Janet Reno Oral History

September 27, 2004

Riley

This is the Janet Reno interview. It is a part of our Clinton Presidential History Project, and I should say again for the record how grateful we are for your coming to Charlottesville to participate in this. Historians will have to go back and check the timing on this, but you have come up at a rather difficult time for Floridians because of all of the hurricane activity, four in the last--

Reno

Six weeks.

Riley

Six or eight weeks, something of that nature and one that came through yesterday. We were a bit concerned about the possibility of interruption in your air travels. I spent a good part of my day yesterday clicking on the Miami International Airport website to make sure the airport was open. But we're grateful under difficult circumstances for your coming up to be with us.

There are a couple of housekeeping chores we always have to take care of at the outset. The first is a restatement about the confidentiality of the proceedings, that the interview is conducted under a veil of confidentiality. Nobody here at the table is free to report anything outside the room except you. You will be given the transcript that is prepared to review, and that will become the authoritative record of the interview. Everybody at the table has taken a pledge, and I hope you know that you can speak with the understanding that things won't go anywhere outside the room.

The second thing is, as an aid to the transcriber, a voice identification, so we go around the table and get everybody just to identify himself or herself and say a couple of words so that the transcriber knows who we are. I'll start. I'm Russell Riley, an associate professor here at the Miller Center and heading up the Clinton Presidential History Project.

Reno

I'm Janet Reno, I'm delighted to be here. I appreciate the great work that went into the preparation of the materials and let me know if I don't speak loud enough, please, because with Parkinson's you sometimes forget and the bottom drops out from under.

Riley

I'll keep an eye on Angie and she'll let me know if we have any problems.

Baker

I'm Nancy Baker and I'm from New Mexico State and I never get any hurricanes.

Meador

I'm Dan Meador, a retired University of Virginia law professor.

Reno

Hardly retired.

Meador

Retired from teaching but not from work.

Abraham

I'm Jill Abraham, a researcher here at the Miller Center.

Morrisroe

I'm Darby Morrisroe. I'm the chief researcher for the Oral History Program.

Riley

Ms. Reno and I had an interesting conversation outside about memory and oral history and the clarity of one's memory and how one retains one's memory. I thought it might be appropriate for us to begin by my asking you if you wouldn't mind repeating some of what we talked about outside.

Reno

I appreciate the opportunity to do so. Since I left the Justice Department I have continued, in an effort to understand what we can learn from postconviction DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid] exonerations, which now total approximately 149 people who have been exonerated from crimes they did not commit but for which they have been convicted. Key to these convictions oftentimes appears to be eyewitness identification and eyewitness memory. It has been fascinating for me to learn from psychologists how fallible memory is because it's relative to each person's experience with it. If you see an accident and you put the accident in your memory and then pull it out to testify in court, if you've given a statement to a police officer who has shown you the report that you gave, you have an overlay on your memory that is not the same as the original memory.

I was puzzled that you gave me so many newspaper articles because each of those newspaper articles I read is a potential overlay on my memory. I'm fascinated because I now have another arena where I can suggest that there could be much more interdisciplinary work between historians and psychologists, as I am trying to encourage interdisciplinary work between lawyers and psychologists. I think indeed we can do a lot more in terms of teaching in the K [kindergarten] through 12 [12th grade] years, and even in early childhood, what memory is and how we can be more effective and accurate in our memories.

Riley

We are certainly open to further discussions about how to improve our methodology. As I indicated to you outside, we don't think that oral history is a perfect method for recapturing that which otherwise is lost. There is such a great fear in Washington, as you're much better aware of than I am these days, about recording things in diaries and notes of meetings and so forth. What we purport to do is only a limited effort at trying to recapture what has happened in prior years, but it doesn't mean that some refinements in our methods wouldn't help us improve this.

Reno

I had the best opportunity when I sat around the conference room table in the Attorney General's office and had law enforcement and other people who were expert on policy issues, such as disability, that I was dealing with. To get them together to recall what we did and why we did it--it can be so important to have different people with different materials saying, "It couldn't have happened that way."

Meador

I think I understood you to say that if you read a newspaper article now about something that happened eight years ago, you can't be sure whether you actually remember it or the newspaper article has given you a view of it.

Reno

Yes.

Meador

I'm well aware of that phenomenon.

Riley

Of course, our purpose in doing that is precisely to prompt memory in some respects. We often find through the course of our interviews that interviewees will say, "I had forgotten about that particular episode." The upside of this is that by tickling that particular memory cell, we hope it will set off a chain of recollections that aren't recorded. But you're suggesting that there may be a deficiency here.

Reno

A distorting effect. Time is a problem because there's not enough time to do everything everybody wants to do well, but I would think a framework, without the articles, just a timeline that is not editorial in nature: Waco, nominations, reappointment, key issues. Ask the person being interviewed what they remember cold. I think anybody would tell you, "I'm going to have to do more research and look at more papers and better understand some of these issues."

But you could take the transcript, for example--and I assume I can do it since I can tell anybody whatever--and sit down with my colleagues and let them recall with me and try to put pieces together and try to do it with an arbitrator, a referee if you will, saying, "You can't put those pieces together." But it's like a picture puzzle. Every now and then I saw it happen at the Justice Department, trying to piece out what exactly happened, in a death penalty evaluation. Suddenly the pieces come together and he couldn't have done it.

Riley

One of the things we hope will happen in providing the news accounts is that the news accounts aren't always accurate. And this gives the respondent an opportunity to say, "I know that this was what was reported at the time, but this couldn't be the way that things were. It's definitely not the way I recall it." As somebody who has a lot of newspaper people in her family, I would assume this is an argument that would resonate well with you?

Reno

What I would do if I were going to argue with a newspaper reporter at this point is again go--it really is a matter of time, and I think it's a matter of balancing and I am just suggesting a balance.

Baker

Especially if the participants each get the newspaper stories, Darby's homework assignment, which has consumed me for the last three or four days, but I read every word except the extremely tiny five-point type. With the participants having access to that then they will be framing questions that might be--

Riley

That's a good point. I can certainly tell you that we're always looking for ways of simplifying the production process of the briefing material.

Baker

It's a very interesting point though.

Riley

I know Jim Young would be eager to speak with you about this too. He's the overall program director and has been doing this a very long time. The methods questions are something we're constantly revisiting but seldom at the specific prompting of an interviewee. So I'm very happy that you've raised these issues, and we'll continue talking about these I'm sure through the course of your time here.

If we may, there are some things about your political biography and your own personal biography that I'd like to talk a little about as a way of getting into things. I don't want to spend a great deal of time on that because you were Attorney General for almost eight years, and a day and a half is not enough time to do justice, no pun intended, to the entirety of that time. There were a couple of questions I had, and my colleagues may want to follow up with some.

You were a chemistry major as an undergraduate.

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Why chemistry?

Reno

Because my mother was a reporter for the Miami News. One day she arrived at home excited, saying that she was going to borrow the baby-blue, brand-new Cadillac of the [Estes] Kefauver Committee's general counsel and go buy babies for the Kefauver Committee and have an exclusive on the reporting of this effort. The Kefauver Committee was coming to town. The next afternoon she picked us up wearing my grandmother's blue linen dress, a bra, which she usually didn't wear, a big floppy hat, and a phony diamond ring. She had gone to buy babies for the Kefauver Committee. The next day she was on the front page of the Miami News.

