McLean Author Recounts Her Career as CIA Agent Today

Martha Peterson will recount her story today in  her debut book, “The Widow Spy: MY CIA Journey from the Jungles of Laos to Prison in Moscow,” which details this harrowing and exhilarating time in her life.

She speaks  to a McLean audience at 2 p.m today, at the Dolley Madison Library. She will read from her book. A book signing will follow.

Published in February by Red Canary Press, “The Widow Spy” has given Peterson a chance to tell both her story and her husband’s, a Green Beret named John.

Her husband—shot down in a helicopter by North Vietnamese Army troops while on a CIA mission. She—a widow at just 27, devastated and forced to take stock of her own life.

Seeking his legacy and charting her own path, she would herself take the oath of secrecy for the CIA, and accept a dangerous and covert mission to Moscow during the Cold War, putting her directly in sight of the KGB.

You just can’t make this stuff up.