I struggled to put that on. And they had no jetway. So we had to walk down the stairs right onto the

tarmac. And it was cold. It was like 20 degrees. And it was really cold coming from Florida. And so as I walked to the terminal, there was a big sign over the terminal door, you know, Moskba. And I thought, gee, I wonder how many eyes are looking at me. And I thought, I wonder if that stencil that they put on my forehead shows that says, CIA, you feel like you have no clothes on.

You feel like everyone must know who you are. But of course, nothing seemed to happen very differently. I went in like everybody else. I had to go in the diplomat line because I had a black passport. I was a diplomat. And so I handed him my passport and he looked up and looked down, looked up, and he called someone over and I thought, hey, I wonder what's going to happen? And he just stamped it and off I went.

And a man from the embassy was there. not one of my CIA colleagues. They had someone else meet me. And he had a Soviet driver in a black Zill and put me in the car. And off we went into Moscow. And we chatted a little, you know, how's the weather? I didn't know this man. And I knew the Soviet driver was listening.

So that was all we said. He dropped me at the Beijing Hotel. He helped me get my bag out, and there I was. And he gave me no rubles. I hadn't brought any rubles with me. So I got into the hotel. And the worst thing in Moscow, whenever you went into a hotel, they took away your passport. Now, that isn't a happy moment.

Now you're there without anything. You just, you know who you are, and that's about it. but they take it of course and process it and copy it and all what they have to do. So then I got into the elevator and they had a man on the elevator. It was a cage, you know, so they pulled the cage across and we went. And then there's a lady on every floor in any hotel in Moscow. And they're called the Hall Dragons. And they keep the keys.

So I stopped and told her the room number and she gave me my keys and I got into my hotel room and I thought, oh, I made it. You know, I'm safe here. And of course, the phone rang off and on all night. But as I stood there, I thought, you know, this is just a hotel room. And if they're watching me, what are they going to see? You know, I'm just going to wash up and go to bed. But the problem was I had no roubles. and I thought, I wonder if I can go downstairs to the hotel and charge my room.

But I decided, you know, I've made it to the hotel. I was tired. And so I opened my suitcase and my mother had packed a bag of apples, Macintosh apples in my suitcase. And I thought, what a sweet thing mother did? She knew how much I loved apples and we didn't have any apples in Lowe. So this was just a wonderful welcome home for me. And I had taken the cheese and crackers off the Lufthansa plane and put them in my purse.

So I had cheese and crackers and apples for dinner. I don't think I was probably starving. I was nervous and excited. So the next morning, I got up and I had to kind of find the embassy. Well, of course, that was no big deal because I had. had long studied the map of Moscow. I knew every twist and turn at that point. So I walked out, but I didn't wear a hat and I didn't have my gloves on. And this little old lady came up to me on this street that next morning and said, you don't have your hat on. And I thanked her

and went on my way to the embassy. Yeah, it was quite a welcome to Moscow. And so what was the reception like at the embassy because, of course, you're a CIA officer, but as far as most people in the embassy, they just think you're like, what, a secretary, right? Yes. They all thought I was an admin, a clerk. And I never disabused anyone. I never really talked about my work. But that's true about most places. That's not the first thing you talk about, you know, where you come from, what you do, that kind of thing. So I got to the Marine Guard, which was on the ninth floor. It was an upside down embassy with the top floor was where he went in. The embassy guard was there, and he signed me in and called a secretary in the office where I was allegedly working.

She came and got me and took me down to the office. I met everyone, hung up my coat, and then she took me the rest of the way down one flight of stairs where the actual CIA station was. And so she got me into there. And when I opened the door into that box, there were all my colleagues from training. There was Bob, my new Chiva Station, and all the other fellas,

and two of the wives who worked in this station. So it was wonderful. It was like a box inside the room, right, to help eliminate bugs. listening devices and things like this. Yeah, that was wholly inspectable. You could see every single side. There were really no power lines into it that weren't somehow, you know, protected.

That's interesting. Now, when you were there under State Department cover, did you have to do a State Department job? Did you put in like eight hours a day or whatever as a State Department employee? You know, I will say yes. I can't tell you any more than that. Sure. The State Department doesn't like me to go into, but I did work an eight-hour job, and I worked that the second year I was there, worked in an office where there were eight Soviet women in the office, so they could have

observed me all the time. So I really did work eight hours at the job. It was a full-time job. And so the U.S. government, of course, gives you two paychecks, right? You're getting one for your job at the State Department and one from the CIA. That's how that works, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, no. No, I must say, I did get paid overtime by the State Department when I worked overtime in my covered job. So that was a good thing. But, oh, no, people always say, yeah. No, I was the lowest paid office officer in the station. I was a, you know, brand new officer. So, yeah. There wasn't anything to spend money on it.

It didn't matter, did it? You know? So it really was that by day you were the sort of mild-mannered State Department secretary or something, but by night, you're Marty, the CIA officer out there doing sneaky things around Moscow. That's right. Yeah, my name is Marty, but they all call me party, Marty. And that was my persona. That was my persona.

I drank a lot of Carlsberg. beer and I had friends at the Marine House and I invited all the single embassy women to go with me in my car and I'd take them out and we'd take picnics or go out and while they were standing there, I'd take a picture with my Nikon camera, you know, but they didn't know right there behind them was the drop site where I was recasing it. You know, there was always a point to where I was going. That's amazing. Yeah. And so what was those? sorts of initial experiences like in Moscow. I mean, what was Moscow like in, I believe this was 1975? And what were some of your initial taskings, things for, you know, the first female case

officer in Moscow to do? Yeah. Well, what all the officers did when they got there was the first thing was to get a car. And so the Soviets had a fiat that they manufactured in the Soviet Union. And so my job the first week I was there was to go to our office in the embassy where there was a Soviet lady. And she would take us out to a lot that was right next to a train line, a rail line. And there they all floated all these little jiggly. And they were bright yellow, orange, purple, turquoise blue, chargers green. they were all colors. I'm telling you, this lot was huge.

So I looked at all of them, and I thought, none of them looked very sedate. So I picked an orange one. Well, you know, another guy in the office had a turquoise one, and Bob had a, you know, a yellow one. So we looked like every other car in Moscow. There were those who did bring cars from home or imported. them from Sweden or Germany, those cars never started when the temperature was 30 below. The jingoli started, yeah.

So that was my first job. And then with the car, I had the ability to really start looking to see whether the KGB was following me. And what I had to do to really be secure in knowing that was to wear a piece of equipment called the SRR 100. It was a small size like a cigarette pack, and it had an on-off switch, and it had a squelch, and it had in it the one frequency, one crystal, one frequency of the frequency that the KGB used in their surveying,

teams to communicate between each other. So if one car, one surveillance car, one KGB car, spoke to another car, we could hear it. Wow.

So we had this little radio and then there was a plug in at the top and then a neck loop that went around. So we plugged that in and then we had a wireless earpiece. It was induction to the the antenna.

So we'd turn this on. The men had a harness. Headquarters had sewn a harness to put the little radio or receiver in. But you see, I have different equipment and the harness didn't fit

me. So in February of 1976, a little known fact, headquarters sent us a new invention and it was called Velcro So I took it home. I took this strip of Velcro home and I tore up a t-shirt and I made a little pocket for it that I hooked on to the side of my bra.

And so then I could slip the little receiver in there, put the neck loop on, the earpiece in. Now, all the men wore them too and they were always under their t-shirt, under their dress shirt. We wanted no one in the embassy, of course, to know that we wore these things, which, of course, was our real insight into whether a team was following you. So the chief of the station, Bob would go out and he could hear in his radio. The team would say, up, targets turned right, up, targets turn left, targets lost. Bob often got lost. targets home. And then I would wear it and I would go out and I could drive for hours.