I was so impressed with all of this that I told her, "I really want to be a lawyer, that's what I've always wanted to be." And she said, "That's the one thing I would forbid my daughter to do." Two years before she had helped my grandfather in his law practice when he was ill and in the hospital. She came away with a disdain for lawyers, or at least some of them, so I decided to be a doctor and undertook Chemistry 101. Robert Plane was a splendid professor. He's one of the great professors I've had. So I stayed a chemistry major, and by my third year knew that I had enjoyed the chemistry major a great deal, but I still wanted to go to law school.

Riley

How was Ithaca, New York, after having been raised in south Florida?

Reno

My first year there it was 24 degrees below zero, no windchill factor, just 24 degrees below zero for a solid week. I can get through anything now.

Riley

You decided to go to law school. Harvard was--

Reno

I didn't think I had a chance of getting into Harvard. I took my LSATs [Law School Admission Tests]. Went to a movie the night before, got a good night's sleep, went in and answered the questions the best I could and got into Harvard on my LSATs.

Riley

Tell us a bit about what Harvard was like for you. There couldn't have been many women.

Reno

There were 16 women out of a class of 544. Harvard was the best educational experience I ever had, with one specific emphasis. It taught me how to think better than any other educational experience I've had. The Socratic method--sometimes professors didn't use it as well as they could, but so much of my thought process, of policy development, of issue identification and problem solving comes from that experience at law school.

Riley

Did you feel any additional burdens at being a young woman on the campus at that time?

Reno

No, everybody was very pleasant to me. I never had anybody treat me any way but nice.

Riley

Did you have a lot of social interaction with the other women or were there any organizations--

Reno

We saw each other in the classroom setting, but I had friends from Cornell in the area. I also used to love to take the opportunity, one time I walked from Salem to Gloucester overnight with a sleeping bag and camped out along a ridge of beach. I went up into the White Mountains and climbed, and used it as a time to explore Boston. I went everywhere the MTA [Metropolitan Transit Authority] could take me. I clambered around old buildings and had a wonderful time.

Riley

Any professors there that you recall specifically who had a major influence on you?

Reno

There were a number of great professors, Paul Freund, Ernest Brown. Ernest Brown gave me the highest grade I got in law school, which was in tax, which I've never used since. When I came to the Attorney General's office, I interviewed, sat down, and talked with the Acting Assistant Attorneys General in each of the divisions. The Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division said, "Your tax professor works for you." Ernest Brown was still teaching, and I interrupted the meeting to go down and find him and greet him. But Irwin Griswold was the dean and he encouraged me greatly.

Riley

Dan, do you or Nancy have any questions about this period?

Baker

What area of the law really intrigued you? Was it criminal law, is that where you were going right away?

Reno

No, I swore I would never be a prosecutor because I thought they were more interested in securing convictions than seeking justice. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do in the law, but I didn't want to go to Wall Street.

Baker

But you didn't want to be a defense attorney either, I guess?

Reno

I thought about doing it, but I was interested in the problem-solving aspect of it. I had already faced limitations, "You can't do this, you can't do that." It goes again to the fact-finding issue: how do you find the fullest set of facts?

Baker

You would have been a good judge.

Reno

I probably would have felt constrained as a judge, so I never really pursued that except once. I made an application to the Supreme Court nominating committee at one point and I was told, "Too young."

Morrisroe

Did you have it firmly in mind at that point that you wanted to return to Florida?

Reno

I had looked at the rest of the country. I liked the Pacific Northwest, that's the only area of the country that teased me away from south Florida in my mind. But I really wanted to come home.

Riley

You returned and of course had a long and distinguished career in Florida before moving to Washington. The only part of that I really wanted to ask you about was your decision to run for the state legislature. You didn't succeed in that. Can you tell us a little about that race and what you learned about politics?

Reno

In 1972 the Florida legislature had gone to single-member districts or two- or three-member districts, and the at-large districts had been reduced in size. I ran for a district that included South Beach but included Coconut Grove and Coral Gables. That was the year George McGovern ran for President, and I won the nomination handily but was defeated in the general election at the same time McGovern was. I had undertaken, on behalf of Joe Robbie, the Democratic Party chairman, an effort to support McGovern and didn't pay too much attention to my race because everybody thought the primary victory was tantamount to election. Never, ever take anything for granted.

Riley

I guess the other lesson would be the power of George McGovern in the Deep South to alienate.

Reno

What it was was a falloff and that's something--it was fascinating to see the falloff in the election from the Presidential election to the legislative. I think I had 25 votes--these are not accurate figures--but I'd have 25 votes and my opponent would have two votes compared to the Presidential election, which had 100 votes and 20 votes, which compared to other races on the ballot had a lot more. I think getting out the base is one of the absolute, most important things you can do. I don't think we've really learned our lesson yet.

Riley

Which of your experiences before you came to Washington do you feel provided the best preparation for what you were going to confront there?

Reno

If I had this experience to do over, I wish I'd had a year or two in Washington at the outset as I did in Tallahassee. But I think the local government experience was absolutely key to my thought and my policy approaches, the way I approached public service. It's not about programs and concepts as much as it is identifying the problems and figuring out how to solve those problems. I think lawyers have to learn how to be better problem solvers. I think public servants, whether they are social workers or others, have to learn to be better problem solvers.

Baker

I think your grounding in state politics and local-level problem solving made a real impact on your approach to law enforcement at the federal level, the need for interagency cooperation, cooperation across the levels of government. In my reading of your experience, cooperation was a major thrust of your thinking in law enforcement.

Reno

It is absolutely key, and it is listening to people and what they want. The two examples I use--child support. In private practice I had quoted a lady a retainer of $250 to take her child support case. I remember her looking at me in my office saying, "You've got to be out of your mind. I don't have $250. I'm going to be out on my backside, thanks to my landlord." It just seemed to me so strange that we have such an apparatus for collecting income tax but we don't have a comparable apparatus for child support. So I got the state to agree to let us continue intrastate child support collection as well as URESA [Uniform Reciprocal Enforcement of Support Act] interstate child support collection. And that is the most difficult issue. You get phone calls in the middle of the night. You get people hollering at you, crying at you, but that cadre of people that we touched are the backbone of what it's about. How you get people into drug treatment. We had a grandmothers list because so many grandmothers were taking care of their grandsons. How do I get child support? How do I get Medicaid? What do I do? How do I work through these issues?

I also used to tell the story of the Feds who came to town. They'd come to town, "We want all your records." "Can we share?" "No." Yet then I had the opportunity, we were prosecuting a major police corruption case, and in Florida the defense attorney can take the deposition of any of the state witnesses. These went on interminably, and it was obvious they were going to try to wear the witnesses down.

I called the U.S. attorney and asked if we could transfer the case to federal court. We'd send our prosecutors, and we'd be responsible for it. He said, "That's political suicide." I said, "But it's what's best for the case." We were successful. That just taught me that if people will work together--and you've got to do it on a personal basis because there are issues of corruption, who can you trust? So you have to pull people together in teams that can trust each other. But how you work together to get the job done makes the difference.

Riley

Had you set out a career path in the early 1990s? Assuming you hadn't moved off to Washington as Attorney General, were you thinking about making any career changes?

Reno

I had thought about running for Governor. But short of that I didn't--I thought I was going to be state attorney as long as people wanted me.

Riley

How seriously had you moved along in this thinking about running for Governor?

Reno

When Lawton Chiles got into it, I didn't run for Governor.

