It is unlikely that Chicago historians ever heard of Martha Ann Pittard in spite of her national standing as a member of a select group of women.
Should they comb the files of one of the city’s more nefarious bribery scandals, though, they may give her the respect she deserves.
Without Pittard, you see, the federal government might not have nailed down “Operation Incubator” and sent to jail a passel of politicians, caught a decade ago in a sting for accepting payoffs from an FBI mole. Or, obtained the convictions of a loan shark named “Blind Looie,” among other sordid characters.
An Arkansas native who went from teaching home economics at a high school in Camden to arresting crooks in Chicago, Pittard has bid farewell to a job once closed to women.
One of the country’s first female FBI agents, she recently retired, ending a career that began shortly after the death of the bureau’s longtime director, J. Edgar Hoover, in 1972.
Hoover had adamantly refused to accept women as special agents. But pressure to admit women was strong and, after Hoover’s death, the Justice Department quickly dropped all resistance to the admission of female investigators into the FBI.
“I was number 17,” says Pittard, most recently a firearms and fraud case specialist in the agency’s Chicago office. “The 17th female special agent. Most of the others of my time have retired or changed careers.”
Today, the FBI has 1,655 female agents. Nearly one of every 10 bureau investigators is a woman.
For Pittard, a knack for investigation and a proficiency with guns muted any antagonism from male colleagues.
“I can’t say that when I walked in all the male agents left the room,” says Pittard, now 57, the mandatory bureau retirement age. “This is not to say there are female agents in this organization who haven’t had problems. I’m just one of those who didn’t.”
Never?
“I’ll tell you one story,” she replies with a chuckle. “When I came to Chicago (in 1974), some of the (male) agents didn’t know how to act” around women agents. “I think they looked at me to see if I could do the job, if I could hack through it.”
Pittard then recounts the arrest of a violent bank robber and how her male partner, mindful of her presence, had bent over backward and politely informed the suspect he was under arrest.
“You ought to behave himself,” scolded the male agent. “There is a lady present.”
The bewildered suspect calmly allowed himself to be handcuffed. Pittard could hardly conceal her amusement.
If Pittard has no male war stories to share, she isn’t alone.
The bureau’s 10th and highest ranking female agent, Burdena “Birdee” Pasenelli, credits the determination of women to make it in the bureau and that of their male trainers to see to it that they did just that.
“We were a novelty. Our (male) training agents became responsible for making us good agents,” says Pasenelli, special agent in charge of the Seattle FBI office. “For those men it was a matter of pride. Many had daughters. They wanted us to succeed.”
Says another female agent, “I have to knock on wood because I never was presented with any real (male) problem. Once people know you and realize what you can do. . . . We are all individuals. You do what you have to do.”
Retired agent Bill Curtis of Chattanooga, Tenn., was among the cadre of agents who trained Pasenelli and other rookie females 25 years ago in Sacramento.
“Some of us male agents had mixed feelings about working with women,” Curtis concedes. “We weren’t sure they could carry their share of cases. She (Pasenelli) could shoot better than any male. That made her a hit in more ways than one.
“Once we got over our natural hesitancy,” he adds, “I think the women melded pretty well.”
An FBI support employee in Washington in 1972, Pittard was recruited for a special agent’s job in October of that year and began training at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va., the following spring.
She soon was assigned to the Omaha office, replacing the only other women there. Pittard was assigned to investigate an illegal gambling business, keeping copious notes of what she saw and monitoring recorded conversations.
On her arrival in Chicago 23 years ago, Pittard was one of only five female agents. Assigned to find draft dodgers, the trail often took her into poor neighborhoods, places she’d never experienced before.
Although her mother had been a public aid caseworker back in Arkansas, Pittard was not prepared for the crime, poverty and child abuse she encountered.
“It was an eye-opening experience. Seeing children being raised in poverty got to me,” Pittard says.
By 1979, the number of women entering the bureau as special agents had increased sharply. Pittard, no slouch with a handgun, rifle or shotgun, was chosen to be a firearms instructor. Her trainees were impressed with her Annie Oakley quickness. At the FBI Academy, Pittard’s name is engraved on the gun vault.
“I’d been a pretty good shot, starting back in Arkansas with my dad,” she explains. “On Sunday afternoons, he would take me target shooting, and we’d plunk away at old tin cans with a .22- (caliber) rifle. With practice I got to be pretty good.”
At Quantico, Pittard became only the 1000th agent — out of tens of thousands of men before her — to shoot “a possible.” That’s FBI jargon for nifty shooting. To score “a possible,” shooters must fire 50 bullets, loading and reloading and using both hands, from prone, kneeling and standing positions, all in a tight time period.
As an instructor Pittard coached others on how to hit the bulls’-eye on the run. The FBI “stress course” requires agents to shoot while on the run and jump obstacles.
“It really gets your adrenaline flowing,” she says of that course.
When not firing on the range, Pittard worked with squads of fellow agents investigating organized crime and public corruption.
As such, she helped to serve a search warrant on the late Chicago mob boss Anthony “Big Tuna” Accardo. The 1978 search of Accardo’s River Forest mansion turned up $275,000 in crisp $50 and $100 bills hidden in wine crates.
As an agent assigned to “Operation Incubator,” the 1986 FBI probe of graft at Chicago City Hall, Pittard was assigned to monitor the activities of the government mole Michael Raymond. As she watched, Raymond, a corrupt businessman and convicted felon, doled out bribes to city officials in return for getting lucrative city contracts.
“He was never left alone,” Pittard says of Raymond, whom she accompanied and helped to protect for four years as one of his handlers.
“Blind Looie” the loan shark, was caught when he allowed himself to be seen in a restaurant, pocketing a payment on an illegal “juice” loan. Pittard and a male agent, posing as a married couple, witnessed the payment and busted the shark.
For the Blind Looies of the world, “it’s easy to see (pass) a couple in a restaurant, as opposed to two guys,” Pittard says. “Two guys spell trouble. They look for types like that. But not a couple.”
Seeing the future is now her focus. Her plans include travel and an eventual move to the Jackson Hole region of Wyoming.
Pittard leaves the bureau with the praise of her peers, led by Pasenelli. “Martha’s positive attitude,” the FBI Seattle chief says, “always helped to get the job done.”
With or without male backup.
