WHO IS JANET RENO?
Dr. Jai Maharaj
The Wall Street Journal
October 15, 1998
So maybe Janet Reno will dispatch someone to interview the
President of the United States about fund-raising charges, all the
while averring that there is no need to appoint an independent
counsel. That is to say, the President's minions will question him
to see whether there's any reason he should be questioned by
someone independent.
At least this seems to be the latest deal being cooked up by the
legal eagles of Justice and the White House, with billing and
cooing from the President and the Attorney General in respective
press conferences. Extention of Ms. Reno's inquiry until Dec. 2 is
intended as a bow to get her past hearings today before Congressman
Henry Hyde's Judiciary Committee. What will bear watching is the
committee's Democrats, a menagerie with Barney Frank on point.
Ms. Reno's position gets more preposterous by the hour. After all,
the whole idea of an independent investigation is independence. The
intent of the present Independent Counsel Act is that when
accusations involve the President and other high officials, their
own appointees should not be the investigators. Before the statute,
Justice Department practice -- in Watergate and Teapot Dome, for
example -- was to appoint a special prosecutor to operate
independently of the Attorney General and other Presidential
appointees. The President could always fire a special prosecutor,
but at a high political price, as President Nixon discovered when
he dispatched Archibald Cox.
Which system works best remains a question for another day; the
statute is the tool history and events have given us to deal with
corruption in high places. At present, it is being construed as a
shield by Mr. Clinton and Ms. Reno; the career officials appointed
to cook up rationalizations peer into its entrails and find reason
not to do, or at least to delay, what the occasion so clearly
demands.
If a controversy has reached the point where it's necessary to
question the President, it has long since passed the point where an
independent counsel is required. After getting "mad" about the
delay in releasing video tapes of White House coffee solicitations,
Ms. Reno hauled a member of the White House Counsel's office before
a grand jury. If White House lawyers are being taken to a grand
jury, surely it should be done not by Justice but by an authority
with some measure of independence.
In defending her position, Ms. Reno has been at once defensive and
self-righteous. Yet in fact throughout her tenure, the press, the
Congress and the public have treated her with extraordinary
deference, due to her gender, her demeanor and her sufferings with
Parkinson's Disease. Ed Meese would have been run out of town way
back over Waco.
Consider her record as Attorney General. Appointed to the job after
the misfortunes of Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, she arrived to find
Webster Hubbell already ensconced as "White House liaison." In our
first "Who Is Webster Hubbell?" editorial, he had already come to
our attention for helping to engineer the reversal of a Justice
Department position in a corruption case, leading to the
resignation of a U.S. attorney. Even before confirmation, Ms. Reno
quickly endorsed the new position.
About her first act as Attorney General was the unprecedented
dismissal of all 93 sitting U.S. Attorneys, a sweeping step toward
politicization of the Justice Department. This led to the speedy
replacement of prosecutors in Washington and Little Rock, the
jurisdictions where Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr now operates.
Ms. Reno also resisted appointment of an Independent Counsel in the
Whitewater affair, only to reverse her position when the President
made a political decision to the contrary.
Today Mr. Hubbell is a convicted felon, and Ms. Reno's Justice
Department a shambles, with many top positions unfilled. The head
of the Criminal Division, in particular, has been on "acting"
status for two years; and the acting head had to recuse himself
from the campaign finance inquiry because his lawyer son was hired
to represent some of the potential defendants.
Meanwhile, a Federal Court taking a new look at one of Ms. Reno's
proudest accomplishments as a district attorney back home in
Florida. As our Dorothy Rabinowitz reported yesterday, a three-
judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court has accepted jurisdiction in
the case of Grant Snowden, a former policeman Ms. Reno convicted of
child abuse in 1986, on the basis of the kind of hysterical
evidence then fashionable but now discredited. Indeed, when a first
jury acquitted Mr. Snowden, Ms. Reno set out to get him with a
whole new set of charges. She came to White House attention, and
her present high office, as a champion of children.
Ms. Reno's record as Attorney General is far from one of
independence; it is a record of pliability. Which of course is why
Bill Clinton, a shrewd judge of character, chose her in the first
place.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the
educational purposes of research and open discussion.
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Posted by: atsi (atsi@whatever) 11/12/98 21:28:06 PST
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> To: atsi
Good reminder. Ms. Reno should be IMPEACHED
alongside of Clinton & Gore, ASAP......
> From: Mike P. (emailname) 11/12/98 22:08:46 PST
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Source of the above and more news and discussion:
http://www.freerepublic.com/
Click on the "Latest on Clinton" link at
http://www.flex.com/~jai
Mike
Dr. Jai Maharaj wrote in message ...