Although she was born in Kansas City, Missouri, she grew up in Darien, Connecticut, with her sister, Mary Alice.
From November 1975 on, her official job at the embassy was an administrative clerk in the consular department, dealing with visa and passport issues.
[2] In her covert role, she was responsible for keeping contact via dead drops with Aleksandr Dmitrievich Ogorodnik, code named TRIGON, who had been recruited while working in South America.
Ogorodnik was compromised and arrested by the KGB in summer 1977 and committed suicide during interrogation with a covert L-pill in his pen.
Peterson, still not under suspicion of being an active CIA officer, was arrested a few weeks later while placing a dead drop for him.