Morrisroe

As state attorney for Dade County, probably more than many other state attorneys across the country, you'd have an opportunity to interact with the Justice Department in a variety of forms. You mentioned with the U.S. attorneys, but also, I presume, with DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency] and other law enforcement aspects of the Justice Department. What were your perceptions of the Department of Justice [DOJ] during your tenure as state attorney? How were they to work with?

Reno

The FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] was the one-way street. I think in the 15 years I was state attorney, the FBI had--and this is a figure that would need to be confirmed--seven SACs, Special Agents in Charge, in the 15-year period, which makes it very difficult to form strong working relationships. I was surprised that the FBI had to rely on the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] in terms of complex financial transaction analysis and knowledge of financial investigations. We breathed a sigh of relief when IRS agreed to take one of those cases because they brought tremendous knowledge to the cases, and yet the FBI did a good job in terms of following up with and interviewing witnesses and putting the final touches on it.

DEA was developing. It had gone through a number of--Bureau of Narcotics, or whatever its predecessor was, and it was assuming a more sophisticated, more skillful reputation at the time. U.S. Attorneys' Office--Stanley Marcus had come down there right after [Ronald] Reagan was elected and Rudy Giuliani--let me go back in the story. Rudy Giuliani had come down on behalf of the administration to find out what we needed. We had the Mariel boatlift and I said, "What we need is a United States attorney like the Southern District of New York has, somebody who is known for absolute integrity, tremendous skill, and excellence." And by George if we didn't get Stanley Marcus, who is one of my heroes. He was a great U.S. attorney, he's great on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and I just admire him so much. I will always remember that scene when Giuliani delivered him. When I went to New York, the first visit after I'd been confirmed as Attorney General, I met with Giuliani and he remembered the experience.

Morrisroe

I don't know if you had ever considered working for the Department of Justice but did you have in mind, at that point, any reforms you thought the Department of Justice would benefit from?

Reno

A two-way street.

Morrisroe

After your run in 1972 were you actively involved at all in the Democratic Party in Florida? In what manner?

Reno

Yes, I was a Democratic candidate for state attorney.

Morrisroe

I meant the party organization and operation in terms of national campaigns.

Reno

No.

Riley

Let's track ahead then and get right to it. The approach to you about serving in the Clinton administration. Had you been involved at all in the campaign in '92?

Reno

No, I had not been involved in the campaign. My mother was terminally ill with cancer and I had taken her on several trips, a houseboat up the St. John's River and a train across Canada. Hurricane Andrew had hit in August of '92, and so after the election Mrs. [Hillary] Clinton had come by the office and had impressed us all. One of the assistants I had invited in to meet her said, "Why don't you run?" She demurred.

But I started getting calls from people about the DEA position. I said no because my mother was ill, that I wasn't sure if I would take the position but my mother was ill.

Riley

This was during the course of the campaign or after the elections?

Reno

After that.

Riley

This was during the transition period, November, December.

Meador

Somebody called you about becoming head of DEA, is that what you're saying?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

Do you recall who called you?

Reno

Bill--and I know him--

Meador

Was he part of the transition team?

Reno

I think he was.

Riley

We can check this or leave it blank and we'll fill it in.

Reno

I would remember his name if--he wears glasses--

Meador

Was that the only approach you had after the election up until the time you--?

Reno

There may have been one more, but my mother died on December 21st and on December 22nd I got a call from Mary Doyle, the dean of the University of Miami Law School, saying, "I'd like to put your name in consideration for Attorney General." My sister had awakened me out of a sound sleep and Mary Doyle and Sam Dubbin were on the line and I said, "That's not possible. But yes, that's fine." But shortly thereafter Zo? Baird's name was put forward. Then when she withdrew, Kimba Wood was under consideration.

It happened over the week of February 7th. February 7th, as I recall, was a Sunday night, and a couple of days before there had been other inquiries. Somebody called me, I think it was Mary Doyle, and said, "It would be very helpful if there were some women's groups that spoke out on your behalf." I called Ann Lewis whom I had known because her first husband and I had been law partners, and Ann had been a good friend. The next morning I saw in the Miami Herald a brief article saying that Harriet Woods and the National Women's Political Caucus mentioned a number of candidates including--and my name was mentioned. That's the only way I knew that it was serious until the night of February 7th when Bob Graham called me about 11 o'clock and said he'd just finished a conversation with the President and I should expect to come to Washington the next day to be interviewed.

Riley

I want to ask you one further question about the DEA post. Was your sole consideration at that point the fact that you were otherwise occupied with your mother's illness or was there something intrinsically about the DEA job that you didn't feel was a match for you?

Reno

I didn't think too much about the DEA job because I knew I wasn't going to leave with Mother--I think there was a feeling that I had more power to problem solve as state attorney with the base I had there and the political clout I had to get things done like the drug court and other initiatives. It was more a great laboratory for problem solving.

Riley

So you felt comfortable in the match that you had there such that the DEA would not have been a magnet for you to leave that and go to Washington.

Baker

And that's a difference with the Attorney General's office, that's much more of a problem-solving--

Reno

It can be used as a problem-solving office.

Riley

So you got the call from Graham late at night that you should expect a call the next day.

Reno

I got my secretaries in early, swore them to secrecy, didn't leave the office. By noon, no call had come in, and I thought Bob Graham was pulling my leg. But about one o'clock in the afternoon Bernie Nussbaum called and said, "Bring your files, bring your medical records, bring your income tax returns, fax us a list of people who don't like you, fax us a list of people who do like you, and come to Washington and don't tell anybody you're coming."

Riley

So that sounded pretty serious.

Reno

That sounded pretty serious.

Meador

That was on a Monday.

Reno

Yes.

Meador

When did you then go to Washington?

Reno

Monday.

Meador

That very same day?

Reno

They told me to get on the plane and come to Washington.

Meador

How did you get all those papers together in such short order?

Reno

I started making a list. The medical records I called the doctors and Bernie told me we could fax whatever--it became a running continuum of faxes back and forth. The funniest thing was on Saturday I had found one department store that had dresses that generally fit me, and that was Saks. I had gone to Saks to buy my yearly winter suit or something and it had to be altered. I called my friend at Saks and said, "I can't tell you why but I need that dress in here today." It arrived before Nussbaum's phone call arrived.

John Hogan and Kathy [Fernandez-] Rundle took me to the airport, and I hid in a telephone booth while they went and maneuvered quietly through American Airlines to get me on a plane to Washington.

Baker

You were already being watched, do you think?

Reno

No, but Bernie just told me to be quiet, and I got to Washington and checked into the hotel. Sandy D'Alemberte was staying in the hotel. His wife had told him to stay in Washington and help me do anything I needed to have done. I was told to go to Patton Boggs office, and Lanny Davis who headed the vetting committee, Vince Foster was there from the White House. I don't remember the names of all the people.

Meador

About how many people met with you at that time?

Reno

I'd say there were eight people in that room.

Meador

Were you all seated around one table?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

About how long did that session last?

Reno

I think I got to Patton Boggs at 9 o'clock looking like a bag lady because they told me to bring my suitcase. They told me I could go home that afternoon, so I brought my suitcase and the big bag with all the papers in it. They grilled me. After they were through, I didn't really think it was going to work out the more I was confronted with it because I thought, You can't be state attorney in Miami for 15 years and not have so many hurdles to overcome that it would be impossible. So I turned to them and said, "Thank you all, I've enjoyed this, but I've got a 2:30 reservation and I'm going to have to leave to catch it." Vince Foster turned to me and said, "You're not going anywhere." That night he called the President and said, "I think I've got a live one."

Meador

So you stayed overnight.

