U.S. Customs Service’s Surprise Weapon : The Woman With a Golden Gun

WASHINGTON —  Bonni Tischler is known to her fellow agents in the U.S. Customs Service by her trademark: the gold-plated Smith & Wesson .38 in her handbag.

She picked it up in Miami several years ago, when she was investigating Colombian drug traffickers, who are known for flashy clothing and extravagant gold jewelry.

“The boys were all buying automatics, but they were too big for me,” Tischler said. “They kept saying my chrome-plated .357 magnum clashed with my gold jewelry. What would the Colombians say?”

So, agents Bobby Fernandez and Pete Balonon accompanied Tischler to a firearms store, where she purchased the golden gun.

It’s been a big hit. Drug traffickers regularly offer to buy it when she makes an arrest, she said.

Tischler is the highest-ranking woman agent in federal law enforcement. She is head of smuggling investigations for the Customs Service.

First Woman in Job

Customs Commissioner William von Raab said that she will be promoted next summer to special agent in charge of the service’s Los Angeles office. She will be the first woman to hold that post.

Tischler does not fit the stereotype of a federal agent. She is known for her sense of humor, not her physical strength. She is tiny --5 feet 3--and feminine. Her hobbies don’t include body-building or triathlon competition. She considers herself a sport shopper.

When she joined federal law enforcement in 1971--as a sky marshal, one of the armed agents assigned to commercial flights from 1971 until 1974--her parents were horrified.

Tischler still considers herself the oddball of her family. Her father is an orthodontist in Hollywood, Fla., where she grew up. Her mother designs costumes for local theater groups. She has two younger brothers, one in hospital administration, the other in commodities trading.

“My mother always said that nice Jewish girls don’t go into law enforcement,” Tischler said.

There is no shortage of stories about Tischler around the Customs Service.

Played Undercover Role

Dennis Fagan, now head of Customs’ New York office, got to know Tischler from long conversations during all-night surveillance assignments in Florida.

He recalled a case in Tampa, Fla., in which Tischler posed as an executive in a money-laundering operation, handling cocaine and marijuana profits for Colombian traffickers.

Tischler, in her undercover role, was arrested along with a group of suspects as they prepared to flee to the Bahamas.

When the arresting agent, a friend, threw Tischler up against the side of the plane, she answered him with a string of four-letter words that amazed even some of the veteran agents.

“She carried it off better than any male would have,” Fagan said.

He also recalled a case in Miami several years ago, when he and Tischler were working under cover. Fagan played the muscle man and Tischler posed as an aspiring madam, trying to convince two suspects that she was interested in buying their house of prostitution.

As he tells the story, Tischler was fully involved in the role, fluttered her eyelashes and allowed her skirt to creep higher and higher.

‘Act Like a Princess’

Tischler was asked once if she had any problems with the way people treated her when she was working under cover. She said she relied on her past training as “a Jewish-American princess. You act like a princess, and people treat you like a princess.”

There is always some grumbling in a male-dominated field--only 10% of Customs agents are female --when a woman moves up the chain of command. But, Fagan said, “She didn’t get it because someone decided to give it to a female. She earned what she got.”

Speaking of their days in Miami, he said, “She was always there. She never used being a female as an excuse to get out of doing something. She held her own with the guys.”

An expert marksman, she scored 295 to 300 out of a possible 300 on a combat course.

Tischler was graduated from the University of Florida in 1966 with a degree in broadcasting communications, and quickly found that most openings in that field were being filled by men. She moved to Washington and went to work for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Joined Sky Marshals

Then, in 1971, the law was changed to allow women in federal law enforcement to carry firearms. When she heard there were openings for sky marshals, she said, she jumped at the chance.

She did that for about three years, then worked for Customs as an equal employment opportunity investigator for a couple of years.

Like Fagan, Fernandez, Balonon and several other people at Customs, Tischler got her big break in 1980 with Operation Greenback, in which federal agents began to track illicit cash as a way of going after the principals in narcotics deals and criminal organizations.

Tischler was transferred to Washington in 1983, and named to supervise the agency’s financial investigations, at which she was considered a whiz.

About a year ago, she was named director of smuggling investigations, the largest of four investigative groups in the Customs Service.

She describes her job as supervising smuggling cases, involving “everything from fish and lizards to narcotics to currency to child pornography.”

All Types of Smuggling

Besides the most obvious areas of smuggling, including drugs and cash, Customs is responsible for enforcing hundreds of laws, including prohibitions against smuggling animals of endangered species and their products.

Von Raab also assigned the Customs marine branch--about 180 interceptor, utility and radar tracking boats--to Tischler.

She said that at first, she was a little panicked, and thought: “What do I know about boats? I don’t do boats. I do Bloomingdale’s.”

But, Tischler said, “I’m not into failure.” So she studied the technical manuals for the boats under her command and began to learn to operate them.

Her most memorable effort, she said, was a high-speed ride on heavy seas on Blue Thunder, the service’s new Cigarette-type pursuit boat, which can outrun most smugglers.

Tischler said she managed to gain some acceptance during the ride on Blue Thunder by keeping her lunch down and yelling, “Yahoo! Faster! Faster!”

She has gained respect during her Washington assignment because of her hard work and her aggressiveness in representing Customs before congressional committees and in meetings with other agencies.

Long Hours, Few Dates

Tischler concedes that there is a down side to being a woman in law enforcement. Because of the long hours and the reassignments every several years, she said, it is difficult to manage a social life.

In Washington, she often works 13 or 14 hours a day. In the field, agents work until the job is finished, sometimes all night. “It’s not one of those 9-to-5 jobs where you always know when you’ll be available,” she said.

She recalled one dinner date that she canceled and rescheduled six times one evening, as she and the other agents tried to decide whether to go ahead with an operation. “After you do that a few times, (dates) just don’t call back any more,” she said.

But she said she can’t imagine doing any other type of work. “This is something outside the traditional, something where I can have an impact . . . where we can collectively right wrongs. . . .

“I feel kind of like Wendy in Peter Pan, pulling thorns out of hurt paws.”