By Steve Neavling
Trailblazing former FBI agent Joanne Pierce Misko, who was among the first two women sworn in as special agents in 1972, died Friday in Wheatfield, N.Y., near Niagara Falls.
She was 83.
Her brother, James Pierce, confirmed her death, attributing it to a lung infection, The New York Times reports. She died in a hospital.
Before her groundbreaking career with the FBI, Misko spent a decade as a nun in the Sisters of Mercy, a Roman Catholic religious order in western New York. In 1970, she transitioned to working for the FBI as a researcher, one of the few roles open to women at the time.
The FBI’s legendary director, J. Edgar Hoover, had long maintained that women were unsuited for the physically demanding and hazardous duties of special agents. However, following his death in May 1972, interim director L. Patrick Gray III broke tradition by allowing women to apply for the role.
Encouraged by her supervisor, Misko submitted her application. By the end of 1972, she was among 45 new recruits being sworn in at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. She and Susan Roley Malone, a former Marine, became the first two women to enter the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., for an intensive 14-week training program.
Misko and Malone faced some skepticism from male colleagues but ultimately earned respect as they trained alongside them. From mastering the .38 revolver to passing rigorous physical tests, the women demonstrated their capabilities.
“We worked very hard,” Malone told New York Times. “We would go out after dinner and run Hoover Road, and we’d do pull-ups, sit-ups. She was tenacious.”
Assigned initially to St. Louis, Misko tackled white-collar crimes but was soon dispatched to Wounded Knee, S.D., amid a tense standoff between the American Indian Movement and federal authorities on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
During the 71-day standoff, gunfire erupted, and Misko found herself under siege with her colleagues. Taking cover in an armored personnel carrier, she passed ammunition to agents engaging in a firefight. Though one member of the movement was killed, the agents emerged unscathed.
“I can remember very vividly the first case I had,” she told the Buffalo TV station WGRZ in 2022. “We went out to get the guy, and he found out that we were looking for him and he called back into the office; he was incensed that a woman was being sent out to get him, you know, that he wasn’t worthy of a guy. He had to have a woman go after him.”
Often, Misko found her gender worked in her favor. Suspects frequently underestimated her, allowing her to catch them off guard.
“Most people back then didn’t even realize the F.B.I. had female agents,” Misko said on the Madame Policy podcast in 2022. “Many times a subject would simply open the door when I knocked, not expecting me to say, ‘F.B.I.’”
After retiring in 1994, Misko transitioned to a banking career. That same year, she filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the Department of Justice, claiming her career progression had been stymied due to her gender.
Though she settled the lawsuit in 1996 for an undisclosed amount, the decision to file it weighed heavily on her. “Filing that lawsuit was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life,” she told The Buffalo News in 1994, “because the great majority of my feelings toward the F.B.I., and the people I worked with, are good feelings.”