Reno

Yes. That afternoon when we canceled the flight, Vince took me to another office at Patton Boggs and sat and talked with me and told me Webb Hubbell at the Justice Department said he would like for me to meet him and would I have a problem working with him. I said, "I don't know, I don't know him. I obviously want to work with the White House to make sure that the people on board are agreeable, but I do want a veto."

Webb came over and he and Vince were close friends, and I felt comfortable around them. This was Tuesday night, and he said, "We're going to take you to the White House at about 8:30 after the press has left the south gate." So I went to the White House about 8:30 and sat down and talked with the President in the Oval Office. I was immediately impressed with his knowledge of the criminal justice system, his knowledge of the law. What struck me as so important was his emphasis on people and how we solve their problems and how we cooperate together.

Riley

This was your first meeting with Bill Clinton?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

And this meeting you had just before with Webster Hubbell and Vince Foster, how long did that session last approximately?

Reno

That was a continuing session because Vince and I started talking about 2:30. The vetters would come back in asking me a question and they finally got linked up with my office. It was really a tremendous tribute to the people who had worked on cases because we'd pull out a troubling case and they'd want more information and we had the information. Under Florida's public records law this information was public record. We didn't have the limitations that the Justice Department and the federal government had of "this is privacy."

Baker

Good sunshine laws.

Reno

Exactly. It was just wonderful to see point after point resolved quickly by people.

Meador

They were looking into cases about which there might be some troubling questions?

Reno

Yes, and they had a list of the people and they were starting to make the calls for the "don't like Janet Reno" and "do like Janet Reno."

Baker

So word had to start percolating around Florida at this point?

Reno

The next morning, Wednesday, there was a big article in the paper, "Reno under Consideration." I got on the elevator to go down to Patton Boggs that Wednesday morning and the elevator opened in the lobby and every television camera I ever saw in Washington was there. I punched the up button and grandly ascended again before they could get on.

Meador

You said you met with President Clinton Tuesday evening?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

How long did that session last?

Reno

Half hour to 45 minutes.

Meador

Did he ask you a lot of questions or just talk?

Reno

He'd talk and then he would ask me questions. He really understood so many different issues. He understood what community policing could do and what a difference it could make. He had experience with corrections issues. He was very impressive.

Baker

Hadn't he sat in once on one of your drug courts? You weren't the prosecutor but--

Reno

I don't know whether he sat in on a drug court or not. She did, I think.

Meador

Did you ask him any questions during that session?

Reno

I don't recollect so. What I can't remember is whether it was at that point or Thursday afternoon when I was nominated and when he came in--and I'll tell you about that in a minute--that he said, "Do you know Diane Blair?" It was such an uncanny situation because Diane Blair was Diane Divers Blair, who was a year ahead of me at Cornell and an extraordinarily bright, able government student and no nonsense, funny, engaging, and just a standout then. So I didn't make the immediate connection with Blair. I said, "You mean Diane Divers? Yes." He said, "She said I should nominate you."

Riley

Which was high praise in that company. I want to go back and ask you another question about the initial meeting you had Tuesday afternoon with Vince Foster and Webb Hubbell. You said through the course of that meeting you did develop a comfort level with those two. Can you tell us a bit about the substance of your conversations? Was this a meeting in which you were getting a sense of your personal chemistry together, or were you talking about issues and the direction of the department?

Reno

He was talking more about staffing then. He told me who Webb Hubbell was and what he had done. He was, I think, trying to get my sense of--it comes back to the team player issue. What I said was, "I think the President ought to be able to put into positions the people he wants, and I think I ought to have the veto power if somebody isn't--but a veto power only after I've talked with them."

Meador

I take it you're saying you didn't take the position that you ought to be able to select these people or some of these people yourself.

Reno

I was told I could select some myself.

Meador

Any specific positions identified for that purpose?

Reno

No, and for all of that, don't hold me to this, I can't recall a time when I had to take somebody in a high position who didn't fit comfortably. When I say didn't fit comfortably, I had worked with Phil Heymann on a big drug sting in south Florida and liked him and was looking forward to working with him. When Chuck Ruff didn't work out because of [Douglas] Wilder's issues, as I recall, Phil was the person with the experience. Phil and I, when we say it just didn't click, it just didn't click.

Baker

A different approach to problem solving.

Reno

Yes.

Meador

When was the first moment you were told you were being nominated? Was that on Wednesday after that Tuesday evening?

Reno

No. I sat in the hotel room with Sandy D'Alemberte being my intervener. Nina Totenberg found where Sandy was and knew that Sandy could get in touch with me and all afternoon I sat there.

Riley

This was after you went back up the elevator?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

So you're stuck in the hotel.

Reno

Stuck in the hotel, answering questions from the White House, answering questions from Patton Boggs.

Meador

All by telephone?

Reno

All by telephone. Then I got a call from Vince, I think, this was about 7 o'clock at night. They were sending people over and I think he probably gave me their names, but it didn't register with me who they were or what roles they played. Then arrived three extraordinary people who were great influences in the years to come: Ron Klain, Ricki Seidman, and Walter Dellinger. Walter Dellinger started talking and didn't stop talking--

Meador

In your hotel room.

Reno

In my hotel room.

Meador

What was he talking about?

Reno

Everything, and Walter said the reason he started talking was because he didn't want me to say anything, because he knew I had it sewed up.

Baker

So he didn't want you to blow it.

Meador

Were they there to inform you that you were being nominated?

Reno

No, I think Walter was there for an overlay on my legal issues. There had been a person, and I don't recall who it was, I get the vetting mixed up between the preparation for the confirmation and the vetting for the nomination, but I think Walter was there for the sophisticated legal issues, Klain was there for the confirmation politics, and Ricki was there as the facilitator. But I had been used to answering all these negative questions. Are you a lesbian? No, I'm not a lesbian. Well, who can we call to find out?

Then I would get a call from a friend Bernie had called because he'd gone to law school with him. So [Richard] Ben-Veniste represented the Saudi prince that we had pursued--you must have that in here someplace--

Riley

Yes, it's in the briefing materials.

Reno

And Ben-Veniste was saying, "She didn't know anything about dah, dah, dah," and so it was all negative, negative, negative responses and Ricki said, suddenly, out of the blue, "What are the good things you've done?" I started talking and she started pulling them out of me. I had to change gears because I had been trying to be as candid and as honest and as straightforward as I could on the other issues, and I realized that she wouldn't be pulling this out of me if there wasn't a real feeling--and she started preparing it. So I thought, Maybe there's something.

I got a call the next morning from Bernie, I think--

Baker

That's Thursday morning.

Reno

Yes, saying, "You should expect to come to the White House this afternoon for an announcement, but you have not been offered the job." Then he called and said, "Vince Foster and I will come pick you up. We will take you out the back of the hotel, but you have not been offered the job." Then he called and he said, "Write out a little statement." I said, "Bernie, what am I to write out if I've not been offered the job?" So he said, "Pretend." So I wrote out a statement.

I was put in Mrs. Clinton's office because she was away that afternoon. Vince Foster came in and said, "Well, at least you can write," based on the statement I had given them. Then he came in gleeful, saying, "Just great reaction, wonderful reaction." People were opening the door and looking at me like I was a strange person and closing it. So then I was told to come into the little dining room off the Oval Office, and I was standing there. I think Vince was there, Webb was there. The President came in, elbowed me, and said, "Don't blow it."

Baker

And that's how you found out.

Riley

That's a heck of an invitation to a high-ranking position, isn't it?

