This was published 7 years ago
Janet Reno, lawyer famous for integrity, had strained relationship with Washington establishment
Janet Reno, who has died aged 78, was the first woman to serve as attorney general of the United States and became the longest-serving head of the US Justice Department in the 20th century.
When President Bill Clinton nominated her in February 1993, Janet Reno was his third choice for the post after his first two women nominees were disqualified for employing illegal immigrants as nannies. As chief prosecutor for 14 years in Miami, she had built a reputation for her rock-solid integrity and as a fair but brusque and, at 188 centimetres tall, physically imposing boss.
Janet Reno often found her principles tested by circumstance.Credit: Dennis Cook
Within weeks of her appointment she faced the greatest challenge of her career: the confrontation with followers of self-proclaimed prophet David Koresh at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. Koresh had already killed four federal officers and had withstood a standoff with the FBI lasting several weeks when Janet Reno was asked to authorise a raid of the compound.
She gave the go-ahead for the agents to storm the building with tear gas, believing reports that children were being abused inside, but the assault went horribly wrong. The compound went up in flames, leaving more than 80 people dead, including 25 children. The debacle was seen live on national television.
Later that day, an anguished-looking Reno went on television, saying that she took full responsibility and offering to resign. Viewers, unaccustomed to forthrightness from those in high office, were stunned. She was deluged with messages of support and by the summer had become the most popular person in the Clinton cabinet. "Reno is pure oxygen in a city with thin air and she's gone to its head," declared Time magazine.
While she continued to win praise for her integrity, her popularity waned and her relations with the Washington establishment came under strain.
She was never part of the Clinton inner circle, and her preference for kayaking on the Potomac River over hobnobbing on the capital's cocktail circuit meant that she never became part of anyone else's.
Even though she served in the Clinton cabinet for two terms, her relationship with the occupants of the White House was tested by her decision to let an independent inquiry into a failed Clinton land deal in Arkansas, the so-called Whitewater investigation, expand to include Clinton's sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, an episode that led to his impeachment.
Republicans, on the other hand, accused her of protecting Clinton and Vice President Al Gore when, in 1997, she refused to allow an independent counsel to investigate allegations of fundraising improprieties in the White House.
Nor did she endear herself to journalists. Even veteran reporters came to dread her terse rebuke: "You haven't done your homework, have you?" Her homely appearance and awkward manner made her a regular butt of jokes for late-night comedians.
Reno had progressive views, notably on capital punishment and abortion, but often found her principles tested by circumstances. She authorised prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Timothy McVeigh, responsible for the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City which killed 168 people and injured scores more.
McVeigh was killed by lethal injection in June 2001, the first federal execution since 1963.
In 2000, late in her term as attorney general, she intervened in the case of Elian Gonzalez, a six-year-old Cuban boy whose mother had drowned as the pair attempted to flee to the US, and whose Miami relatives were refusing to comply with a court order that he should be returned to his father in Cuba. Faced with their intransigence, she authorised federal agents to seize the child; a photograph of a border patrol agent pointing a gun at the young boy was plastered all over the newspapers. Many Cuban-Americans never forgave her.
Janet Reno was born in Miami, the oldest of four children of two hard-drinking, unconventional local newspaper reporters called Jane and Henry Reno. Henry was the son of Danish immigrants who had changed their name from Rasmussen to Reno (chosen at random off a map of Nevada).
The family lived in a log house they had built themselves in the Miami suburb of Kendall, where they took in unwanted pets and kept a yard full of peacocks, all called Horace. On one occasion police raided the house, having been tipped off about a possible rape on the property, because the opera-loving Henry had been listening to La Traviata at full blast, driving the peacocks into a frenzy.
Henry died when his children were still young, leaving Jane to bring them up on her own. Irascible and outspoken, she subjected them to strict discipline, making frequent use of a bridle strap. But she also taught them to appreciate Beethoven, Coleridge and Kipling, how to use a rifle, scuba-dive and catch alligators.
She advised her girls, Janet and Maggy, that they should not marry a man unless he made their heart go "potato, potato, potato", and set an example of defying convention by refusing to wear dentures after her teeth rotted.
Reno was a debating champion at Coral Gables High School and went on to study chemistry at Cornell University, hoping to become a doctor. Instead she decided on a legal career and in 1960 was one of 16 women accepted by Harvard Law School.
Graduating in 1963, she joined the Miami law firm of Brigham & Brigham before becoming a partner at Lewis & Reno, where she stayed for four years.
In 1971 she entered government service as general counsel to the Judiciary Committee of the Florida House of Representatives, where she was responsible for drafting the state's no-fault divorce law and engineering a reorganisation of its court system.
In early 1978 the state governor appointed her interim state attorney for Dade County, which contains the city of Miami.
She was elected state attorney in November and, despite running as a Democrat in a predominantly Republican county, was returned to office by the voters four more times.
After retiring as attorney general in 2001 and despite suffering from Parkinson's disease, in 2002 she mounted a surprise bid in Florida to unseat Governor Jeb Bush but lost in the Democratic primary, her support undermined by continuing anger in the Cuban community at her handling of the Elian Gonzalez affair.
Janet Reno was unmarried.
Telegraph, London