Document 6504507
Transcription
Document 6504507
Savannah News-Press • Sunday, November 21,1993 - 5F Janet Reno, Star Of Clinton Cabinet, Makes An Unlikely Hero By CAROL HORNER Knight-Bidder Newspapers WASHINGTON - It's a dark and drizzly Sunday afternoon, approaching dusk. A strikingly tall woman - 6 feet, l'/4 inches - casually dressed in slacks, a jacket and a khaki-colored canvas hat with its floppy brim pulled down to partially obscure her face, is striding the streets of the nation's capital, gazing at architecture, reading historical markers, looking at landmarks. She's accompanied by two clean-cut men whose eyes pierce every shadowy corner and examine every passerby's face. It's a rare day off, and Attorney General Janet Reno, chief law enforcement officer of the country, acknowledged superstar of the Clinton cabinet, is out exploring her new home town. The men accompanying her are what she refers to as "the detail," FBI agents assigned to guard her every move. "(Yesterday) was a wonderful time to walk because there was a mist and a rain, and it was as it Washington was kind of just a magical place." It's the 'day after, and Reno, interviewed as she sits on a loveseat in her office at the Justice Department, has been asked if she finds time for any life outside her job. She talks about friends and family who have visited "to make sure that they spoiled me rotten." She talks about her habit of walking to explore, about how she enjoys reading articles and books to enlighten her on her new surroundings. But she says she spends most of her time on her job - traveling around the country to hold town meetings on crime, addressing gatherings of lawyers and others, administering a department of 92,000 employees, submitting to interviews, testifying before Congress, supervising investigations, advising the president, helping him sell his programs. Still, the day before - on Halloween - she found time to go out in public disguised only by what she called "my old boat hat," and nobody recognized her. That was fun, she says, smiling. It has been a while since Janet Reno, 55, could count on an uninterrupted walk around town or a peaceful wait in an airport lounge. Named by President Clinton to be attorney general in February - following two nominations that failed because of embarrassing controversies about illegal or improper hiring of domestic help - Reno fast became something of a media darling. The public warmed to her plainspeaking style right away. But the citizenry really embraced her five weeks after she took office, when the government standoff with Branch Davidian cultists near Waco, Texas, ended in fiery tragedy. AP Photo STRONG WILLED: Attorney General Janet Reno is an individualist That day, April 19,Reno, who had as unpretentious and genuine. In recent months, Reno has been given the go-ahead for the FBI's tear-gas attack on the cult com- the subject of glowing profiles in nupound, stepped forward, appearing merous national publications. "Reno all evening on radio and television, - The Real Thing," proclaimed the to say repeatedly, "I made the deci- cover of Time in July. "Janet Reno - How She Got Her Grit," said sion .... I'm accountable." Reno makes an unlikely hero. Lear's that same month. "Janet She is a self-described "awkward Reno: Clinton's Conscience," headold maid," a plain-talking, un- lined Vogue in August. No one is more surprised by the adorned woman. She has been called blunt, crusty and, on occasion, adulation than Reno herself. Tve been astounded,'1 she said. moody. She has been known to answer interviewers' questions in terse "I don't sound any different, I don't monosyllables accompanied by un- act any different, I don't look any different, I don't say anything differflinching, chilly stares. But she has also been called com- ent than I did in Miami, and people passionate, indefatigable and bright. liked me but they didn't gush about A graduate of Cornell University me." She doesn't seem swept away by and Harvard Law School, she served for 15 years as elected state attorney all the praise. "I know that tomorrow I can be in Dade County, Fla., where she developed a reputation as a hard-work- cussed out regularly and all the ediing prosecutor with a social con- torial boards can dump on me." In fact, some have started to. Not science. She is universally described everyone liked her recent congressional testimony, in which she warned television executives that if they didn't do something about onscreen violence, the government would. "I'm watching," headlined the New York Daily News with a stern, chin-jutting close-up of Reno. Some editorialists and columnists said her pronouncements smacked of government censorship. Also, two weeks ago The New York Times published a long frontpage article under the ominous headline "Doubts on Reno's Competence Rise in Justice Dept." The article reported that Reno's critics inside Justice and in some Democratic legal circles found her management style tentative and her personality prickly. Her new initiatives in criminal justice were lacking, detractors said, and further, her department's report on Waco was superficial and self-exonerating. Even her personal style at some inside-the-Beltway parties came in for criticism as "blustery," Reno remembers being in her office the morning the story appeared. "I hadn't read it yet, so I took it and I looked at the front page of the Times up the top, and then I turned it over and I started reading it veeerrrry carefully, and I braced myself and I opened it up and I read it more carefully.... . "I got to the end, and 1 called (Deputy Attorney General) Phil Heymann - he'd been worried and I said, 'The Miami Herald was 15 times worse to me for 15 years. » "I expect much worse." Reno calls the critical piece her "banana peel." Back in the summer, she said, when she was the subject of so much adoring press, "... my brother-in-law called me, and he said, 'I'm sending you a banana peel. ... and I want you to go out in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, put the banana peel down and very carefully and gracefully execute your own descent from all this gush so that you can control it."' Well, said Reno, "I couldn't ask for a better banana peel." Asked in the interview last week if she was satisfied with her own performance during the Waco tragedy, in which an estimated 80 cult members, including 17 children, died after Davidians