Meador

May I go back a minute before we get on beyond this point? As of that moment, somewhere along the way up to that moment, did you feel you had some understanding, I suppose with Webb Hubbell or Vince Foster or Bernie, as to what leeway you were going to have on choosing the other Presidential appointees in the department?

Reno

I was going to have a voice in it. This is more my take because I had not been offered the job. I said, "I cannot serve as Attorney General--" and this may have been, I don't know how I articulated it to Webb or to Vince, but this was the pattern-- "I can't serve if I don't have veto power over anybody who comes into the department, and I can't serve if I'm just going to be given a pro forma opportunity to participate." But I felt very comfortable going into it that I would have that.

Riley

I want to ask you a question about your own preparations at this stage too. Typically when we talk to people who are under consideration for high-ranking positions in an administration during the transition, where there is the leisure or the luxury of some time, our routine question is, did you talk to any of your predecessors or did you do any preparation for moving in? Did you have any opportunity during this very truncated period of time to say, "I need to pick up the phone and call somebody who worked in a prior Justice Department," or--Nancy, your book wasn't out then, but--"I want to go read a biography of Robert Kennedy" or something, just to educate yourself more specifically about what you were being approached about?

Reno

You mean as of the nomination or the confirmation?

Riley

I'd be curious about both, but right now about the nomination process. It doesn't sound like there's any time for you to even run to the library and pick out a book if you were inclined to do that.

Reno

No, I didn't have time to do that.

Riley

Did you feel during this period of time that your own inherent knowledge of the Justice Department was sufficient for the kinds of questions you were being asked about taking over the leadership of the department?

Reno

The questions that arose that afternoon in the Rose Garden was, "What makes you think you know anything about the federal system?" My response was, "If you've been state attorney in Miami-Dade County for 15 years you're going to understand an awful lot about the federal system, about immigration issues, about law enforcement issues." I felt very comfortable in that arena. I had also seen some of the work out of the Office of Justice Programs and felt very comfortable with that area.

Civil rights I felt comfortable with because of my inherent positions on civil rights issues. I had the sense, and it may have been presumptuous on my part, that we could do more too, that civil rights was not just a matter of litigating, it was a matter of bringing people together and solving problems. Particularly--and I wish we could do more--with young people, working with police agencies in pattern and practice cases. So I felt that there were wonderful opportunities to do things that hadn't been done before.

Baker

In your conversation with the President on that Tuesday evening, did he talk at all at that point about his priorities for the Justice Department in terms of civil rights or some of these other areas?

Reno

We talked about civil rights. My position at the time was that youth violence was one of the single greatest crime problems we faced in America. He talked about it, and I talked to him about my zero-to-three position and how I got there and why I thought it was so important. He told me of Donna Shalala. My brother, who had been a Newsday columnist, had a great respect for her, and I felt that I would have a colleague I could work with. He, in his discussion of domestic violence, had heralded the coming of the Violence Against Women Act and how important that was.

Mostly it was his attention to people and developing a--he had promised 100,000 cops during the campaign. He understood how a police officer could make a profound difference in the community, but he also understood how you could let something get established and you always have to have a check and balance on a community institution so it doesn't become a small tyranny in a greater democracy. But it was his understanding of people and problem solving as well as litigation in the courts that was so impressive. And also the fact that he's one of the smartest people I've ever met.

Baker

And he'd been a constitutional law professor. I think he's the only President we've ever had who actually taught constitutional law.

Meador

William Howard Taft.

Baker

That's right, did he teach constitutional law?

Meador

He taught at Yale Law School. I'm not sure what the subjects were.

Baker

But he'd been a law professor.

Riley

All right, so we've got you in the dining room off the Oval Office getting elbowed by the President of the United States.

Reno

Then Chelsea [Clinton] came in and asked him for help on her math problem that night.

Riley

And you headed out into the Rose Garden--

Reno

With [Al] Gore and the President.

Riley

Immediately.

Baker

And that was the first time you had met Gore as well?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

And when you were picked up was that the first time you had met Bernie Nussbaum?

Reno

No, I think I met Bernie when I went to the White House on Tuesday night.

Meador

You had met with him all day at Patton Boggs, hadn't you?

Reno

No, not Bernie.

Meador

He was not there at that meeting?

Reno

No.

Riley

So we've got the record of your Rose Garden appearance. How was that for you? Were you terrified going out in front of that group of people or--

Reno

No, one of the things I still remember, it was a gray day and there was just a patch of sky. I'd prepared my remarks but then I thought, There are people who don't have lakes, don't have rivers, don't have mountains, but have just the patch of sky, and I looked up and saw the patch of sky. Then Helen Thomas was saying, "What do you know about--?"

Riley

So you got through that experience.

Reno

What doesn't show I think on the transcript is the Vice President kept--I would go up to the microphone and answer a question, "What is your position with respect to abortion?" "I'm pro-choice." I would step back. Bull's eye. I didn't know what he was saying at first and went up and answered the second question. "Bull's eye." It's bull's eye.

Baker

Were they concerned that you were being maybe too candid, talking about being pro-choice. You didn't get any sense of "Rein back the rhetoric"?

Reno

No, no, it was right on.

Baker

Good.

Riley

So when you left that, the business of confirmation is underway. At that point did you go back to Florida?

Reno

I had to go home at that point and start--it seemed most reasonable to get clothes, to call the lady at Saks and say, "I'm going to need some more clothes to get me through three weeks of confirmation" and to get the office on an even keel and get some people designated to do things and work things out. I came back the next Wednesday night when I think he was giving the State of the Union message.

Riley

You came back to Washington?

Reno

I left Friday.

Riley

Tell us about wrapping up. Did you feel comfortable that you were leaving your place in good hands in Florida?

Reno

I hadn't reached that point yet because I still had to get confirmed.

Baker

And you had seen what had happened with the other--

Meador

Who was in charge of preparing you for the confirmation?

Reno

Jamie Gorelick. Everybody assumed I knew who Jamie Gorelick was, and I said, "What's a Jamie Gorelick?" She came in and took over.

Baker

And you hit it off.

Meador

She was not in the government at all then, is that right?

Reno

No.

Meador

How much time did you spend with her during the whole process?

Reno

I spent more time with Ron Klain because he was the person--Jamie, in her delegating, she's a great manager and she had people identified, an agenda set out, and Klain was the troubleshooter. He started me on my courtesy calls, gave me remarkable thumbnail sketches that enabled me to go in and talk to Senators and the key Representatives as if I'd known them for a long time. So Klain was the keeper.

Meador

In meeting with these Senators, did you encounter any, what you might describe as opposition or hostility to your appointment?

Reno

No. People were strategically placed. Bill Cohen knew my uncle, who was a Bangor doctor, and my uncle knew Bill Cohen's father's shoe store, bakery, whatever. I think it was a bakery. I had an aunt in southern California. Dianne Feinstein took proper note of that.

Baker

So that's how you could really have a personal connection with each Senator as you walked in. That would be important.

Riley

But you didn't get the sense that you were having trouble with anybody at the time?

Reno

I didn't get the sense I was having trouble with anybody. [R. J.] Duke Short, [Strom] Thurmond's chief of staff, was an old friend, I think an Army buddy or an Air Force buddy of one of my investigators. They wanted to get somebody confirmed, and they were looking critically but with relief every time I was able to answer a question for them.

