"They told me he was slapping the babies"
Reno 2002
Posted on 09/05/2001 9:08:19 AM PDT by alloysteel
Nine months ago, relations between Capitol Hill Republicans and Janet Reno were at an all-time low. The attorney general had roundly rejected the advice of top investigator Charles La Bella that she seek an independent counsel in the campaign-finance scandal. Before that, she had ignored the same recommendation from FBI director Louis Freeh. For a while, Reno refused even to let lawmakers see a heavily redacted version of La Bella's analysis of the case, which led to a serious but unsuccessful attempt to hold her in contempt of Congress. It was hard to imagine relations between the Hill and Reno getting any worse.
Until now. News of the Justice Department's failure to act in the Chinese spy case has led to new calls for Reno's head. Less publicized- but equally galling to some Republicans-is the department's decision to make lenient plea-bargain deals with John Huang and Charlie Trie, perhaps the two most important figures in the campaign-finance case. Taken together, the latest developments have Reno's critics asking a simple, if harsh, question: Is she corrupt, incompetent, or some combination of both?
Incompetent, vote some of those most knowledgeable about Justice's botched spy probe. "National security, espionage, and counterintelligence were never a top priority for her," says a former department official. "She's suffering for it in this Los Alamos fiasco. It was inevitable that something like this would happen." Reno, according to prosecutors who have served under her, has always been more interested in trendier causes, like deadbeat dads, abortion-clinic violence, and school safety.
While she concentrated on those, Reno neglected some of the agencies most critical to national security. By many accounts, she has been indifferent to the department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, which is the agency that refused to okay a request to wiretap Los Alamos espionage suspect Wen Ho Lee. As much attention as that has attracted, it's nothing new under Reno. Back in 1995, some insiders complained that the office turned down too many FBI requests to seek search and wiretap warrants for suspected spies. And Reno drew criticism from both her colleagues and Congress when she tried to reorganize the department's internal-security section in a way that placed less emphasis on prosecuting alleged spies. She later dropped the idea.
Reno also de-emphasized the work of the department's criminal division as a whole. For reasons that she has never adequately explained, she chose to leave the top job in the division-one of the two or three most important posts at the Justice Department-empty from 1995 until last year. "The criminal-division head job was vacant when the Los Alamos intelligence was obtained," says the former official. "The division was never briefed on the case."
STONEWALLING
Perhaps the incompetence argument explains some of that. But to what does one attribute the department's actions during the Cox committee's investigation of Chinese espionage? The committee's report says Justice refused to cooperate, forcing the committee "to expend a major part of its available investigative resources in retracing the Justice Department's steps, often in the face of protests from Justice Department officials."
And not only did Justice not supply information to the committee-it tried to keep other government agencies from doing so as well. "If we sent a document request to an executive department," ranking committee Democrat Norm Dicks said recently, "[Justice] would say the executive department couldn't respond to the committee's request, even if it were a subpoena, because they needed first to get in the middle of it." The committee was eventually able to get around that, but members remained frustrated by the department's delaying tactics. "If . . . you're trying to look at this as a national-security matter, then you want to get to the bottom of these things in a hurry," Dicks said. "You don't want to drag it out."
Even when one concedes that Justice performed atrociously in the spy investigation, it is likely that the scandal would not be causing such rancor on Capitol Hill were it not for the deep well of distrust created by Reno's handling of the campaign-finance probe. The reason that so few Republicans trust her to do the right thing now is that she didn't do the right thing then.
During the critical first year of the probe, Reno assigned the case to an inexperienced lawyer and set limits that virtually ensured the investigation would go nowhere while precious time ticked away, witnesses fled the country, and evidence was destroyed. In September 1997, after public exposure of the investigation's shortcomings, Reno brought in the well-respected La Bella and then ignored his findings while listening only to favored staffers who opposed an independent counsel. La Bella, by his own public account, became persona non grata at the department and last month left the government altogether.
But all of that bought Reno time; she hung tough during the most intensive period of congressional calls for an independent counsel. Now, with the statute set to expire soon and virtually no public appetite for setting up a new, wide-ranging campaign-finance independent counsel, it's clear that she's won the game.