And I never heard anything. And I always changed the batteries because I figured it was operator error. Obviously the batteries were dead. That's why I wasn't hearing anything. But occasionally I would be with someone out on the street or in the environs near someone and I would hear their teams. So we always wore this. But so the takeaway was they didn't

think women worked as spots. True. Absolutely. That was why they didn't follow me. Why would you follow Party Marty? You know, you can see what she's doing. My pattern was flatline. You know, I didn't do anything jerky, herky, jerky, or anything.

I just followed a very normal pattern. And, okay, so now I got to have you tell us about Trigon. Who was Trigon? How does this enter the picture for you? Right. The reason we were in Moscow, other than technical collection, which is a whole different world, was to run agents that we recruited overseas. So we would recruit an agent, for instance, in Bogota, Columbia.

Trigon was an agent who we recruited there. We came upon him when we listened to the telephone chat that we had on the Soviet embassy in Bogota. And eventually we determined that he was not a typical Soviet. He colored outside the lines. He had a girlfriend, but his wife was there. He was married. And he hated the Soviet system. And it became very clear in his attitude on the phone.

I must say it takes a while to figure out who it is you're listening to without caller ID. And we're very spoiled today, but we didn't have caller ID. You had to listen and figure this out who the different speakers were on the phone. phone. So we determined that he had this girlfriend and that she was going back to Madrid where her family lived and she had some tax issues there in Bogota. She was going home, I think, to get money from her family to pay the back taxes. So we would listen to the phone calls after she left and we determined when she was coming back to Moscow, or back to Bogota. And so we knew the flight and the time, and Trigon was going to meet her at the airport.

So we met with her. We stopped her before she got to the exit point, and two of our officers went and talked to her and said, you know, you might want to consider getting Trigon to come meet us. we have an offer that he probably won't want to refuse. So she got the message. She went and told Trigon. And he met us then at the signed date and time in the Hilton Hotel in the Turkish Bath. You can't make these things.

Truth is the basis of all good fiction. And why a Turkish bath, well, you have to have to. wear a towel so you can't hide a microphone or anything like that. So these two men met in the Turkish bath and Trigon like all good assets, many of the best ones, was a volunteer, really. He said, yes, that's what I want to do. I'll do this. I will spy for the U.S. government and you pay me money. That sounds like a good deal. So he was right on it. And so then we began to meet him regularly. at various safe houses around Bogota. And it was clear he had great access,

but he was a Ministry of Foreign Affairs officer. He was not a KGB officer. So what he had access to mostly was information about the Soviets' influence in Latin America and in Colombia and the area. And that was, of course, very interesting to the analysts at home. But, of course, more interesting was his agreement to go back to Moscow and spy for us there. So we trained him on various things on how to write secret writing on the back of letters, how to

receive radio broadcasts and then to decipher the message that he receives Were these the so-called what are they the random number stations that read? Yes, this is the one-time pads that's what they're called, one-time pets

they were on small pieces of very thin tissue like water-soluble paper and they were groups of numbers, five numbers in a group all the way across. He would match up what he was hearing with a number, and then he would write the numbers under it and then decipher it. He could encipher using another pad if he wanted to encipher a letter to us. And we also trained him on how to use a miniature camera. The miniature camera was in a black fountain pen. And when I, of course, give us, talk to younger people,

I have to show them what a fountain pen looks like, you know. But the camera itself was in the barrel of the pen. He would hold it over the document and plunge the top down. Every time he plunged the top, it would take a picture of a full piece of paper and it would advance the film. And all of that was in this big

fountain pen. It was a one-time thing. It was created by CIA for this. So we trained him on how to use this. He had a fake pen, a real pen, that he carried with him all the time, and then he had

the one pen that had the camera in it. So he learned how to do that. He was very proud of himself. He was a very astute. man and he did this very well. Then we also trained him on how to do dead drops, how to find a rock or a log in the forest that had spy equipment in it. We taught him some about how to determine if he was being followed, that kind of all those

tradecraft things that he needed to know before he went back to Moscow. He also then eventually came him a signal site that he came up with in Moscow that he could use but was never written down anywhere. And that was a park car signal site in a parking place in front of his mother's apartment. So he was, like I said, a very astute and willing spy. And he gave us a lot of documentary intelligence. before he left, we gave him a schedule of drop sites in Moscow, a brief description that he memorized. And we put that schedule in the back of a hardback book and the inside cover under the glued-in piece of paper there. So he had a full schedule when he left to go to Moscow.

But when he got to Moscow, right, he kind of went dark. Like there is some difficulty in CIA and your station reconnecting with their asset. Right. Well, he was told to he would be on ice for a year. But there was some difference of opinion whether he should pick up a package before then. And yeah, we went through some difficult times. I also need to tell you that one of the stipulations he had, was that we would give him a way to commit suicide.

And that was the only way he would agree to go back to Moscow. That was his stipulation. Yes, it was. And so we decided that that ability would be also in an identical pen that we would give him in Moscow. So he, in fact, had three pins, the one, plain one, the one with a camera, and then later on the one with a poison. He didn't take the one with a camera back with him. We had to deliver that to him.

And the pen, as I understood it in the book, was if you unscrewed it, the cartridge, the ink cartridge had actual poison in it that he would bite down on. Right, right, where the ink reservoir was. So he could bite through the actual outside of the pen. Oh, okay, okay. And he would puncture that poison capsule. And was it cyanide or what was it you guys gave him? I never asked. I mean, and that's a lot of trust on his part to receive something like that,

kind of a one-time used thing and go, it's going to work. That's okay. It's a one-time use. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you don't practice. You don't train. Right, right. And I think we all worried that he would use it. Prematurely, right. Yeah, exactly. If he got scared or something and was seeing ghosts on the street or something like that, that he might get nervous, yeah. So they didn't bring in dentists to implant like a tooth, a cyanide capsule on his tooth. That always worried me in the sense of like, you're eating a bite down. And it pops out. Yeah, you just wouldn't want to eat popcorn, right? Right.

Right. Get that curle of. Oh, no. How long, for, especially in an environment like the Soviet Union, such a non-permissive environment, how long would you train him in tradecraft or train somebody like that in tradecraft before you felt comfortable making them operational? As long as you have. Okay.

You know, we've trained people on the run. We really have. Because it's however much time you have, you use all that time. Because you're trying to, you're kind of putting them through a mini farm in a way. You're trying to make them skilled. Yeah. Absolutely. Plus, he's now having to be in Moscow by himself without any coaching, without anyone saying,

other than our packages to him. And we'd say, you know, great package. But we never wanted to say too much because we didn't want to, if someone else found the package, identify him. Right. And as I recall, it was, I believe it was Jack who pitched Trigon in Bogota, got him on board. Oh, no. No, no. But he did meet him in Bogota.

Okay, okay. So, and then Jack is with you in Moscow, so there's some continuity. Gotcha. Right. Okay. Go ahead. So eventually Trigon put a signal down that he was ready to receive a package. And I arrived on the 5th of November, and this was like the middle of December.

He put this mark down, which, of course, later on, the KGB, of course, thought there was some reason that this all collided there. but it was just timing. And so he put a marked signal down saying that he would drop a package for us, and it was all predetermined where he would put that package. So Jack, who was our deputy chief of station, a Marine forever, he went for a morning run. And so at 5 o'clock he'd get up and put on his jogging outfit and go out, It didn't matter what the weather was, and it was cold in Moscow.

And he ran two or three miles. And his surveillance team always followed Jack. Jack had surveillance all the time. But, you know, they knew what Jack was going to do. He was going out. He was running two or three miles, and he was running back. So, you know, they sat in their car and probably drove a little bit and watched him, and they could still see him.