Riley

Was there anything about your record at this point that you felt vulnerable about? There must have been some things that you had some concerns with that could--

Reno

One of the things I wondered what they were going to do with because I--this has been an issue for me--was the death penalty because I am personally opposed to it. I would like to see it eliminated. But my position as state attorney had been, if I were in the legislature, I'd vote against it but I can ask for it and I can do everything possible to make sure that innocent people are not charged and that the guilty are convicted according to the principles of due process and fair play. I didn't know how that would--but support came from the general counsel in Governor [Robert] Martinez's office, who said, "If you had told me that she was opposed to the--I'm just surprised to hear that because she certainly didn't seem opposed to it."

Meador

During the hearing itself, did anybody give you a hard time about anything?

Reno

I can't remember anything because so much of the time I said, "I don't know about that, I look forward to working with you on that issue, I'm not familiar with that issue."

Baker

Those sorts of responses helped to deflect some of the criticism?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

How long did your hearing last from start to finish?

Reno

It started on a Tuesday morning, as I recall, went to Wednesday afternoon.

Meador

So two full days essentially.

Reno

Yes. Jesse Helms, that was another thing, Jesse Helms' wife was the niece of my great-aunt and the South Carolina family was--I was standing in the Old Executive Office Building as the debate was going, not the debate but Orrin Hatch was being helpful, everybody was being helpful, and Jesse Helms got up and I thought--and Helms got up and said, "I think she is a woman of good character."

Baker

You knew then you were all right. Now when you were given these things as you were walking between the senatorial offices, obviously you didn't know off the top of your head that Jesse Helms' wife--

Reno

Yes, I did.

Baker

Oh, did you know that already? So you knew some of these and other connections you were being told by the White House?

Reno

I just knew because I'm close to my uncle in Bangor and he had always mentioned Senator Cohen and knew that, and the only one I didn't know was the connection with Thurmond and that fact, but Dot Helms--we all knew that.

Baker

Okay, but the connection with Thurmond then, did the White House discover that?

Reno

No, my investigator told me, "Duke Short is--"

Baker

Good, good, so you went in with some advantages then. That must have really impressed your White House handlers.

Reno

They were intrigued.

Riley

You neutralized all the real lions.

Reno

Well, [Arlen] Specter, I had testified before Specter's committee and I think Specter had been in Miami. I testified before a committee in Washington on career criminals and then he had been down in Miami and I knew him.

Morrisroe

During the confirmation period, given that it appeared to be going fairly smoothly, was there any discussion about getting you up to speed on what was happening at Justice during that period?

Reno

As it came closer to the confirmation date, they felt that I should not go to the Justice Department but that I should meet with Stuart Gerson. So we developed a neutral area, which was the Florida House.

Meador

Was there any discussion during that confirmation time about appointments in the Justice Department?

Reno

Yes. Bernie would come over with lists of people and we would talk the issues out. Walter was in and out all the time, and I'd already decided that Walter was wonderful.

Meador

Did you have in mind wanting to appoint him to something?

Reno

Bernie, I think, reached the conclusion that he would be the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel [OLC], and that seemed a perfect fit for me.

Meador

The day that you were sworn in, do you recall how many positions of Presidential appointees were in place already in the Justice Department?

Reno

None.

Meador

Not any.

Reno

None.

Baker

None had yet been confirmed.

Meador

I don't mean confirmed but designated or nominated.

Reno

None.

Meador

Not a single place was filled as of that date?

Reno

Webb was over there, in what capacity I don't know. Nancy McFadden was there, in what capacity, I guess Gerson had appointed them trying to--and Gerson was wonderful at the meeting at Florida House. He discussed Waco, he had met with the President, knew what the President wanted on Waco, was extremely helpful.

Baker

That really facilitated the transition.

Reno

He urged me to meet as soon as possible with the Acting Assistant Attorneys General of each of the divisions. The preparation for it helped me in those meetings, but Gerson urged me to meet with them as soon as possible and people were prepared to do it.

Baker

Did the fact that you didn't yet have a security clearance hamper the kind of information you could get on Waco or some of the unfolding events?

Reno

I wasn't hampered by any lack of information from Gerson and I don't think--

Meador

Was there full FBI field investigation on you at any point?

Reno

There was a crash FBI investigation both in Miami and around the country. I think they had that FBI investigation going into the hearing.

Baker

The fact that you'd been elected five times didn't hurt because the voters sort of vetted you each time on that. Many of these issues had come up before in your election campaigns.

Morrisroe

Other than Waco, were there issues during that period that were brought to the floor? The [William] Sessions issue comes to mind.

Reno

Sessions was one of the issues I think Gerson got into. When was the first World Trade Center?

Riley

It's right around that time, February 26th.

Reno

He touched on that as I recall.

Meador

You arrived and were sworn in, you arrived in the office without a single Assistant AG [Attorney General] in place, no Deputy and no Associate yet nominated. Can you recall which of those positions the White House already had somebody clearly in mind and was intent on nominating?

Reno

I really can't answer that question about who the White House had clearly in mind and intended to nominate.

Meador

Do you recall which of all those positions you yourself actually selected the person without having a name suggested by the White House?

Reno

That's hard to say because, for example, Phil Heymann's name would be discussed and Chuck Ruff's name was discussed. And I had dealt with both Ruff and Heymann when I came to Washington to try to work out issues with respect to the sting and cooperation with DEA, so I immediately thought of Chuck Ruff. I felt comfortable with him. He had gone to Swarthmore with my sister. I had the greatest respect for him following my experience with the [Jimmy] Carter administration with the Justice Department. So I can't say that the White House had Chuck Ruff clearly in mind, but when the issues developed with Wilder, I then, having felt comfortable in my dealings with Heymann, went to Heymann--and I don't know which came first.

Riley

Can you clarify and maybe I should remember this from the briefing materials but you've mentioned the situation with Wilder twice and it doesn't--

Reno

I can't remember the details, but Wilder was antagonistic. I don't remember what it was.

Riley

But there was some bad blood between Wilder--

Meador

You're speaking of Governor Wilder of Virginia?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

So he ended up basically being set aside at that point. He's not eligible for any of these significant appointments because of his concern about the--

Reno

But could become White House counsel because he didn't have to be confirmed.

Meador

Can you reconstruct who selected Drew Days to be Solicitor General?

Reno

I think I may have met Drew once, but I met him during the course of the confirmation and we had several conversations. The White House selected him, but I was already comfortable with him when they selected. There had been no signal to me that he had been selected.

Riley

Were there people in the mix for those senior appointments that you felt you had relatively more influence over, that you brought to the table with you? Or is it just the case that there's a natural farm team of legal talent that any Democrat would consider for these senior positions?

Reno

I think Walter had been active in the campaign and they knew him. I did not know Walter or of Walter before that. I had a chance to work with him during the confirmation and that night at the hotel room. Chuck, I knew. Heymann I knew.

Meador

I take it it was fairly well set in the mind of the White House that Webster Hubbell would be the Associate Attorney General?

Reno

They didn't know what--They kept looking for the best fit and I think that's where they finally came down.

Meador

Did this arrangement make you at all uncomfortable in terms of your anticipated relationship with the President and the White House?

Reno

No, it made me feel more comfortable because when I didn't feel comfortable with the person, I never got that person.

Meador

You didn't have a sense that Hubbell's close association with the President would in any way result in his bypassing you and dealing directly with the White House instead of your dealing with them?

