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

National Review, Nov 15, 1993 by RicH Lowry

In taking another easy political out, Miss Reno undermined the institutional integrity of her own department. Since the spring of 1992 House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell had been pushing to interview career Justice attorneys about why certain EPA-recommended environmental prosecutions were dropped.

The Bush Justice Department refused. If attorneys knew that dropping a case would get them dragged before a congressman, it reasoned, they would feel pressure to prosecute in every case, whatever the legal merits. Never mind: this Spring, when a besieged Clinton Administration could least afford to offend a House baron, Janet Reno granted Dingell's request.

Even a Carter Administration attorney general, Benjamin Civiletti, has knocked the decision. "The Attorney General cannot effectively and fairly enforce the laws when career prosecutors are receiving pressure from Congress," Civiletti said in prepared remarks at the Heritage Foundation.

Reinventing Waco

BUT SURRENDERING to congressional bullies like Dingell hasn't tarnished Miss Reno's reputation--after Waco, it seems nothing can. Miss Reno turned law enforcement's biggest disaster in recent memory into a public-relations coup, notwithstanding the Justice Department's report about the siege, which portrays her as indecisive in the runup to the April 19 tear-gas assault and misleading in its aftermath.

On April 16, Webster Hubbell, who supported the tear-gas plan, told FBI officials Miss Reno had rejected it. When FBI Director William Sessions asked to speak with her, Hubbell left, and returned with her ten minutes later. Unaccountably, she then "made no reference to her disapproval of the plan," according to the report. She did request a written justification of the FBI proposal, which the FBI gave her the next day. "The Attorney General did not read the prepared statement carefully," the report continues, "nor did she read the supporting documentation ... She read only a chronology, [and] gave the rest of the materials a cursory review... "She approved the plan for April 19.

When that day ended with some 85 cult members dead, Miss Reno said child abuse within the compound prompted her decision. But the FBI had no evidence of on-going abuse. Miss Reno also contended that the FBI had unanimously rejected the possibility of mass suicide, when a March 8 memo from FBI behavorial experts warned about exactly that and advised that FBI tactical pressure "should be the absolute last option."

The positive press after Waco has provided excellent cover for this attorney general's weakness.

Traditionally, the Justice Department has a crucial role in selecting Supreme Court nominees. But in picking Ruth Bader Ginsburg the White House set up its own vetting operation, dispensing entirely with Miss Reno. Many of her top lieutenants were picked for her by the White House, making it impossible for her to assemble her own team. And she had nothing to do with the formulation of the two Democratic crime bills now on Capitol Hill--bills too hard-nosed for Miss Reno.