And then he turned around. And when he came back, he ran through a portico, which was over a sidewalk. It was just a portico over the sidewalk. And inside was a window. And Trangana left his package right on the window sill. So as Jack ran by, he swiped it up and tucked it inside his jogging suit, ran on back, never missed a beat, and got back to his apartment and his surveillance. was, of course, nonetheless.

He then brought the package into the station. We were all there waiting. We were so excited. And we opened up the package. Our tech officer did. And inside were two pieces of paper with children's drawings on them. And I looked at him and I thought, well, that's what we're waiting for. And, of course, on the back was the secret writing that he had put on.

And he said he had a safe trip back. and they'd had several security interviews with them. And, you know, he just had to go through the normal reinvestigation. And he said he had a great job in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Global Affairs. And he wanted his camera badly because he saw lots of good things that he wanted to give us. And he divorced his wife. and he didn't want to involve her in this nefarious affairs. Well, of course, I think he was actually looking for a new wife at the time.

So it was all very exciting, and we were ready to pick up and deliver to Trigon. So that was exciting. What was the next step? And how did it come that you were going to be the one to begin servicing these dead drops and kind of handling Trigon. Right, you know, because all the guys had surveillance all the time, all the time, whether they went to take their kids to school or the grocery score or to the church or wherever they went, they had surveillance on their bumper.

And even sitting in the Bolshoi theater, they had surveillance sitting two rows behind. and because it seemed that I was not getting any surveillance the thought was that I would be good to go out and make these pickups and deliveries to Trigon, but they didn't quite believe me. So we had to do this test, and one of the couples in the station, the case officer and his wife, went to a Berrioska store. And the Berrioska was a diplomat. store where they took hard currency only, no rubles.

And it was called the dollar store. That's what we called it, the dollar store, because we spent dollars there. And so this store was up on the second story of a building, and there was a big parking lot out in front. And all I had to do was to drive by and pull into the parking lot. And this couple would be upstairs in the second floor watching out the window, very nonchalantly, and listening, of course, on their radio. And I came by, I drove into the parking lot, I parked, and I got out of the car, and then I got back in the car, and I drove away. And there was no chatter on the radio. And so it kind of confirmed to my peers that I was seeing nobody.

Yeah. It was a good confirmation. And I think it helped me feel a little more confident. You don't ever want to drag a surveillance team to meet your agent, you know? So it was real stress. It was hard to do. And I felt like every time I had to give it everything to make sure I had no surveillance. And yeah, you took, you take some extraordinary steps, you know, you, and I'm not surprised.

how much the CIA let you write in this book about, you know, you're driving in your car, you get out of the car, you get on the subway, you get off the subway, you get back on the subway, you're doing this extensive surveillance detection route before any sort of not, not contact with it. You never met Trigon just to hit a dead drop site. Right, absolutely. And it was a religious thing to me. I just felt that was the most important thing I did and all of Moscow was to do that route every single time. Yeah. Marty, like we've had some of the other case officers we've had on

when they talk about doing meets in hostile or non-permiss environments, there's generally like a counter surveillance element. Was that, was this before counter surveillance was the thing? Or was Moscow just so non-permissive that the more Americans you got out there, the more problems it caused? Well, who would you get to do it? The guys that had surveillance all the time. You couldn't do anything without double thinking about they're going to see what we're doing. The first drop I made to Trigon, we had to have cigarette packs. Well, the Soviet cigarette packs are kind of

small. The cardboard is very poor. And so, in fact, we ended up buying five packs of Soviet cigarettes. And what American out there buys Soviet cigarettes. So that itself was an operational act. We had to do that when we weren't under surveillance or they weren't aware. I mean, they'd go up to the guy afterwards and say, what did that guy buy? Five cigarettes? Why would an American, they're terrible cigarettes.

So. That's amazing. I mean, there's so much detail that would go into it. Yes. It really was. Every time I went out on the street, we had the map out on the desk and all my peers, all my teammates in the station, I showed them exactly where I was going to drive. I didn't go out and drive some random route. I knew where I was going, and I plotted it out for them.

And they told me in one case, you know, Marty, on that road, behind that wall, there are five migs. they're all folded up and parked in there. I guess it was in case they had to pull them out real fast and take off because the streets were that big. But I didn't know that. I didn't know where all the police stations were. We had a map that had all the hot spots. But, you know, this was not a random route that I drove every time and every time it was different. It was amazing.

Yeah, the level of detail we went into. So can you tell us about some of those initial dead drops where you're receiving a package, sometimes you're dropping a package off, and then bringing raw intelligence back to the CIA station? Absolutely. So eventually Trigon and I got into a good kind of give and take. We decided that if we put one package down and he picked it up and left a package in the same site, because I had no surveillance, we could do this exchange in the same place. If you had someone with surveillance, they could only go by there once, and that was it.

They'd never go by there again. So this way, the packages were on the ground the shortest amount of time, and it was done in one run. So I did the counter-surveillance run. I'd drive the two hours. I would park my car where other diplomatic cars would be parked. I ducked then into the subway. I took several stops. Like you said, I changed.

I went out and got on to another line and eventually got to the stop. This was one of the routes was out Kutuzovski Boulevard, and it was to a park called Park Pub Yeti, the Victory Park. And it was kind of out along Boulevard, and it was off to the side. and had one road going through it, which was one way. And the actual site had been caseed as a car toss site. So originally, the case officer would drive by this particular lamphole, and it was a driver toss, which was very unique for a car toss.

So the driver would be on this one-way road through the park. He'd roll down its windows. we had no electric windows. You had to roll them down. If there's surveillance behind you, of course, you can't go like this, you know. You have to carefully roll down the window. Now it's cold. And then get the package and pitch it out the window without your hand going through the window.

And then hope it landed close by the target. But see, because I had no surveillance, I could put that package. under my clothes and walk there. So this lamppost in this park, in Park Pabieti, which was codenamed Les, which means woods in Russian, I would walk to it from the metro site. It was a long ways. And I had walked down under the trees on the side of the road.

So it was really a very large canopy of trees and the path was quite a set back from the road. And I walked down there, and I would make sure there was no one in the park. And I would then walk to the lamp post, take the package out from under my arm, and drop it in the hollow of the lamppost. Then I would continue walking out of the park into a large Soviet neighborhood where people were out walking day and night. It was always very busy.

I had a very gray, dark, ugly coat, and I had nothing that appeared American. I would spend an hour there. While I was there, Trigon would come. He would come to that site. He would take my package, pick my package up, and he would then put his package in the same place and then leave the area.

So that's how we delivered many of the packages. They have a log here. Can you see it? Yeah, yeah. And this one sought off at the ends, but of course the ones we had were rough at the end. Like it looked like it had fallen off the tree. But all of his package was inside a hollowed out area.

and then the top was glued back on and the bark glued back on that. And inside there would be the camera in the pen and the roll of money in low denominations, rubles. There was notes to him on white film. It was called Calvar film, not Kevlar, but Calvar film. on. And so there'd be some one-time pads for him and a resupply and then a schedule of the next drops for him. We also put

in their ML jewelry, which he wanted us to buy in Bogota to give to his mother, because we knew she'd never get a life insurance policy if something happened to him. At the time was DS&T a thing? Like, did you have people that specialized in this tech stuff or were you guys doing it all? No, no, it was all. It was the Office of Technical Services, OTS.

And a lot of the things you can find in the book, SpyCraft by Bob Wallace. It's a very detailed book about all the gimmicks and things we used and many of the things I'm talking about, whole war stuff. And so the type of dead drop you use that, what did you call it? LES or something like this. It was a timed, limited time interval. Time to exchange.

That's what we called it. Time to exchange. So, and so I knew, he knew I wouldn't be back for an hour. So he would leave his package and leave. And then I would come back and pick up my, his package. And so what was his package?