set fire to their compound, Reno responded in characteristically measured tones. "One of the things that I want to look at is, should I have had a civilian person - »by civilian, I mean non-law enforcement person - on the scene from the beginning to make sure that negotiators and behavioral scientists and law enforcement were all coordinated. "I want to do everything I can to Monday-morning-quarterback me.'1 On a somewhat lighter note, Reno was asked about the comment that her dinner-party style was "blustery." "Oh I talk a lot.... I was probably talking too much," she said, unapologetically. Last week in her cozy office, sitting opposite an evocative painting of Robert Kennedy walking on the beach, Reno said she had pretty much been able to live by those principles, thanks to the example set by her parents, Jane and Henry Reno. Henry, a Danish immigrant who was a crime reporter at the Miami Herald for 42 years, died in 1967. Reno described him as a man of great common sense from whom she learned "to get along with all sorts of different people, to empathize with them." After his four children were grown, Henry Reno moved to a cabin in the Everglades and lived alone, but Reno says he visited and remained involved with his wife and family. Her iconoclastic mother, Jane Wood Reno, was, variously, a crusading journalist, a carpenter, a peacock raiser, a skunk trapper and an honorary Indian princess. She died last December at 79. Reno, the oldest child and the only one not to marry, lived most of her adult life with her mother in the simple but sturdy house Jane Reno built 45 years ago, largely with her own hands, on the edge of the Everglades outside Miami. "She taught us how to live life and enjoy it," Reno said of her mother, who banned television from the household on the ground that it caused mind-rot, and who stirred PLANTATION SHUTTERS INTERIOR - EXTERIOR - BAHAMA SHUTTERS NO OBLIGATION 15% FREE ESTIMATE OFF THRU DEC. 31ST CUSTOM MADE PROFESSIONALLY RNISHED AND DRAPERIES & TOP TREATMENTS INSTALLED 30% 1V4, 2V2, 3V2, 4V* LOUVERS • Baggers are needed to assist a local food bank in filling brown bags with food items for the less fortunate Volunteers are needed Dec. 13 from 8 a.m. to noon • Meals-On-Wheels volunteers are greatly needed for adult shut-ins who live in the 31401 area Volunteers are needed Monday through Friday during the middle of the day for one to one and a half hours Volunteers must be dependable, provide their own transportation, follow directions and read a map. have a cheerftil personality and relate well to other people are desired Volun- teers are also needed in other areas. • Readers are needed to read newspapers, magazines and periodicals on the air to the blind, visually impaired and print handicapped. Volunteers are needed Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon and Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Volunteers can choose the most convenient time. • Telephone counselors are greatly needed for an information and referral service. Volunteers are needed Monday through Friday, from 1 to 5 p.m. Training provides YolimUm Aclion ( e n t e r volunteers with extensive information about the community. Materials will be furnished. How to help your Mends discover OFFTHRU PEC.31ST VAN DER CLEVELAND (912) 354-7195 (800)572-7679 Savannah, GA Tour Guides Needed For Dinamation Display The Voluntary Action Center (VAC), a service of United Way, recruits and refers volunteers to 135 non-profit organizations in the Coastal Empire. VAC can match your interest with a community need. Orientation and training are provided when needed. Unless otherwise noted, volunteer hours are flexible. Call 651-7700, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Immediate volunteer needs: • Tour guides and attendants are needed to oversee the Dinamation's Prehistoric Sea Creatures, which is being held on the lower level of Savannah Mall next to Belk until Feb. 12. Tasks will include guiding guests through the exhibit and monitoring public activity to protect the creatures. Volunteers are needed Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. Volunteers should have an outgoing personality and like working with other people. Three-hour shifts are desired. Students must be 16 or older. • Child care provider is needed for a foster home that houses medically fragile and HIV positive infants. Volunteer is needed on the weekends beginning at 5 p.m. on Friday until 7:30 a.m. Monday. It is very important that the volunteer have a background in child care as well as infant CPR. A background check is required. • On-call child care providers are needed for a foster home that houses medically fragile and HIV positive infants. On-call volunteer is needed Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on the weekends beginning at 5 p.m. on Friday until 7:30 a.m. Monday. Volunteers with a background in child care as well as infant CPR is required. Volunteers will be compensated for time. A background check is required her children's imagination by encouraging adventurous travel and a multitude of outdoor exploits, including wrestling alligators (small variety). In a eulogy, Reno said her mother "could say 'I love you' better than anyone I know ' But, she said, her mother was "no saint." Last week in Washington, Reno chuckled as she told how her mother once ran away from home for a few weeks: "She got mad at me because I was bossy." On another occasion, while Reno was state's attorney, her mother was picked up for drunken driving in a neighboring county - not her first offense of that kind. Concerned about the integrity of her office. Janet Reno asked the governor to appoint a special prosecutor for her mother, and Jane Reno, who rejected not only organized religion and racism but also makeup, dentures and bras, served the required sentence. "It was really a tough position to have to drive down to the Keys and get your mother out of jail while she was calling the trooper a pipsqueak," Reno told the Los Angeles Times. Reno's sister, Maggie Hurchalla, is a commissioner in Florida's Martin County. Her brother, Robert, is an economics writer for New York Newsday, and her brother. Mark, an outdoorsman who has been a game warden, a ranch hand and now a 'tugboat captain. Hurchalla proclaims her sister "clearly the noblest, the oldest and the wisest of us all." 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