Ms. Agents

In his 48 years as head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover stoutly -- some said male chauvinistically -- refused to allow women as special agents. Tracking down Dillingers and other enemies foreign and domestic was man's work, he believed. He continued the ban even in recent years when the FBI's Most Wanted List came to include women, among them Angela Davis and the Weatherman's Bernardine Dohrn.

After Hoover's death last spring, Acting Director L. Patrick Gray decided to abandon the men-only policy. Last week two women were accepted for the FBI's special-agent training program -- Susan Lynn Roley, 25, a former Marine Corps lieutenant, and Joanne E.

Pierce, 31, who used to be a nun in the order of the Sisters of Mercy. The women must still complete a 14-week course and establish that they can meet the masculine standards -- including a two-mile run in 17 minutes or less, jujitsu and shooting with a .38-cal. revolver.

On the assumption that they need a certain anonymity as agents, the FBI has permitted no pictures of the pair. However, an FBI spokesman with oafish gallantry and an unintended pun insists, "They're not pigs, by any means."

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