United States Attorney
General
Janet Reno and her aides Sept. 5 were
unable to explain why the Justice Department did not know that money
raised by Vice President Al Gore from his office may have violated
campaign finance laws."
The country's top law enforcement officer -- who has a reputation (en
couraged by her boss, President Bill Clinton) as a micro-manager -- said
her department began reviewing the allegations only after the Washington
Post disclosed Sept. 3 that some of the money went to accounts earmarked
for individual candidates and not for general Democratic Party
activities, as previously believed.
"The first I heard of it was when I saw the article in the Washington
Post and that's the first time I learned of it," Reno said at her weekly
news conference. "It is my understanding that is the first time the
public integrity section learned of it as well," she said, referring to
the Justice Department unit which has been conducting a lengthy probe
into campaign finance practices.
The White House has released documents showing that Gore from his
office called at least 46 people asking for contributions during the
1996 presidential election -- although media reports, from the
Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal, place the number of
arm-twisting calls placed by Gore at more than 100.
The Washington Post reported Sept. 3 that more than $120,000 in
campaign contributions personally solicited in 1995-96 by Gore went into
a so-called "hard money" account, which is like to be found to be a
violation of federal law.
Reno cultivates a reputation as a bulldog prosecutor, so much so that
she placed herself into the limelight on such cases as the Olympic Park
bombing in Atlanta, the Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma City, the
Trade Towers bombing in New York City and the trackdown and arrest of
alleged radical bomber Theodore Kaczynski. She will be most remembered
in history for her personal oversight, for better or worse, of the
Branch Davidian compound standoff and subsequent explosion, albeit by
elements under her own coordination.
She was highly evident for weeks as a national detective into the
alleged firebombing of African-American churches.
The word is, when a bomb goes off Janet Reno wants the news from ground
zero.
The probability that a Vice President of the United States used an
official phone card inside the White House to put the arm on donors to
the re-election campaign of Clinton-Gore in any other era would be the
stuff on which a tenacious Attorney General might feast -- but in a slic
e of time when literal bombs are exploding about the nation, chasing
after a figurative bomb doesn't appear to have captured this Attorney
General's attention.
Or, is it that intra-White House lawbreaking -- Ms. Reno is pleased
that she has been the breakthrough woman Attorney General sitting in
cabinet meetings -- is a subject matter this top cop wants left to
future Justice leadership? Certainly she must realize that to probe
assertively federal law violation by a man who may be the next President
is a splintery fence to walk. It would take a truly great Attorney
General to be aggressive in snooping up the real dirt on a fellow
denizen of the White House hallways.
That is not what has transpired to date under Janet Reno. With that in
mind, despite all of the national press tough-judge Reno has encouraged
in her five years -- Waco, Oklahoma City, New York, the rural church
fires -- she is proving herself far less than a truly great, courageous
Attorney General.
She is proving herself a blindly loyal resident of the Clinton-Gore White House who micro-manages cases of gunpowder and flame, but learns third-hand and belatedly of bombs set off by her political cronies.
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