TYING UP LOOSE ENDS
To make matters worse, she seems to be eagerly clearing the decks of the campaign cases she fought so hard to keep within her own department. Last month, prosecutors announced they had reached a plea agreement with Democratic fundraiser John Huang under which Huang will admit campaign infractions from 1992 and 1994 and receive a sentence of probation and community service. Huang was not required to admit any wrongdoing involving the 1996 campaign. Shortly before the deal, the department accepted a similarly soft, no-jail plea from Charlie Trie, the presidential friend who was a major source of illegal campaign cash and who tried to contribute more than $600,000 in illegal money to Bill Clinton's legal-defense fund.
All this leaves Republicans feeling had-again. At a recent hearing, Sen. Fred Thompson bitterly pointed out that he wanted information from Huang during the Governmental Affairs Committee's 1997 campaign-finance investigation. But the Justice Department said no, telling Thompson that if he offered Huang immunity for testimony, it could jeopardize the whole campaign-finance case. "None of us want to mess up an important prosecution, especially if there's a possibility that the person is going to cooperate," Thompson explained. So he held off on Huang and other witnesses. Now Justice has let Huang go with a wrist- slap and no accounting of his role in the illegal fundraising of 1996. "That's the fix that we're all in now," Thompson bemoans.
In the House, Government Reform and Oversight Committee chairman Dan Burton is even angrier. "Nobody can be that incompetent, and you can quote me on that," he says. "This is insane. She has to know what's she's doing. She's blocking for the president, and I believe she's done that on Wen Ho Lee, and she's done that in campaign finance."
But Republicans stop short of connecting the two scandals now engulfing Reno. There's no denying that she and the department downplayed the investigation of Chinese espionage at the same time the president was happily accepting illegal campaign contributions from China. But did one fact guide the other? "I do not see a Chinese operative paying money into the presidential campaign coffers and being able to fix counter-intelligence investigations at the working level in the FBI and the Justice Department," the former official says. Even Burton stresses that, whatever happened, the responsibility goes above Reno's pay grade. "The president knew about the campaign contributions on one side and he knew about the espionage on the other. And he did nothing." Of course, Reno helped him do nothing.
And she stays in office. What can Congress do about it? Impeach her? No way. "Impeach" is not a word Republicans throw around much these days. Hold her in contempt? Burton tried last year; lacking top Republican leadership support, the move died with the 105th Congress.
Of course, if they wanted to, Republicans could take their cue from the toughest, meanest Democrat ever to oversee a Justice Department. In 1985, House Judiciary Committee member Jack Brooks, angry at the Reagan administration's opposition to a law concerning military contracts, persuaded the committee to vote to cut off all money to attorney general Edwin Meese's office. The Reagan administration backed down. In 1991, Brooks, by then chairman, threatened to cut off the entire Justice Department until the Bush administration acceded to his demand for an investigation of the Inslaw affair, a decidedly minor scandal over a government software contract. Bush caved. Today, even though they have a vastly more momentous issue, some Republicans believe they'd be crucified in the press if they tried such tactics. They're probably right.
So look for them to continue to call for Janet Reno to resign. And continue to summon her to testify at one hearing or the other. And continue to be frustrated by her non-answers. Until either she or Bill Clinton decides it's time to go.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace of Reason: http://www.geocities.com/fporretto
The only reason she gets attacked and criticized so much is simply because Republicans attack and criticize more.
Anyone with an engaged brain knew when they were spoken that they were lies. Anyone who now denies that they were lies--or claims that those lies served any interest greater than x42's own personal interest--cannot be reasoned with.
That sounds like a good idea for a bumpersticker:
Pay no attention to Hidy. Hidy is a cowardly little sneak...hits and runs.
"They told me he was slapping the babies"
Reno 2002
You've heard the blather- now look at the record...
...and pass this on--
--The WACO horror--
Waco producer: Weapons photos falsified
FBI, Delta Force, ATF, All fire Shots into Mt. Carmal killing children
-David T. Hardy: An Interview With American Gun Owners' Best Friend ( & Waco )--
WACO: The truth seeps out good info web page
More Waco links from The War Room:
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