Gambling on Reno - evaluating the competence of Attorney General Janet Reno

National Review, Nov 15, 1993 by RicH Lowry

Instead of ending Janet Reno's career, the Waco disaster made her the superstar of the Clinton Cabinet. Just how honest--and how competent is she?

"If the attorney general can think about pre-natal care before she thinks about more prisons, that's got to tell you something."

--Attorney General Janet Reno

DURING her confirmation hearings, Janet Reno was asked how she would react if the White House tried to meddle in a possible indictment of Representative Dan Rostenkowski. Miss Reno replied with endearing bluntness: "I'd say, 'Mr. President, that's not the way to do it. Let the Department of Justice pursue it in the regular course of business. Let's not mix things up. And if you don't want me to be your attorney general, I'll go home.'"

Attagirl. Janet Reno has become the star of the Clinton Cabinet with a well-publicized integrity (she buys her own lunches at the Justice Department cafeteria) and a buck-stops-here attitude made famous after Waco. Not only does she say she's willing to pack her bags for home---her mother built that Florida home by hand, and it is surrounded with pet peacocks. No wonder the press has swooned.

But if Clinton's most celebrated Cabinet member has personal integrity and a no-nonsense sort of flair, what else does she have? There is reason to believe that "the first woman to run the Justice Department" doesn't; the White House and Clinton crony Webster Hubbell share that distinction. Miss Reno's views on fighting crime, morever, hark back to the "root causes" rhetoric of the 1960s. And she presides over a department undergoing the sort of politicization Democrats used to attribute to Reagan-Bush Republicans.

Indeed, when confronted with what seems to have been White House pressure to buy time for Rostenkowski, Miss Reno didn't head for home, she fired every U.S. attorney, including the one investigating the powerful House Ways and Means chairman.

Normally, when control of the Administration changes from one party to the other, the old U.S. attorneys are replaced gradually. Thus, when Tom Corbett, chairman of the U.S.-attorney advisory committee, asked Miss Reno about the transition timetable on Thursday, March 18, and got no answers, he assumed there would be the traditional, slow handover. He reeled when, on Monday morning, Associate Attorney General Hubbell told him the attorneys would have to resign immediately. Literally. "[They] should be able to clear out of their offices over the weekend," one White House politico told Corbett. (Miss Reno was nowhere in sight.) Corbett had to fight just to get the attorneys an extra week to clear out.

The next day Miss Reno called for resignations. Jay Stephens, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., resigned that afternoon, commenting that he had been within thirty days of a "critical decision" about Rostenkowski. (Once Stephens left, the transition lost its urgency; some Republican U.S. attorneys are still on board.) The Illinois congressman may yet be indicted for his alleged abuse of the House Bank, but Stephens's hasty dismissal surely slowed the investigation, leaving Rosty, who loses his chairmanship if indicted, in place to steer Clinton bills through the House.

Politics, Politics

WHAT WITHIN days of her confirmation Miss Reno would make such a politically convenient decision shouldn't come as a surprise. A Democrat, Janet Reno won election as state attorney five times in conservative Dade County. Her accessibility was legendary--her home phone number was listed but the flip side of her "responsiveness" was a sensitivity to political pressures.

"She is very reactive. The issue of the moment becomes everybody's top priority," a former assistant told Legal Times. "When everybody was getting upset over smash-and-grab robberies, she formed a smash-and-grab task force... Then that just faded away. I think the chances are she's honestly concerned, but sometimes it looks a little like politics."

Certainly Reno's law-enforcement record--at least judging by the numbers-wasn't the key to her success. An analysis by Legal Times shows her office lagging behind the rest of the state, and behind neighboring Broward County, in prosecuting criminals.

In 1991 her office brought 2 per cent of all felony defendants to trial. In the rest of the state, 3.6 per cent faced trial, and in Broward about 5 per cent did. This might suggest that Miss Reno's office secured more guilty pleas. Not so: in Broward 88 per cent of those charged with felonies pleaded guilty; in Florida, 82 per cent; in Dade, 73 per cent. Perhaps, because it tried fewer cases, Miss Reno's office was more successful in the cases it did try? No, again: in the rest of Florida about 62 per cent of trials ended in guilty pleas or convictions; in Dade, about 60 per cent.

Miss Reno did excel in social work. She had grand juries investigate homelessness, public housing, and minority set-asides. The list goes on. According to Legal Times, a nine-month grand-jury investigation into Dade's high-school dropout rate resulted in a four-year effort by one of Miss Reno's prosecutors to organize Little League and pre-school programs in Miami's toughest neighborhoods. Meanwhile, during her tenure Dade's crime rate jumped by about 50 per cent, roughly twice the rate of increase state-wide.