So he, he would leave the same package often that was at, on the window sill. It was a pyramid-shaped child-sized carton of milk. It was crushed and dirty. It always looked like you wouldn't want to pick it up. Sometimes he bought a mustard plaster. It was an old-fashioned remedy for pneumonia, bronchitis, that kind of thing.

It was dry mustard on a piece of wax paper. You would put it on someone's back and then a hot towel. top of it and it would get very hot and it was supposed to be healing. But he would get it and just wet it and then drave it over whatever it was. It would look like baby poop or vomit. It was disgusting.

Nobody would touch it and of course it being mustard. No animal would touch it either. So I always kept a plastic bag to tuck his package and sometimes he used, there was an old ugly glove

and that it had oil and it was all misshapen. And the way he kept his cassettes out of the camera dry, he would put them as well as a roll of 35 millimeter inside a condom. He would then tuck them into the condom and then tie the top off. It kept it dry and clean. And he would tuck it inside of the milk carton or the glove or crushed milk can, tin can, or whatever he used. And those little cassettes out of the pen,

we would pouch back to headquarters. We never developed them in the station because they were like seven millimeters wide and very, very thin emulsion, very thin. So nobody wanted to go, oops, the water was too hot or too cold. So, I mean, can you imagine what he would have done with digital camera? I mean, it's incredible. We did all this with film, real film.

It's amazing. And like I said, he gave us a role of 35 millimeter film undeveloped in a black little film canister. And that film, he took pictures of his operational notes for us, how he was doing, what his health was like, problems. He had that kind of thing. So he knew that if someone opened it and pulled out the film, of course, it would expose and destroy. And so what was the quality of the intelligence that he was providing? It was exceptional. This was produced in only five copies for the five top people in our government.

What he had access to was all the communique's being sent. back from every Soviet embassy in the world. And it was the reports from the ambassadors. The ambassadors would write reports in Tokyo or Mexico City or London or Buenos Aires or Washington, D.C., so we were seeing what Anatoly de Brinnan was thinking and planning about relations with the U.S. government. And this was a time we were discussing the salt talks, the nuclear, you know, limitation. Right, right. Marty, you know, this is the type of source that I think, like a seasoned person, like somebody who had been in the Indian for years and years, this would be like their pinnacle.

It's a strategic asset. Like the thing. And this is out of the farm, your first source. Did you know how big this was and how did your station react to this? No. You know, headquarters was very protective of the information and they sent nothing to summarize what was in the intel he gave us. It was two precious and they wanted no one to know how valuable that was. And so it wasn't disseminated.

It wasn't part of any other intel. You know, a lot of times a piece of intel that's disseminated is pieces from all different agents. This was singular blue border five copies. So I only saw once when I was back TDY, the chief of reports said, I asked her. I said, may I see it? And she opened her safe. She picked out one report. I didn't get to read it, and she showed it to put it back, truly.

And it was important because you never know, you know. And that's how we, you know, preserved him, I think. And then as time goes on, you started using the log instead. And also from his operational notes and the quality of his photography, you guys noticed that his mental state is beginning to deteriorate, let the stress is starting to get to him? Yes. In April of 77, now,

in August of 76, before Jack, our deputy left town, Jack met with Trigon in a part, in person. And this was because Trigon and Jack had met each other. It was a good way to see the state of Trigon. It was also a way. to hold him and say you're doing great.

And you can't imagine the stress he was under being all by himself taking this risk. So that was a wonderful moment in the life of the operation. And so we, I think from then on, we thought it was going to go all right. And which it did through that fall. But come April of 77, we hadn't heard from him. He generally didn't deliver a lot of. packages in the winter. It was just too difficult. His car didn't work. It was up on blocks and it was just hard. And so in April, I went out to pick up the package and I put down the package and came back and

picked his up, and this was in Les. And the package itself had a few anomalies in it, or tech said that in the bottom of that 35 millimeter, that little can, there had been a leader

of the film cut off, which was really atypical, because Trigon was so precise. And then later on, headquarters told us that in his production, there was something, something a little odd. And so we knew, that's all we knew. We didn't know in this station the full

details about the anomalies that they thought that were in his reporting. But we then got on some higher level of caution and concern about Trigon. So that was in April. And then we didn't hear from him. We had a drop in the end of June, June 24th. It was again in the same place in Lest, and it was

a dreadful rainstorm that night. I went. Of course, I was feeling concerned that something had happened to him or that things weren't right. So I was on high alert and I went into

the forest. I put down the package. There was no one around. I left. I went over to the Soviet apartment buildings and walked around. And when I came back into the woods, I came down the path like I normally did. And I didn't get to live, even with a lamphole when I saw out in that one way road that there was a van park there, a small panel van. The dome light was on and the windows were fogged.

So I thought, this could be Romeo and Juliet out here, but it also could be an ambush. So I continued walking on down. I decided not to stop at the lamppost. I walked on, and as I came

to kind of a dip in the path, there was I was startled when a and stepped in front of me, but he hadn't seen me. So we were both startled, and I continued walking, and I guess he did too, because I just walked down into the woods, and eventually I stepped off the path in case he came looking for me, and I waited there. And the man had a big black cape on. He had a military cap with a shower cap. kind of thing on the top to keep the rain on it and I had a big flashlight.

You know, it was probably not that big, but it looked that big. I waited and eventually I thought, well, I will return by means of the other side of the street and I'll see what's happening. So I returned across the street to the other side and as I came up towards the lamppost on the other side, the van was gone. There was nobody in the park. So I diagonaled the cross back across the street, and I looked down at the bottom of the plant post, and of course there was the law.

There was his package. He had not been there that night. He hadn't picked it up. So I went home and had to go and tell them the next morning, you know, there's a problem here. He has no new schedule. He hasn't been here. And I ran into this man and there was a van.

All bad signs. Very bad. So we had to figure out then how to get in touch with him. So we went to him via the radio broadcast. He had a trans-oceanic radio that he listened on. And so we would broadcast out off of an antenna in Germany into Moscow. And he would copy the numbers down and then get a. this one-time patent.

These are those famous radio stations where it's just a woman's voice saying 14 to 26. Of Deutsch in German. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. It really was. Can you imagine doing this in an apartment you share with someone else and you're trying to get the numbers right? Oh, my Lord.

There's still an operation today. Yeah. You can hear them. Yeah. Oh, they are. Yeah. They still are. It works.

It works. So I went into the office and we were out of communication dates with him. So we decided we'd put a broadcast up and we said, if you can, park your car at Park Plots on July 14th. Well, I told you early that we didn't write down where Park Plutz was. So only he knew where that was. and if you can't park your car at park plots, mark a signal on the 15th, and we will deliver to you at a site we called Setoon,

and he had some sketches for that. And so that was a remedy, you know, and how we hoped we'd get back in touch with him. So I worked a full day. on the 14th and drove past park plots, as did several of my colleagues, and the car was not there. And so then the next morning I got up, and I was the one to drive by the signal site. As I came towards it, I'm sure I was more than a block away. It was a big, bright signal.

It was on a child crossing sign, and it looked like it had been stents. like that big in red. So you couldn't miss it. So I drove by it and I came into the station and I said the signal's up. We had a brand new station chief and of course he wasn't about to let this go. And so although at the time I said, why don't so why doesn't somebody else go? You know, I think deep in my heart I knew I had to go because I wasn't a first. I was, it was just maybe I didn't want to know the end.

