A Proud Public Servant

In her eight years as attorney general, the road has often been rocky, but Janet Reno’s commitment to public service has never wavered.

by Sarah Abrams

Janet Reno sits at a long table surrounded by 30 Harvard undergraduate and Kennedy School students. She patiently answers questions and discusses her views on drug sentencing, the Elian Gonzalez case, and the importance of early childhood intervention. Reno is at the Kennedy School late in November to receive the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence’s final report and to deliver the keynote address at the commission’s conference — an event sponsored by the Kennedy School’s Center for Business and Government — later that day.

Her pleasure in listening to the earnest, thoughtful questions posed by these members of the younger generation is evident by the attention she gives each questioner. In a low, even voice, the 62-year-old Reno discusses such issues as fair sentencing for criminals and the measures required to ensure that every child gets a good start in life. She encourages students to enter careers in public service, which she came to value early on. From the time Reno was small, she says, her mother told her and her three brothers and sisters that there is no higher calling than working for the public good. From her experience, Reno gives these future public servants a survival tip.

“Don’t become cynical, don’t lose your idealism,” she tells the students. “Learn how to be smarter than the people who are cynical, and you derive much benefit.”

In fact, Reno relied on that advice, especially during those eight high-profile years as attorney general, when Congress had threatened to impeach her and the Clinton administration often hoped for her resignation. She stood her ground and remained in office. Her passion for public service and her idealism had strong, deep roots that could not be tugged out no matter what she encountered. Her life prior to becoming attorney general prepared her to develop the independence she would need as the country’s chief law enforcer.

Reno was one of only 16 women in an entering class of 544 at Harvard Law School in 1963. That first year, Law School Dean Erwin Griswold called the women together and worried aloud about what they would be able to do with their law school educations. Reno was undaunted. After graduation, Reno took her law degree back to her hometown of Miami, Florida, where, after a stint in private practice, she was recruited by the prosecutor’s office. In the 10 years before heading for Washington, she was elected five times to serve as Dade County’s chief prosecutor. It was in that position that she became a fervent advocate for children, calling for tougher actions in preventing child abuse and in tracking down child support. Mothers would sometimes call to yell at her, she recalls during her talk with the students, when they were not receiving their child support payments.

In 1993, her career leapt onto the national stage. President Clinton, after his first two choices for attorney general — both women — fell through, tapped the relatively unknown Reno for the part. And she didn’t have much of a honeymoon. Few attorneys general have endured so many challenges — and so soon. Less than 40 days in office, she gave orders to storm the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, which resulted in the deaths of 81 people, 25 of whom were children. That, she admitted to an audience later that evening in the Kennedy School’s ARCO Forum, was her lowest moment.

“You try to prepare yourself as much as possible, ask as many questions as you can, try to make sure that you thought of everything you possibly could, and then live with your decisions, because you know you tried your best,” she said. “I will never know what the right decision was because we could have done the same thing three weeks later with no provocation, and we could have been blamed for that too.”

Though some faulted the FBI for withholding information from her, Reno took full responsibility for the debacle when questioned by the press. Many more challenges followed. She is said to have infuriated the Clinton administration when she appointed a series of independent counsels to investigate five cabinet members, including Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, for accepting favors, and even Clinton himself. She, in turn, infuriated Republicans in 1995 and 1996, when she refused to appoint an independent counsel to investigate then Vice President Al Gore for alleged campaign-finance abuses. Only a year ago, she was called before the Senate and criticized for her handling of the investigation of Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist accused of being a Chinese spy.

When Elian Gonzalez’s plight became a rallying cause for Florida’s Cuban Americans in 2000, Reno was once again thrust into the spotlight. Standing before the Kennedy School crowd, Reno recalled with amusement, the first time she read about Elian, soon after he was found adrift in a tube off the coast of Florida and brought to the United States. “I will remember as vividly as if it were yesterday picking up the paper when I was in Miami and looking at his picture on the front page and saying, ‘What a cute little boy, and what a terrible ordeal he went through.’ I was just struck by it and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Little did I know …,” she said, to much laughter from the Forum audience.

The case, Reno believes, so greatly engaged the American people because of the many lessons involved. “There were all these issues,” she said. “There was freedom versus a totalitarian government. There was a father’s love versus freedom. There was the law. There was the passion of the people.”

The process itself, she noted, was also intriguing. “There are very few processes where the case goes from state court, to federal district court, to the federal court of appeals, to the Supreme Court in less than six months,” she says. People could see the legal system at work, and, she says, it gave them the chance to appreciate it. But the bottom line for her, she says, was that “that little boy belonged with his daddy.”

