Polish your jackboots, Reno’s running

Now that she’s a candidate for governor of Florida, will Janet Reno have a fund-raiser at Waco – a barbeque, perhaps?

As attorney general, Reno behaved less like the nation’s top cop than the consigliere of a crime syndicate. Now, she’s running for governor on a record that reads like a rap sheet.

When she wasn’t playing Tom Hagen to the Clinton family, Reno was a capo directing enforcers. At the beginning of her tenure, there was Waco (in which 19 children died) and toward the end, the storming of a private home in Miami, to snatch Elian Gonzalez. In between, the mob lawyer protected her godfather.

In April 1993, following a 51-day siege, the FBI attacked the Branch Davidian compound with tanks and tear gas. We’ll never know for certain what started the fire that claimed 80 lives.

But, when she ordered the assault, Reno knew there were innocents inside. She’d been warned the Davidians had a bunker mentality and would resist force. Sen. John McCain, no stranger to military operations, called Waco “an ill-advised exercise of federal authority that led to the unnecessary loss of life.”

Reno said she did it to save the cult’s kids from alleged child abuse. Doubtless, their ghosts appreciate her solicitude.

For eight years, Reno did nothing to impede the Clinton crime wave. She refused to appoint special prosecutors to deal with Chinagate (illegal campaign cash from the People’s Republic) and Al Gore’s 1996 Buddhist Temple bash.

In 1997 and 1998, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh, a Clinton appointee, warned Reno she was ignoring the law by not designating an independent prosecutor. “It’s difficult to imagine a more compelling situation for appointing a special counsel,” Freeh wrote in a memorandum. And it’s hard to conceive of a more compliant attorney general.

There wasn’t much Reno could do for her don during the impeachment, though she did try to keep Secret Service agents from testifying in the Monica Lewinsky investigation.

Reno’s Justice Department has been accused of mishandling the Wen Ho Lee case. Not at all. The objective was always to limit political fallout, not plug security leaks.

When the FBI began investigating Lee, the Los Alamos scientist who downloaded classified information, Reno refused to authorize a wiretap on Lee’s phone. Of roughly 2,700 wiretap requests, it was the only one she ever rejected.

During the 2000 election, Reno allowed Lee to plead down to one felony count for time served. Thus was a trial avoided, with potentially embarrassing details of lax security at our nuclear labs.

Reno ended the way she started.

At 5 a.m. on April 22, 2000, INS agents in full battle gear stormed the Gonzalez home to seize the 6-year-old refuge. The raid was based on an arrest warrant claiming Elian was here illegally (he wasn’t; the 11th Circuit Appeals Court had ordered that the child not be removed from the country). It also involved a search warrant – issued ex parte by a magistrate as if the boy were a piece of evidence being concealed by his relatives.

Even loyal Clintonistas were appalled. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, who supports Reno’s candidacy, said the way she went about getting Elian “strikes at the heart of constitutional government and shakes the safeguards of liberty.” His colleague Alan Dershowitz said it “confirmed a dangerous precedent.”

Why was Reno willing to crumble the Constitution to nab a 6-year-old? In a recent interview, she argued, “That little boy belonged with his daddy.” But as she well knew, Elian was not going back to his papa, but to the custody of Big Daddy Fidel.

Elian’s mother died trying to save him from life in a communist state. Asylum is regularly granted to refugees in such cases, even minors. Custody could have been settled in family court.

Reno intervened because the Clinton administration bowed to Castro’s threats. Elian’s treatment was disgraceful and unconscionable – in other words, typical Reno.

The former attorney general says Floridians are telling her “they share my vision and are looking for strong, independent leadership.” Strong leadership doesn’t begin to describe what a Reno governorship would be like. If she’s elected, they’ll have to issue jackboots to the state police.