And so I worked a full day again with those eight Soviet women. And I packed at my desk and I went up to the station at the end of the day. And so I, we sat down with the map like we always did and went through the route where I would park and timing and I had it all down. And we had one other detail that we had every single time. And that was where I would be at a certain time so that my station pals, my peers, couldn't know I was safe. And I hadn't been run off the road or something other than the worst possible thing. It was called my safety signal. If you have a wife, that's no problem. When you get back, your wife knows you're safe. But when you don't have a wife, I had no one to know I was home.

So we set that at 12 or 1230 something that night. So off I went with a package in my hand. It was a piece of asphalt. And this also had a top that lifted off. It had screws and you lifted it off. And so off I went on my long tour. I parked my car at Gorky Street. I had no surveillance that night. It was pretty bright out because the sun, you know, rarely gets very low below the horizon. And I went into industrial areas, all kinds of places,

and I spotted no surveillance, and I heard nothing. So I parked my car. I took the subway several stops. I got out of the subway at Lennon Stadium. There was a soccer game letting out. So all the escalators were coming down. I fought my way to go up on them. And then I realized they were all coming down.

So then I had to turn around, which would give me a good view of anyone that was following me and turning around too. I went out in the park and walked along this, dark park, stopped on a couple of benches. I listened. I looked. I had no evidence following

me. I went then out to the edge of the river along the sidewalk there and I was a little early. So I walked away from the site and then I saw

it was about time to head back to the site. And as I did, there were three men across the street walking towards me, but they went into the entrance to the Novigievichi cemetery, which is a very famous cemetery. It's where Khrushchev is buried and the cosmonauts were buried there, some musicians, that kind of thing. So it wasn't unusual. It was a very bright night. So I continued on to the stairs. to the railroad bridge.

And the railroad bridge at the top of the bridge is where the site was located. It was in one of the four pillars on the bridge, one of those pillars right there. And I walked on the pedestrian walkway through the pillar, and there was a window inside the pillar. So I walked up about 47 steps to the top of the bridge. when I got to the top, a train came from behind me. He had his headlight on and shown it all the way across the bridge so I could see nobody was out there waiting for me.

So I went into the center of the pillar. I took the package out and I put it into this narrow window. Trigone and I had used this before, so he was aware of where the package would be. I walked out in the middle of the bridge. I was listening and watching and I heard nothing. So I turned around, went back through the pillar, and started down the 47 steps. I got to the fourth from the bottom, and those three men came towards me from across the street. They sender man said, move out so she doesn't run.

And I knew right then, I thought, I'm going to get mugged array. which would have been a better thing. But in fact, they grabbed me by my arms. My purse was across my chest. So he went to take my purse, and as all women do, I crossed my arms to prevent that. But what happened was I drove this man's hand right into the SRR 100 on my bra. And that's where the infamous picture of these people with their. hands in my blouse comes from. Yeah, there are pictures in your book where you're

being accosted by these godless communists on the streets of Moscow. Yeah, I don't know if folks can see. It's a better picture on the back cover. Well, you can go and check out Marty's website, www.widowspy.com, and the pictures are on her website. You can get you to take a look. Right. So they eventually got this transceiver off receiver off my bra. They didn't have a clue about Velcro. So they were just doing brute force and finally it gave way. At the same time, this big van came from under the railroad tracks. And it was like the circus fan with all these people coming out. Among them a man with a big flash on his camera. And they took all. these wonderful pictures. And within moments, the package showed up. It was, they had it

right up beside me taking pictures. It was, of course, very clear that something had happened to Trigon. I spoke in English and I said in a very loud voice, you cannot arrest me. I'm a diplomat.

He must call the American Embassy. I gave him the phone number. If I gave it once, I gave it about six times. but I got angry, and when you get angry, your brain isn't recording properly, and I did kick some of those people, mostly men, and there is a folk tale out there that I hospitalized one, and he couldn't have sex for a while. But my mother wouldn't approve of that, so I'm pleading of it. Marty, what's, yeah, what's the story that supposedly you learned Taekwondo and that you kick some Spetsnaz guy in the junk? I probably did that too. Yeah, I had taken karate before I, Taekwondo, before I'd gone to Moscow.

Yeah, I had. Yeah. And I was pretty good at it. But I was just angry at that point. And I landed some good blows. And eventually they lifted my feet up. so I'm suspended in air. I guess I was pretty strong.

I was very angry. I was angry. I knew if Trigon was anywhere near, initially I thought if he's anywhere near, I'll holler so he can hear me and he'll know to get the hell out of there. I wasn't quite the case. So they eventually put me into the van and took me to the center of Moscow. And they took you to, was a KGB headquarters?

Yeah, it was Lou Bianca prison. Yeah. They drove around to the back where there was a big sign, brass plaque on the door that said KGB. Okay, so you're an American CIA officer getting dragged into the belly of the beast by the KGB. I mean, what's going through your mind at this moment? Like, holy shit. You think you're dead?

Yeah. Like, what are you thinking right now? You know, I'm just hoping that what they told me in that one lecture on diplomatic immunity work, which said, you know, they'll send you home, honey. Well, good luck with that. I had nothing else to go on, and I knew that if I spoke English, I knew what I was saying. And at that time, then I realized that I really had to turn on my Russian translator head and listen to what they were saying and collect any of it. information that they might have given inadvertently to me. So we sat in a large conference room at a table with two microphones.

There was a piece of Pravda newspaper. Provda means the truth. And they put the piece of asphalt right in the middle of the table. The chief interrogator was very angry with me. He was beyond reason. He was just angry. So I was reading everything around me at that point and trying to figure out what had happened to Trigon and why and all of those details. But at some point, I said, you know, you really have to call the embassy. I gave him the phone number again.

I said I worked for a man named Cliff Gross. And sitting across the table from me was the MFA officer who was there to protect my rights as a diplomat. And amazingly, he said, I know Cliff. So he got up and he walked to the phone and he called him at home. And Cliff said, oh, I'll come right down. Well, I did work for Cliff in my cover job. I'm sure Cliff thought like everyone else who might have thought that I worked at CIA, that I was a clerk. What was I doing out there?

So he got there and his mouth was wide open. He was just shocked. Because now he realizes. So when he gets there, they then decide to open the package. Well, his eyes are like this now looking at all this fight here coming out of this package. And he's in himself a curiosity. He had two watches on. And the KGB thought one was, I mean, they really were Tracy.

One was Washington time and one was Moscow time. That was it. But they thought he had a camera or recording device or something. It was very funny. They were very occupied by him. But every time they asked me a direct question, he said, she doesn't know what you're talking about. He was a great support to me.

So they opened the package, and they took out a warning note that we put in every package. If somebody else found the package, you know, if you find this package, don't go farther, throw it in the river. So then they found that. They read the chief interrogator,

read that out loud. And then they took out each item, the role of rules, the jewelry. We actually resupplied Triton with contact lenses because they didn't have any in Moscow at the time. And then they took out

a role of that white film where we put a message to them. And it said Dear friend, we're so sorry, we missed you the last time you asked for an accounting of our funds in the escrow account that

you have accumulated. And And that the total is, and he stopped reading. Because there were a lot of junior KGB officers circling in a circle around the room. And he knew if he said $365,000, they'd be over to volunteer, right? Right. So he stopped reading and put it down. And the next thing out of the package was the pen. And he said to the tech who was taking everything out.

Put that over in the corner of the paper, don't touch it. He said, I want no one to touch it. And, of course, that's when I knew. I knew this pen and this package was a camera, but it gave me the clear message that he thought it was the peasant poison pen. Right. That was the single most important thing I learned from that whole evening. I was arrested at a little after 10

and at 2 o'clock in the morning they said to Cliff and I, you may leave now. Now, most people say, why didn't they keep you? Why didn't they put you in a jail? And I said, you know, it was tit for tat.

And if we arrested FBI in the U.S. and they were diplomats, we had to let them go. If the FBI arrested a KGB officer in the U.S., the same. Same thing. Moscow rules. It was.