Reno’s detractors have criticized the social agenda she pushed as attorney general. She has been vocal in her call for drug treatment instead of imprisonment and for early intervention to help children. As a state prosecutor, Reno saw the crack epidemic up close, which left her with a clearer understanding of the needs of children.

Reno recalls what she had learned from that time. “The doctors taught me that 50 percent of all learned human response is acquired in the first year of life, that the child develops a conscience and the concept of reward and punishment during the first three years of life,” she said. With this insight, came the realization that punishment comes too late to make a real difference.

“What good are all the prisons going to be 18 years from now if this child doesn’t have a conscience? What good are educational opportunities going to be if this child doesn’t have the foundation of learning?” Reno’s voice grows louder as she speaks about the importance of ensuring that every child has medical care and “educare” from the start — in the first three years of life. She also wants to see after-school and evening supervision for children. “We’ve got to return children to their fathers and mothers, and the fathers and mothers to their children,” she said. In addition, Reno wants to keep pressure up with respect to domestic violence, noting that unless violence in the home ends, violence will continue on the streets and in communities.

Throughout her years in Washington as attorney general, Reno remained something of an enigma. At six-feet, one-inch tall and wearing large glasses, a no-nonsense hairdo, and dresses, often blue, of the same sedate pattern, Reno became known for her complete absence of style in a town where style counts. Even where her health was concerned, image was not a consideration. Since 1995, when she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, Reno has chosen to reduce her medication rather than suffer the drugs’ side effects, even at the cost of appearing in public with her arms shaking noticeably.

While her disinterest in what others think has confounded many inside the Beltway, Reno’s popularity with the American people has remained relatively constant during her eight years as attorney general. Many saw her as a straight shooter with little interest in partisan politics — characteristics that were welcomed by Americans. The most well known of Clinton’s cabinet members, Reno has been described by reporters who followed her career as a “legal rock star.”

No matter what Reno has been called by adversaries and supporters, she has been able through the years to laugh at herself. As attorney general, she has been the butt of many late-night talk show jokes, in addition to her presence as a long-standing character on Saturday Night Live (SNL). At six feet, four inches, SNL cast member Will Farrell has managed to exaggerate Reno’s awkwardness. She recently joined in the joke. After only a week out of office, she literally burst onto the SNL set, dressed in her ever-present blue dress and pearls. “I like your dress, Janet,” she told Farrell’s Reno before instructing the band to “hit it” and launching into the twist.

In describing how has she made her way through the many conflicts in her career, Reno says: “It is so important that you put aside bitterness towards people and try to go out and reach out to them and work through the bitter comments, and in the end, I think we can find a common ground.”

During her tenure as attorney general, one event undoubtedly pleased everyone. The crime rate dropped. Her strategy for reducing crime is simple, she says: Keep politics out of it. “I have stood with Republican sheriffs and Republican mayors and Democratic state attorneys as we have dealt with the issue of crime together without partisan friction, and that’s the way to do it,” she said.

In the future, Reno believes that the development and understanding of new crime-fighting technologies will be critical to law enforcement. The challenge, she says, will be to utilize these new tools in a way that ensures that human beings master the knowledge, rather than letting the technology master humans. “The more we can use information to identify the major crimes and approach them in a commonsense way, we can make a tremendous difference,” she said. “Like the introduction of fingerprints, DNA has forever changed the landscape of the criminal justice system,” she says, referring to the committee’s findings issued in the report that she accepted earlier in the day.

Equal justice under the law is also very important to Reno. She wants to make sure that people charged with crimes have access to the law and not just in name only. “They have to have competent counsel who are vigorous in their defense,” she said. “They must have access to DNA expertise and other forensic expertise.”

Today she leaves office as the longest-serving attorney general in American history, a post that some say she has changed forever. Since her appointment, the department’s budget has grown from $10 billion to $21 billion, and for the arm that oversees the number of police, the establishment of drug courts and community policing, and crime prevention programs, the budget has grown from $800 million to $5 billion.

With her idealism intact, Reno plans to travel across the country in her red pickup truck soon after she leaves office to see more of the people and places she visited as attorney general. The high point of her job in the Clinton cabinet, she revealed to the Kennedy School audience, is getting to know some of these amazing individuals.

“The people of the United States, both in and out of government, are doing so many incredible things. People across America are building a sense of community and a democracy and are making America safer, freer, healthier, and a more positive place to live,” Reno said. “After having had the opportunity to meet so many wonderful people, it gives me greater pride in America than ever before.”