Reno

I had a real respect for Webb by the time I was confirmed. In the events leading up to Waco he was really careful to make sure that I was in the loop, that he didn't inadvertently have a conversation with somebody I didn't know about. Webb is one of the most heartbreaking issues for me because with his work as a state Supreme Court Justice, he had some role in ethics. He could speak so clearly on these issues, and what happened to him was one of the great disappointments for me.

Riley

You said you had developed an understanding with the White House that you'd have a veto power over anybody that you--did you exercise that veto at any point?

Reno

I can't remember having to exercise the veto by telling them, "No, I won't take that person." Bernie told me, "Now, one of the people we're going to have to make Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division is Frank Hunger, Gore's brother-in-law." I said, "Bernie, don't do that to me." And Bernie said, "Go talk to your friends and see what they think."

The first person I called was Chesterfield Smith, and Smith said, "I don't know him well but I'll make some calls." He called me back that afternoon and said, "This is one great guy. The people I value the most who would know are just very high on him." And Frank Hunger became and is one of my favorite people from the Justice Department.

Baker

How about Vince Foster's sister, who ended up head of Legislative Affairs, similar kind of a--?

Reno

Exactly. I sat down and talked to Sheila [Foster Anthony] and became very comfortable with her.

Riley

You said you had worked closely with Jamie Gorelick for a while. Was there consideration of putting her in a position?

Reno

Not at that point because she was interested in the Defense Department, and I don't think she figured she could get the job.

Meador

That's one point for "get past it and forget it." As far as the transition, did you ever have a conversation with William Barr, the former Attorney General?

Reno

Jamie and I had a conversation after she came on board.

Meador

A year later.

Reno

A year later. We did not have one before.

Meador

Let me ask you about something else. You may or may not recall this, but somewhere around the time of your nomination or confirmation, there was a group formed under the aegis of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, chaired by Lloyd Cutler and maybe co-chaired by Nicholas Katzenbach. There must have been 15 to 18 people. Do you recall what your relationship with that group was and what, if anything, came out of that?

Reno

If it's the same thing I'm thinking of, Lloyd opined, and it was obvious that they thought they had a nice lady from Florida on their hands who would try to be a good Attorney General but just didn't understand the politics of Washington, the conflicts, the pitfalls, and that they should take it upon themselves to try to--I didn't remember it being under the Kennedy School auspices. So I was invited over.

I think they had an all-day session; they may have had two all-day sessions, and I was invited over toward the end. "Come along and we'll show you how to be Attorney General." They started talking about conflicts and I said, "My concern is what about the conflicts you all have and what about you advising me." We talked about it and pretty soon they concluded that I probably would have to make my own decisions.

Baker

That lasted for a few months, didn't it? Your first month or two they were trying to meet with you pretty regularly on issues.

Meador

In other words, you thought that they thought you needed some help.

Reno

Yes. And I knew I needed some help.

Meador

You didn't particularly appreciate that help, is that right?

Reno

I appreciated it but it was a clear issue. I said, "Wilmer Cutler [& Pickering] has got to have a lot of stuff pending in the Justice Department and here you all are telling me what--"

Meador

Did anything come out of it, any suggestions or recommendations that were developed in that group that you paid attention to or did any good or that you adopted?

Reno

I can't recall any but that doesn't mean there weren't some.

Baker

Did you bring any friends with you from Florida into the Justice Department?

Reno

Brought John Hogan up, who was absolutely great. I got Lula Rodriguez and she appeared on the scene. I think I may have gotten her as much from the White House as from me. She's one of the shrewdest, smartest people I've known, but she was not the person really for the Justice Department. The State Department was a good fit for her and that worked out for her.

Baker

I think you were once asked point blank, "What are you bad at?" And you responded, "Getting my department staffed." Can you explain that? It sounds like you had some good people but that's not what you meant.

Reno

What I meant was, it was so important to get people on board but you would run into--how did you convince this Senator to withdraw the blue slip, and how did you get this security issue worked out?

Baker

It was even more difficult to get nominations through in the second term, but already you were finding that early in the first term, to get nominations through the Senate?

Reno

The first time, sometimes it wasn't just getting nominations through, sometimes it was working out the politics. Lois Schiffer was doing a great job in Environment and Natural Resources. Gerald Torres, you had the diversity issue involved there. Gerald had not had the experience in Washington. Then we brought him on board. That didn't work out. I forget the issue. The whole problem with Lani Guinier. And there were so many issues that I kept thinking, What can I do to improve this?

Riley

You inherited an extraordinarily difficult job, right? Not just from the typical problems that you would inherit, but the team not being in place.

Reno

And then coming in two months into an administration.

Meador

On the Lani Guinier thing, had you signed off on that nomination or was that strictly a White House operation?

Reno

I had signed off on that nomination. I had talked with her. They had specifically sent her over to talk to me, and I had talked with her and I felt comfortable with her. I think she would have made a very fine Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights division.

Riley

Let's take a five-minute break.

[BREAK]

Reno

--it was an afternoon.

Baker

Friday afternoon?

Reno

I believe so.

Riley

Tell us about it.

Reno

I had been formally sworn in the day before, or informally sworn in, but they wouldn't let me go over to the Justice Department. They wanted to have a formal swearing-in in the Roosevelt Room. We did that and about 2 o'clock in the afternoon I went over.

Baker

Had you been over there before or were all your prep sessions away from Justice?

Reno

The tradition was, don't go near the Justice Department until you're sworn in.

Baker

Like being a bride, you're not supposed to see the groom.

Riley

So what did you find?

Reno

Stacks and stacks of stuff. I found Shirley Bania was an institution at the Justice Department. She was the majordomo of the Attorney General's office.

Meador

What was her position?

Reno

She was the manager of the Attorney General's office, the hostess with the mostest.

Riley

And had been there for so long?

Reno

Head of etiquette. You must wear stockings, no slacks.

Meador

Did you bring along or quickly acquire some personal staff in your office?

Reno

At confirmation there was--at first, I thought she was a secretary but I determined she was a lawyer--Donna Templeton. By the time we finished confirmation Donna and I had become good friends. She was an aide was probably the best description of it, a counselor, and we keep in touch. She came with me to the Justice Department. Bessie Meadows became my confidential assistant and just a great lady, a career person in the Justice Department.

Meador

Did you set up somebody you called chief of staff or anything like that?

Reno

Lula Rodriguez was the first chief of staff, as I recall, then John, and you'd have to go through the sequences of chiefs of staff. John Hogan had been a lawyer I trusted a great deal, one of my closest advisors at the state attorney's office. He fit beautifully into Washington and was very adept at figuring out where to go and what to do. That afternoon I just saw things stacked up.

Baker

Mail mostly?

Reno

Mail, reports. There was a moment that afternoon when I walked in and looked at it all and it was only for about 30 minutes that I felt intimidated by it--just where do I begin? But I just took one and I said, "If you'll start setting up appointments with the Acting Assistant Attorneys General," and I started prioritizing and making notes on Sessions and Waco and the first World Trade Center, all obvious keys in the appointment process. The issue of a DEA/FBI merger. By then I knew a lot more. Ron Klain had warned me during the confirmation process that there was an area of government very few people knew about, and that was intelligence and counterterrorism and the whole intelligence apparatus.

There was a reception for me at the Florida House. Mrs. [Katherine] Graham was there, and I remember meeting her for the first time. But I had to leave because Fritz and Mrs. [Rita Louise Liddy] Hollings had invited me for dinner, and coming to dinner were Joe Biden and his wife. I forget the next couple, and the third couple was the President and Mrs. Clinton. We knew there was a blizzard coming. I remember I could barely stay awake. Clinton and Biden were into one of their interminable conversations. I remember sitting there thinking, I am not going to fall asleep on the President of the United States and Senator Biden.

