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

National Review, Nov 15, 1993 by RicH Lowry

No Friend of Bill

WHATEVER her background, Miss Reno came to Justice at a disadvantage: she lacks the White House connections of her subordinate Webster Hubbell. A friend and golfing partner of the President's, Hubbell worked with the First Lady at the powerhouse Rose law firm in Little Rock. If he were a woman (and weren't obviously a Clinton henchman) he would be Attorney General.

Instead, he uses his clout behind the scenes. While Clinton flipped through Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, Hubbell grabbed an office on the exclusive fifth floor of the Justice Department, where the attorney general's office is located and where no associate attorney general had roosted before. Many observers say he maintains close, perhaps daily, contact with the White House. Indeed, the day of Waco, Webster Hubbell, not Janet Reno, reported to the President. And he does what Friends of Bill do best: politics.

In February, thanks to a change of venue, a predominantly white jury was set to hear the second corruption trial of Representative Harold Ford (D., Tenn.). But the Congressional Black Caucus objected to the jury, and Hubbell brokered a meeting between the Caucus and Acting Attorney General Stuart Gerson (a Bush holdover). A day later, in a stunning reversal, the department said it would join a motion by Ford's attorneys to dismiss the jury and return the venue to his district, sure to produce a jury unwilling to convict (as it had in his first, which ended in a hung jury). A federal judge denied Justice's motion, but Ford won acquittal anyway. For former Memphis U.S. Attorney Edward Bryant, who resigned to protest Justice's reversal, "The Justice Department gave in to the political pressure and violated a very basic principle of justice:... that justice is blind."

So far, Miss Reno has fit right in with this politicization. After endorsing the independent-counsel law, she has developed an allergy to special prosecutors. She won't name one to investigate Travelgate (during which the White House by-passed her and took its orders straight to the FBI), the Ron Brown bribery allegations, or the charges of tampering in Republican personnel files at the State Department. Miss Reno says she can't name an independent counsel because the statute has lapsed. But she still has the power to appoint a prosecutor to investigate a case independently; Bush Attorney General William Barr did so without the law three times.

Similarly, only politics can explain Miss Reno's waffling on whether to launch a federal probe into the anti-Semitic riot and murder of Yankel Rosenbaum in Crown Heights two years ago. On September 8 word leaked that she would announce the next day her decision not to investigate, sparing both New York Mayor David Dinkins (in the midst of a reelection fight) and former New York Police Chief Lee Brown (now Clinton's drug czar) potential embarrassment. But when New York pols raised a stink, Miss Reno backed off, saying she needed more time for reflection. In both moves--deciding against an investigation, then postponing a decision-she swayed with the prevailing political winds.