Introduction
For decades, gender bias created blind spots in Western intelligence—blind spots women like Marti Peterson and Agent Sonya exploited brilliantly.
The First Female CIA Officer Behind the Iron Curtain
Years ago, I attended a presentation by Marti Peterson, the first female CIA officer assigned behind the Iron Curtain.
In 1973, she was stationed in Moscow, operating out of the U.S. embassy and successfully running intelligence operations. In Moscow, Marti Peterson handled a valuable Soviet double agent codenamed TRIGON, using dead drops and coded messages while constantly shadowed by the KGB. “Every time I walked out the door,” she later said, “I knew I might not come back.” I remember her as an engaging speaker, full of remarkable stories.
But what struck me most was the fact that it took nearly 30 years after World War II for the CIA to send a woman into the field. That delay—and the vulnerabilities it exposed—has stayed with me.
Agent Sonya and the Soviet Advantage
When you consider the story of Agent Sonya (Ursula Kuczynski), a Soviet intelligence officer running operations as early as the 1930s, the delay seems absurd. It wasn’t just short-sighted—it was dangerous. While Western agencies hesitated to put women in the field, the Soviets embraced them, exploiting the blind spots created by Western biases.
The CIA and MI6 simply couldn’t imagine a woman doing fieldwork, so they often failed to notice it when it was happening. This ignorance made them vulnerable.
Agent Sonya, for example, passed secrets from the Manhattan Project to the Soviets while living in the UK—posing as a wife and mother, a persona so unthreatening that British intelligence never thought to look closely. (MI6 didn’t even allow married women to remain in service until 1972, effectively disqualifying a whole category of capable operatives.)
The Power of Being Underestimated
And Sonya wasn’t the only one. There are numerous examples of highly effective Soviet spies, women who flew under the radar for years—like Elizaveta Zarubina and Lona Cohen—exploiting the West’s unwillingness to see them as a threat. Sexism, racism, and homophobia weren’t just morally bankrupt—they were national security liabilities.
And frankly, I’m not sure we’ve learned much since then.
Diversity as National Security
Even today, there’s resistance to embracing true diversity in intelligence services. But the world has changed.
In our multi-polar, globalized world, where intelligence is needed from every corner of the planet, relying on one “type” of person to gather it is not only ineffective—it’s self-defeating. There are plenty of places where white men stand out. To blend in and succeed, intelligence agencies must reflect the diversity of the world they’re trying to understand.
Further Reading: Forgotten Warriors
Read this: Forgotten Warriors: The Long History of Women in Combat by Sarah Percy isn’t about spies—but it very well could be. This book dismantles the comforting myths we’ve told ourselves about history—chief among them, that war and combat have always been the domain of men.
Percy reveals the overlooked truth: women have always been part of the fight. They’ve taken up arms, served behind enemy lines, and operated in both overt and covert arenas. They were there—not just supporting the war effort, but shaping it.
This book is expansive, deeply researched, and quietly radical. It doesn’t just reframe our understanding of military history—it questions who gets remembered, and why.