Photo credit: Janet Donovan
“During my career, I barely shared this story with anyone in my offices because I didn’t want to be known by the label as the woman who was arrested,” former CIA case officer Marti Peterson told a packed audience at the Newseum for the premiere of CNN’s Original Series: DECLASSIFIED: Untold Stories of American Spies. “I wanted to stand on my own in each job that I had; and in the CIA we moved through many different positions and areas and I just never wanted to be known as the woman who was arrested.”
Wolf Blitzer, Mike Rogers, Marti Peterson, Mark Kelton and retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin
“DECLASSIFiED is a new eight-part CNN Original Series, that debuted on Sunday, June 19, at 10 p.m. ET/PT. Hosted by former U.S. Congressman Mike Rogers, also the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, each episode features a newly declassified mission told first-hand by the agents who lived it, providing viewers with unprecedented access to the riveting and secret world of espionage. Declassified covers missions set in fascinating locations and time periods from Cold War era Moscow to modern day Iran, from the streets of 1980s Cuba to today’s bustling Beijing. All 16 intelligence agencies from the CIA to the FBI are represented, revealing the unbelievable true stories of America’s covert operations in the United States and around the world. The hour-long series is produced by All3Media America with Gregory J. Lipstone, Domini Hofmann, Aaron Saidman, Stephen Lambert and Mike Rogers serving as executive producers.” CNN Statement
“I had the birds-eye view,” Mike Rogers explained as to why he decided to do the series, “of really tremendous people doing incredible things. All of the episodes will rip you in these personal stories in the FBI, the homeland security cases – we tried to pick the cases that would be most interesting.”
The audience was made up of mostly ‘Intel’ in all the forms that ‘Intel’ takes: Congressional Members, FBI, CIA, KGB ……. the rest of us were probably being ‘spied on’.
Look for Hollywood on the Potomac’s feature story coming up in the July issue of Washington Life Magazine with exclusive quotes.
Jeff Zucker
Edited Q and A with moderator Wolf Blitzer:
The first in the series – Marti Peterson: Tune in Sundays at 10PM ET