6/07/00 1:45 p.m.
The Helen Keller of Law Enforcement
A refresher course on why Reno’s a disgrace.

By Mark R. Levin, president, Landmark Legal Foundation

he expired independent-counsel law required the Attorney General to seek the appointment of an independent counsel whenever she was presented with specific and credible information that a crime may have been committed. The threshold for such appointments was extraordinarily low. Moreover, the law also provided the Attorney General with the discretion to request the appointment of an independent counsel whenever she felt a possible conflict of interest existed. In fact, in May 1993, when Janet Reno testified before the Senate Government Affairs Committee in support of reauthorizing the independent-counsel statute, she told the senators that she would trigger an independent-counsel appointment any time there was merely an "appearance" of a conflict of interest. In other words, she created an even lower threshold for her own administration.

But when it became clear that the law, and her interpretation of it, might ensnare her President and her Vice President, she became the Helen Keller of American law enforcement. Reno not only ignored her own prior congressional testimony — she also actively undermined the law with tortured and legally insupportable conclusions about the conduct of her bosses.

With the release of two key memos, one produced by FBI Director Louis Freeh and the other by ex-Campaign-Finance Task Force chief Charles LaBella, no doubt remains that Clinton and Gore used their offices to illegally raise campaign funds. And there remains no question that both Freeh and LaBella (as well as several career prosecutors in the Justice Department's Criminal Division) concluded that Gore's denials about raising "hard" money, i.e., contributions for the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign, were not believable. Even Reno had concluded earlier that raising "hard" money on government property, such as the White House, violates federal law. But she reached that conclusion only after Gore stated that he had raised only "soft" money, i.e., contributions for the Democratic National Committee.

After Reno learned that Gore had illegally raised "hard" money — and multiple witnesses attested to that fact, including former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta — Reno decided that she would accept only Gore's version of events. And Gore's explanation included this pearl: When the issue of raising "hard" money was discussed in the Map Room at the White House, during a meeting at which he was present, he was unaware of the discussion because he had consumed large quantities of iced tea, which required frequent visits to the men's room. Apparently, Reno thought this story was so compelling that she prevented an independent investigation into Gore's fundraising activities, despite the strong recommendations of Freeh and LaBella.

When the history of this miserable administration is written, Reno will be seen as the chief accomplice to the serial offenses that define this regime, and the chief obstructor of justice. Reno was plucked from obscurity as the elected Democratic Dade County Prosecutor to fulfill Hillary Clinton's edict that a woman head the Justice Department. Prior to holding local elected office, Reno was a Democratic staffer in the Florida legislature. Reno was a local political hack. She was a minor functionary. In contrast, Freeh is a former FBI agent, assistant United States attorney, and federal judge. LaBella was a career federal prosecutor with considerable experience prosecuting corruption cases.

Reno was required to trigger the appointment of an independent counsel. She did not. She had the discretion to do so, whether or not she believed such an appointment was required under the statute. She chose not to exercise that discretion. And she was urged by the FBI director and the campaign task-force chief to seek an independent counsel. She ignored their advice. Instead, Reno put politics before the law and thwarted a potentially embarrassing investigation of her patrons. She's a disgrace.