It was reciprocal. Not so much today in many places. So Cliff and I walked out and went back to the embassy. And so you're... I'm thinking at 12 o'clock, of course, they already got the dogs out looking for me, right? Right. Now, we'll give her a little bit longer. She'll be fine.

Yeah, right. She'll be back. So you're declared persona non-grada and have like, what, 48 hours to vacate Moscow and go back home. Right. Well, they didn't say anything yet until the next day when they called the ambassador to the MFA. And, yeah, that wasn't pretty. But the State Department knew. And I left the next day.

That was it. I was gone. Marty, I want to get into the back story of Trigon and what you later learned about what happened to him. But first, let's do the viewer questions. Yeah, I know there were a few. I just want to ask, when you and Cliff walked out together, did he really, did he have a burning desire to have a private conversation with you? No.

No, he didn't want to know anymore. That was one day. Oh, yeah. When I got in the car, his wife had been waiting on the curb in the car. And so she said, Marty, what are you doing? And Cliff said, oh, Marty's been kissing Millie Man. So that was the extent of the conversation. Nope.

I don't know what Cliff thought. I don't know. That's amazing. Party Marty. But obviously his cool head may have saved you some. Yes. You know, may have saved you. Yeah, he was playing the role very beautifully.

He really did. Yeah. Richard Bowen, thank you very much. He says, great guest, and we agree. Andrew Dunbar, thank you. So Peter had a low draft number. Is that why he was, oh, did we already ask that? John, well, John, the, her husband.

Oh, John, I'm sorry. John. Oh, yeah, sorry. He enlisted. He volunteered. Yeah, so that was never going to, sorry about the John Peters. Jerry, Jay, thank you. You are a very brave woman.

You have my respect. I lived behind the Iron Curtain. do do Americans today have any kind of grasp on what it was like in Soviet Russia? No, they really don't I think it's hard to replicate that

in today's mental state. I don't think they really understand what communism is like and how repressive it is and how it strips people of any incentive to do anything and how cruel it was without medical care. And, oh, it was just horrible. You know, can you have an appendectomy with a local?

I don't think I want to do that. And that was an SOP there. You know, it was people were abused and, I mean, bad food and no food. Right in the market down the street from my apartment. It was real. Marty, what are you talking about? Cuba had like free medical care and everybody was awesome. Everybody liked it.

Sorry. Did you want to comment on that? If it's non-existent, right? John Dugan, or Duggan, thank you. A fantastic interview I'm buying the book now. And guys, you can find the book on Amazon, both in the paperback version. And also it is free if you have Kendall Prime. And Marty still gets paid up for that.

based on the number of pages read. So if you have Kendall Prime, which I mean, honestly, you should because it's a great deal. Get the book and read it. Just the preface, which we'll get into it. It's just, yeah, this is. This is one of the best books I've read in quite a while. So I hope people will check it out. Andrew, thank you.

Was it true that Aldrich Ames was Trigon's first handler? No. Okay. He probably knew about him in Columbia, but he was not the handler. That was Peter Early in his book. He claimed that. Not true. Jerry, Jay, thank you.

I was in Intel after 1989. If I know something about Coker, I would say, but STB burned a lot of evidence. Oh, Coacher. Sorry about that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. He's the one that grew up. the dime on dragon. Oh yeah. We'll get into that. Yeah, we'll get into that for sure.

Andrew, thank you. Since you were in Moscow in the, in the era, how accurate was the movie Gorky Park? Probably a book, too. Yeah, I am, I remember watching that and it was accurate. I really can't think of the details that much. Yeah. I could rewatch it. Yeah. And you think how good does it feel leaving Lubyanka prison? You know, I think I was so upset about what it happened to Trigon. It was several years before I really found out what happened to him. So it was, I was carrying a lot of guilt that night and feeling, how did I screw up? What did I do wrong?

Right. Right, because you felt that your surveillance or your counter surveillance may not have been good enough, and maybe you were compromised and they used you to get to him. And, yeah. Right, right. We'll get to the real story in a minute. Yeah. That must have been tough. I mean, yeah.

And thank you. Do you feel that the world is less with the loss of Moscow rules? When did that really end? Okay. I won't say anything about Moscow rules. It was written by a colleague of mine. There's a lot of stuff that's not correct in that, and Moscow rules didn't. It was his fiction. So some of the rules were, I mean, we didn't call them Moscow rules. It was just a way of operating in a very difficult place. Yeah. So Moscow rules, whether it's accurate or not, but it describes sort of a set of like diplomatic situations. Right. Like things like we didn't, we didn't counterfeit each other's currency because we understood it would collapse the economy overall.

It would be like so bad. There were just some things we didn't do for each other. Mutually assured destruction in a way. The whole man. Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah. That's right. Isaac, thank you.

Are the habits that you learned things that you still do? You know, I've taught my children how to look for surveillance. And I think I'm still aware of anyone following me or around me. I'm very observant. It's just, I guess, it was trained into me. It's not something, and especially a woman. you learn those things, you have to be a little careful and not allow people to follow you or, you know, getting, you know, compromise you. It's a funny, funny thing.

Marty, can you tell us maybe a couple like myths or misconceptions of counter-surveillance, or not counter-stance, but surveillance detection and the actual truth of it? Right. Well, if you don't want to let on that you're looking for surveillance. One, you're not stopping and looking around,

but you're also trying to keep the flow going. And if you start doing jerky things, what you're telegraphing to the surveillance is that you're aware you should have surveillance. So why are you aware

of surveillance? Somebody in Moscow in my era my secretary she would have never thought about it

so she would have never looked for it she would have never been aware of it and she were so I tried to be like

her and just be part of the the scene you know and not be aware of it but the minute

surveillance smells that you're looking for them then you've identified yourself and that was

the last thing I want to to do. Yeah. I think it was it Jack the former Marine, the case officer? Yes. And I think it's what you said about him because I think that in the popular conception like an American philography and things like that is you do these movements where all of a sudden you vanish and surveillance doesn't know where you go. You sprint down and out. Really, he just boards. He just bored them to death. He just bored them to where they got complacent. Oh, absolutely. You don't go around the corner and then jump out.

Yeah, exactly. Although some of them got pretty familiar with their surveillance. Like the one in the Bolshoi when my friend was at the ballet and the guy was two rows behind. He was someone he saw all the time, you know, so I'm

sure he kind of elbowed him or something, but that was the collegial. And we had stories when defense ashes would go on long trips and their car would break down. and or the tire would break, well, their surveillance eventually came up and changed the time

because guess what? We're all in this together. Right. Yeah, I'm stuck out here because you're stuck out here. That's right. So there was some collegial bit with surveillance. It was very amazing. And I think it's interesting when you talked about Trigon

and his sort of, you know, his mental fatigue and what was happening to him. Because if you're always, always, looking for somebody following you. Yes. And you don't have a plan. You're always going to see people following you. Yes, that's right.

That's right. You know, I didn't mention it, but he did have an escape plan. We did have an exfiltration plan if he could get to that point. So we could have gotten a amount, but yeah. Well, Marty, talk to us about what you learned in subsequent years down the line about Trigon. What was his real name? What happened to him? The whole backstory that you didn't know at all the night you were arrested. This kind of came out later on. Right. Trigon's name was Alexander Ogorodnik. And he was actually, he had been in the Navy and he wanted to be a pilot.

These were bad. So he got out of that. He went into ministries. of international affairs. So he was a bona fide MFA officer. He and his wife married out of convenience

to get to Bogota because he can't travel single. So there was no love loss there. What I didn't tell was that when he left Bogota and left Pilar

behind, his girlfriend, she told our case officer in Bogota that she was pregnant at the time. She asked us not to tell Trigon that, and we passed letters from her to him through the dead drops, and she never told him that she was pregnant. The baby was born in March of 1975 in Madrid. She went back to Spain after Trigon left. and so she had a baby girl in 1975, and Trigon died, of course, never knowing that that baby was born.

