Isabelle Pettie

Isabelle Pettie was a CIA employee and the wife of Marion Pettie, the founder and leader of The Finders. Her employment with the CIA was confirmed by FBI Vault documents released as part of the 2019 Finders document disclosure, and was acknowledged by Marion Pettie himself in a 1993 interview with U.S. News & World Report: "his wife once worked for the Central Intelligence Agency."¹²

CIA Employment

The precise dates of Isabelle Pettie's CIA employment vary across sources due to apparent inconsistencies in the underlying FBI Vault documents. MPD Sgt. John H. Stitcher Jr.'s February 19, 1987 report, which documented a conversation with a CIA official, cited her employment as running from 1950 to 1971. Other FBI Vault documents suggest a narrower range, more commonly cited in journalism as approximately 1952 to 1961.²³ She was listed in CIA records under the job title of staff stenographer.

FBI Vault documents established that Isabelle Pettie held passports to North Korea, North Vietnam, and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, three destinations among the most restricted for American citizens during that era and not ordinarily approved for travel by an employee listed as a staff stenographer.³ This discrepancy between her official job category and her documented travel authorizations became a focal point in discussions of the CIA's relationship to The Finders and to the Pettie family.

Travel With CIA Awareness, 1969-1971

The Stitcher MPD report further documented that at least one Finders member's travel to Moscow, North Korea, and Vietnam during 1969-1971 had been conducted with CIA awareness and facilitation. Whether this refers to Isabelle Pettie's own travel (she died before the 1987 investigation) or to a separate Finders member who traveled to the same destinations during that period is not clearly established in the partially redacted released version of the report.²

Discovery During the Finders Investigation

Isabelle Pettie's CIA employment came to investigators' attention during the 1987 federal inquiry. Metropolitan Police and U.S. Customs investigators learned of her background as they examined Marion Pettie's personal history in the weeks following the February 4, 1987 arrests in Tallahassee, Florida.¹

Stitcher's February 19, 1987 report documented a CIA official acknowledging Isabelle Pettie's employment and stating that the investigation had been "treading on their toes" and that the CIA had a "vested interest" in the group.³ The FBI's Foreign Counterintelligence Division subsequently classified all MPD reports related to The Finders as Secret.³

Significance to the CIA Connection Question

Isabelle Pettie's documented employment, combined with her son George's work for Air America and Future Enterprises' training of CIA employees, constituted three overlapping family and organizational connections to the CIA. The CIA's formal public position, articulated in 1993 by spokesman David Christian, characterized the agency's relationship with The Finders as "an indirect, tangential association" limited to the Future Enterprises computer training connection, and did not address Isabelle Pettie's employment in substantive detail beyond confirming it.¹

She had died before the 1987 investigation began. Her specific operational role, if any, within the CIA beyond her stenographer classification has not been established in accessible primary sources.