Yeah. And so what did go down with Trigon? How did the KGB catch him? And how did that whole situation come about? Right. He, um, so I told you we had a telephone tap in the Soviet embassy in both. and we would send back the tapes from that telephone tap and they were the big reel-to-reel tapes and we'd send them back to headquarters and we had a transcribing section and the man who transcribed

those tapes was called Cocher. He was a Czech National who was allowed to emigrate from Prague to the U.S. in the mid-60s. We remember that Prague was invaded in 68 by the Soviets, which all seemed kind of pinky now looking back. But he went to school at Columbia University

and he and his wife were members of a sex-swapping club. When they got tired of that, they moved to Washington, D.C. He became an American citizen, and then the CIA hired

him on contract because he knew all the East European languages. So he transcribed the tapes and eventually, I guess, told the check handlers because he had volunteered to the Czech intel service. And he told them that CIA had something going down in Bargitaph.

And he didn't know much other than that, other than something that had been implied to him that the officers were very interested in his transcribing these tapes. So the checks obviously told the KGB, and the KGB looked at who had come and gone from Bogotod during that period of time. When Tri-Gon-Rack in Moscow, they knew there were three candidates who could be the spy, that the CIA was interested in. And eventually they determined it was him. They could eliminate the other two. So they got him involved in a fake operation.

They, the KGB officer in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs became friends with Trigan and asked Trigan to help him. they went to the sauna at the big swimming pool there and while he was there with his KGB friend a team came in and got his keys and went to his apartment installed cameras and after that they watched him and the night before a drop he got out the the spy equipment to check the site and all of that. And they watched him and said he can't make another delivery.

They went to his apartment. They stripped him down and told him that he really had to make a confession that it would be easier on him. He knew that being caught, he'd probably get a bullet in the back of the head like everyone had before him. And so he sat there at his table and he said, look, I'll write a full confession, bring me some paper. They brought the paper. He picked up his pen. He began to write and he bit on the end of the pen and died. There are various versions of how long it took for him to die.

But I can only imagine that's why that chief interrogator was. so angry with me. He didn't confess. They had no case against him. They had circumstantial. And eventually, after several days, his family came looking for him. He, in fact, had married a young woman. So she was concerned. His parents were concerned. His brother and sister were concerned. And the KGB had no case. So they gave the body to them. And in the back of a Soviet book that a KGB

officer wrote about this case. They wrote about the investigation of Trigon. There's a picture of his funeral pyre and the funeral casket

and we actually have a picture of his grave in Moscow. So that's how he died. So that was June 21st of 1977, three or four days before I went to the park and ran into that man in the park. And according to this book, which I read with some trepidation, because I worried that in there it was going to say, oh, yeah, we had her all along. they were in that park

100 men strong that night looking for the site maybe for me but I'll never know that so I wove my way through that whole mess and avoided that night

but of course normally to be caught later so the FBI then it started an investigation of Carl Coacher I think we had some other

reporting on him. He was arrested in 1984. You see, that was seven years after I was arrested. That was a long time for me to dwell on that. He was put in jail along with his

wife and eventually they were swapped for a Soviet dissident, Anatoly Sharansky. Shuransky is a famous and very well-known, Israeli official now. You can look him up. It's amazing what he did, even after this start he had.

He was a Jewish dissident in Moscow. And then Carl Kutcher, they have made a film of him. A Canadian journalist went to Prague. and interviewed him. So there's a movie about him on Canadian TV. So that's called Coacher. I think he's still alive. And that's how Trigon came to an end.

After I wrote my book, I had one concern that Trigon's daughter would come and appear on our front step. Well, she didn't do that. She emailed me. And from her email, I knew it was her. I went to Washington with my husband, and we met her and her two children. And her son, Trigon's grandson, is living proof that Trigon was his father. He looked so much like him.

It's very interesting. And she and I keep in regular contact. How does she feel about the whole thing? Well, yeah, I mean, she was, she was, she was. She didn't learn until she was 15 that her father was this person. Her mother kept that secret all along. And so that was a revelation. And their mother didn't tell her all the facts.

And her mother now has dementia. So there is that's a dead end. Her name is Alejandra. And her one dream is, of course, to go to Moscow, which I've told her would be suicide and not a smart thing to do. She wants to meet her relatives. But, of course, that would never be a normal thing. The KGB or the SBR would intercept all that, and that would not be possible.

So, yeah. You said, in understandably, like, you had this doubt. Did your trade craft, you know, was something you did, was there also, were there ramifications at all in the agency? Was there doubt? Or did they know that you had done your job right? No, they had no doubt. Nobody blamed me. Nobody treated me very differently from the officer who handled Popoff. And he had a very bad experience with that. And finally had to quit the agency. But in my case, they polygraphed me. I think I flew through that polygraph. There was no doubt in my mind that, you know, I was who I was. Nobody had compromised me. I just had to live with what I had done and realized that I, I, I, you know, the anomalies in the package pointed to other things.

That was all never really explained to me, but I eventually felt like, you know, I was confident enough to realize it wasn't something I did. So were you kind of over it by the time the whole culture thing was revealed, or did that have any kind of emotional release for you? Yes, it was, it was a relief for me. It was. By then, I was already married another. I had children.

It was, you know, I'd moved on, but, you know, that doubt is always there. We take our agent's safety so, I mean, it is Godlike. It is something that is something we never shirk. We will be there for the end. Yeah. After you got PNG'd out of Moscow, come back to the United States, I'd like to hear you tell a story about meeting President Carter and Zabignew Brzeinski at the White House.

So before I left Moscow, I didn't go back to my apartment. So I had no clothes except what I had on. And I had pink pants and a pink top. And so that's how I flew back to Washington. And so that night, I stayed with Jack, the deputy chief of station and his wife in Arlington. And Jack said, well, you have a busy day tomorrow. You have to meet the director. And I said, well, Jack, I got to have clothes.

And the next morning, his wife and I went and we bought clothes. And I bought pantyho shoes, underpants, bra, everything, bottom top up all the way. So I had this great turquoise dress that I bought. And so I went to see Stansfield Turner that day. And like you said before, he was a computer guy. He really liked the new satellite stuff. He was all into the technical piece. And here was his woman here before him who had been dealing with a human source.

And so he wanted no one in the office with me. Well, I told my story. I think maybe I would have worried that I would change it somehow. So I told him what happened. And he sat there and he looked at him and he said, Marty, would you be willing to go to the White House with me tomorrow? Well, was I going to be saying no? I don't think so.

So I said, sure, you know. So I had the same clothes on the next day and off we went to the White House. So he went in the special way and I went down the long tunnel and up the stairs and into the Oval Office. and there sat Walter Dale and Jimmy Carter, well, Jimmy came in a little later, but is a big new Virginsky, and so I sat on the sofa next to Stansfield Turner, and Carter came in. President Carter's a diminutive man. He's very small, and he had a bad rash on his face, and I remember feeling sorry for him with the weight of that. office. And I felt there sitting in the Oval Office. And so I, we had a replica of the package on the table and I told the story. And the director told me I had like 12 minutes to tell it. And like 25 minutes. I'd tell this story that we've been talking about for two, two hours and 18 minutes.

I do go on. Right. No, no. Yeah. And. It's interesting. He sat there and he looked at me and the director said, you may go. So I stood up and President Carter stood up. And he said, Marty, well, when will you be returning to Moscow? And I looked at him and I said, I don't think I'll be going back. And Spignew said, and no, she won't ever be returning to Moscow.

And then as I left, Spignau Bersinski said to me, Marty, we, great. admire your courage. And he was the one of the five people you see who had received this intelligence. He knew the value and what we had lost. It was momentous.

That was quite a moment. So he said, yeah, pictures. I don't think so. This is so incredible because you are, how old at this point? 32. Okay, you're 32. You're a young CIA case officer. You went through this whole experience in Laos, losing your husband.

And young case officer, you're handling a strategic asset and the intelligence that you are servicing at this dead drop is going from you to the station to CIA headquarters and then landing in the lap of the national security advisor to the president of the United States. And then you meet with the president of the United States. And you've been in the agency as a case over like five years now, four years? Yeah, 71 to, yeah, five years. where most case officers are kind of just getting their feet wet, right? They've had like a tour or two. They're starting to get their legs underneath them. Well, there is value in being a new officer.

You have no preconceptions. And you also have no cover history. And that was one thing that was, you know. Yeah. Yeah. J&B has no idea who you are. No. I think there's just a couple more questions.

And then we'll start wrapping it up here. Yeah, Isaac, thank you. In your opinion, is the FSB playing the same games that the KGB did? For example, the 2016 election, Trull Farms, the Haxon, Wagner. Absolutely. There's no difference. You know, the year I arrived in Moscow was the same year that Putin started with a KGB in Leningrad. Yep.

He's the same. Yeah, you can change the name, but what is that? actually do. Yeah. They still have the same job, right? The new boss is the same as the old boss. Oh, and Maria, my girlfriend, says, how dare you not use your custom team house whiskey to decanter?

Let me actually get that. And I'll explain why we didn't because we just had like a small bottle, half a bottle, LaFroid, we're out of the whiskey. Dave's going to pay for that. Yeah. John says, John Dugan says, Cheers to John and his wife, who's a great patriot. Andrew, thank you.

Jim wants to know how long did you stay with the CIA after that and what sort of assignments did she have? Well, I had many assignments. I had one overseas assignment, which I can't talk about. Come on. Yeah, come on, Marty. Go to jail. Go to jail for us, please.

It's just you, me, Dave, and the internet. Okay. Well, you know, if I said to you, you start in the pits of Laos and you think it can't get worse, and then they send you to Moscow. I mean, where would you like to go? So a nice place in Europe probably. Right, yeah. That's what you're supposed to do, right?

You get those cushy jobs after the rough ones. That's right. But I did have a 32-year career, which was amazing. I did work undercover until the very end. And the FBI and I had kind of a joke that if they ever had a troublesome Soviet officer there in Washington, they would invite me to a party, you know, and I would just have to say, oh, Dimitri, don't you remember we met? I'm Marty Peterson because, you know, that was, I had quite a reputation. And the Russians would pull them going, oh, how do you know her?

Yes, exactly. Because you actually were on in the Washington Post in like 1978, right, on the cover. Yes, Washington Post, yeah. How hard is it after that to maintain like a covert presence wherever you go? It was easy. I just said, you know, it's just propaganda. It's Soviet propaganda. I said that they say that about all kinds of people who, you know, I just went along with it.

I married someone in the state department. So I was gold. Yeah. Plus you didn't have Facebook facial recognition to deal with at those times. None of that. And I got married again, so I changed my name. So it was all good. And I should,

I'd also just like to point out to people that Marty's story is featured in the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. It was. No, it was. And are you still in the KGB Museum, though? Yes, I am. You are in the KGB music. Is that in Moscow?

I believe so, yeah. That's amazing. And I talked to a guest we're going to have on the show later on, who is an FSB defector who is here in the United States. And he said he learned about you in the academy. Yeah, that was well known. Yeah. Yeah.

How was, so this isn't the first five years of your career. How were you like a child star and then it was all downhill from there for you? Because, I mean, because it almost feels like a peak, right? You have this amazing asset in Moscow. You get arrested by the KGB. You meet the president and the director of the CIA. And you still have 27 years left. Yes.

Well, you don't, though, do you? You just keep going one job to the next. And it was, I realized recently when I was in the company of other CIA women of my age, and I said, you know, I did some disservice then because when I would change offices and inside headquarters building, you have a job for two years, maybe three, but if you're smart, you move to another office so you get different experience. You keep filling your pockets with new experience. but when I would go to the new office, if they didn't know because I had changed my name,

I wouldn't tell my war story. Now, to be sexist about this, a man will lead with his war stories. That will be his identity. Right. But you see, because I was caught, it wasn't something I wanted to lead with. Oh, you're that woman. And I think I always did that. So why did I write this book?

So I was in CTC, my last assignment, because I served in counterintelligence, counter-espionage, straight-ops, and then in the end, counter-terrorism. That's where I was when the 9-11 happened. And I worked with an amazing group of people, and one of the men came in, to my office the day I retired and he said, Marty, I had told them my story. A

psychologist came to the office and suggested that I tell these men my war story. So I did and there was a new, you know, awareness that she's just not a pretty face or somewhat. And so he came

into my office and he said, Marty, you need to go home and tell this story. People need to know who you are and what life was like for you. So that's, you know, I realized if he thought I could write this and that it was worthwhile, I respected him and I thought, well, that's what I should do. It isn't my nature to shout about myself. It isn't.

And most CIA officers are like that. They don't tell you much about themselves or what they have accomplished. So this has been a really. strange post-retirement phase for me, where I have to kind of come out and, you know, just even saying I was CIA was a choker at the beginning, you know, I am, who. I think the book is a, it's a terrific tribute to the good work that the CIA does. Usually you guys just get a lot of bad press for the things, but this is an example of some of the good work that the agency does.

I think it's a great tribute speaks well of yourself. There's also a great tribute to your late husband, John, who is just one of the kind of unsung, I don't want to say forgotten heroes. He has a star on the wall, but it was a secret war, and not a lot of people understand what happened over there. That's right.

That's right. We don't want to keep you too long, but the preface, you're... Say something for the bonus. Oh, okay. So in the bonus segment for our page, Patreon viewers and it's only $1 a month or more. We'll

find out about when Marty Ashley told her teenage kids that she was a spy. That she was in the CIA. It's, yeah. The very beginning of this book is like, it's like

I felt like I was being shot in the heart. The first four pages will grab you and you will not put the book down. And I just want to say Maria, so my girlfriend had the Ardicant and these glasses made for us custom glasses. We appreciate it.

We just didn't want to put a little bit of the froig in there. We'll fill it with the bourbon next time. We'll make it right for you, Maria. Yes, yes, I promise. Guys, next episode is going to be with Delta Force operator, retired Delta Force operator, Paul Howe, who served in Panama and Mangadishu, pretty famous for the whole Blacklockdown incident.

But he had a good long career. Also, we're excited to talk to him next episode. Please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Check out our Instagram account. Check us out. Where else? Patreon. We have a link to our Patreon down in the description to get access to the bonus segments.

And there's also like T-shirts and coffee mugs and stuff like that. And get Marty's vote. I mean, you honestly, if more people know, like a name, like Oliver Chains, for instance, then they do your name, Marty. Like that that needs to change. Well, it's emblematic that people hear about the failures more than the successes. Right, right. And please go check out her website.

It's widowspy.com where you can learn more about the book. And you can also see a bunch of pictures about what we've been talking about on this episode. It's pretty cool. You know, and it's, I mean, it's an inspiration for women. It's an inspiration for men. It's an important part of history. It's, we are so glad that you actually decided to write this book. Yeah.

And we really appreciate you coming on the show tonight. Yeah, we're very grateful for that. So, Marty, if you just stick around, if I can keep you for like another 10 minutes, I'd really appreciate it. Okay, thank you so much. We say 10, it'll be like 20. We just want to drag a story. All right, guys. We will see you all.