Baker

After the couple of weeks you'd had, I think they would have forgiven you.

Reno

I remember coming out and the ground was covered with snow and got home and a lot of my family was still there. They couldn't get out because of the blizzard. The next morning I had to go home again and get the clothes I had bought. I went to the Justice Department in the most patched-up bunch of winter clothes you can imagine.

Baker

You didn't walk that time, right?

Reno

Yes, I did.

Baker

Even in the blizzard.

Reno

Yes, I will always remember that blizzard.

Baker

A warm welcome.

Riley

You did go back to Florida for a short period.

Reno

I went back. I don't remember the sequence of it, but I went back and just pulled out my files.

Meador

May I ask you about one specific appointment: Eleanor [Eldie] Acheson, Office of Policy Development? How did that come about?

Reno

The first time I met Eleanor Acheson was after the nomination in the Rose Garden and she and Maria [Echaveste], married to Chris [Edley, jr.]--

Riley

We can track it down.

Reno

--had been standing there in the Rose Garden listening to it and Eldie decided that this might be a good Justice Department. She introduced herself to me, or John Smith, my former law partner in Steel, Hector & Davis, who had been up helping me during the confirmation, introduced me to Eldie. Eldie had strong opinions, but I found them refreshing. I don't remember whether it was Bernie or Jamie who told me we should find a position for Eldie. I would never have known her without the Clinton administration, but she was amazing in how she could work through the White House. She could also be very stubborn and get people upset, but she had a real capacity for working through the White House and the appointments process and working with the Senators.

Meador

Let me ask you a question now, something you may or may not recall, and I'm reluctant to ask you if it is uncomfortable at all to you personally. But in May of 1993, Professor Morris Rosenberg of Columbia Law School and I met with you, Phil Heymann was there, and we had come to suggest the Justice Department resume the work of the sort that had been done during the Carter administration through what was then called the Office for Improvements in the Administration of Justice. The Office of Policy Development had evolved out of that. That name got changed early on, I think in the Reagan administration. I was wondering if you recall that meeting or not, and if so, did anything come out of it? Were there any further discussions in the department as a result of that conversation?

Reno

There were a number of discussions. I remember the meeting. I don't remember who was there, but I remember the discussion about how we address this issue. What I don't remember is what form it took and how we worked with the State Department. But that became key to me, and I don't remember the name under which it functioned because everywhere I went in Latin America, in Russia, what was missing in so many of the pieces was the capacity to enforce the law. If you've got a judgment, provide for judicial enforcement of it. If you developed a democracy, how you developed a court system. It was always interesting to me to have people come and say, "How do you ensure the independence of judges? How do you work out these issues?"

Meador

In foreign countries people would ask you that?

Reno

Yes. It made me start looking at domestic issues as well. We see the handwriting on the wall now in terms of our own judges and the independence of judges. I think the Florida Supreme Court decision that's just come down is extraordinary in the unanimity of it. [George W.] Bush's appointees joining in the opinion on the [Terri] Schiavo case. And the danger we find in Congress saying, "Courts can't do this, courts can't do that." But I don't remember the name of what we put it under. Eldie spent so much time on the appointment process because it was so difficult and had to be done so thoroughly, but one of the issues we talked about was when we had a conference on federalism. She put a lot of time and effort into that. I don't think much came of that effort.

Morrisroe

Shortly after you were confirmed you sought the resignation of the U.S. attorneys and that resulted in some controversy. Were you surprised by the level of controversy that engendered?

Reno

No, and that's one area where I think I failed. Jack Brooks started it. I paid a courtesy visit to Jack Brooks. He said, "You've got to get those U.S. attorneys out of there," blah, blah, blah. That built pressure and the White House decided to get them out. It should have been done on a case-by-case basis because there were some people in office who were doing a fine job, who were nonpolitical, who were conducting themselves in an appropriate way, and it kind of blanketed everybody. I should have said, "Let's just do it on a case-by-case basis" instead of getting rid of them all.

Meador

Had none of them submitted a resignation with the change of administration?

Reno

There were some who had not submitted resignations, but the way it was done, we didn't do a good job of it and I should have--

Baker

It also seemed very rushed.

Reno

It was rushed, it was, "Get them out of there, get our people in."

Meador

You say Jack Brooks was sort of a motivating force behind the whole deal?

Reno

No, that's the first issue that I heard, and he continually raised the issue.

Riley

Had you had communications with the White House about this particular issue and how to go about doing it?

Reno

We had had conversations, and I recall talking with Bernie about it. In retrospect I remember being surprised at the Republicans being so aghast at being kicked out. But surprised that we couldn't have done it better. I had gotten to know them. Tom Corbett had been a U.S. attorney from the Western District of Pennsylvania who served as chair of the Attorney General's Advisory Committee. He came in, he gave me good advice, he never once misled me. Working with Tom we could have done a better job.

Riley

Did you feel you were getting pressure from the White House to move on that?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Primarily through Bernie?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

You said when you came in that you thought you would find overall crime reports and other kinds of aggregate data on which you could be making policy decisions. I guess that surprised me because I thought that there would be those sorts of documents, but there was nothing culled, no major crime reports. Are there now?

Reno

There are crime reports per se, but what kind of crime--It just seemed to me that I was going to find more about a jurisdiction, about the state, about what types of crime it was, was it drug-induced, was it youth violence, was it domestic violence.

Meador

Speaking of reports, did you have any occasion to see the Miller Center publication titled, "The President, the Attorney General, and the Department of Justice"?

Reno

I don't have any memory of it, but there were so many books.

Riley

A lot of paper in that office when you got there, right?

Reno

It was a battle to try to generate the information, but it was fascinating to see what would happen. Hartford, Connecticut, was an example of a city and a community that had been plagued by violent crime. The U.S. attorney worked well with the state and locals. Again, when you had one U.S. attorney per state, it could oftentimes foster a more coherent approach. But we were able to take out gangs that cut across local jurisdictions. We were able to work with the state Attorney General in Connecticut, and you could see crime go down as a direct result of those efforts.

Baker

But getting that information is the first step before you can really solve the problem. I know as a researcher I've sometimes run into problems getting good data across jurisdictions.

Reno

We have the capacity to do it now and if we could only learn from it. We had developed an effective effort in a number of jurisdictions, in others we didn't. There were personalities involved. The U.S. attorney didn't get along well with the locals or something like that. But in many instances, we could resolve and work through those and come up with--

Baker

And you'd also had the system, the Justice Department well computerized by the time you left, which could help with handling information.

Reno

But you still had issues with the FBI being much further behind than any other agency in the Department of Justice in terms of computerization and automation and cyber technology. The FBI was way behind DEA. DEA took steps to automate early on.

Baker

Was that cultural resistance in the FBI or money?

Reno

Part of the problem was there were two--the NCIC [National Crime Information Center] project and then the IAFIS [Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System] project were both underway when I came into office. They were both over budget, over time and Congress was really concerned about the millions being spent. So that was Louis's [Freeh] and my first project together. The Bureau had depended on agents to be their financial experts, to be their automation experts, to be their management experts. We finally got some people in there who could address those issues. Congress didn't want to give the FBI any more money with these two massive projects underway and not yet brought to completion. When they were brought to completion, the Bureau started taking about automation, but it was so far behind then that Louis didn't bring anybody in until he brought in [Robert] Dies, the man from IBM. I think [Robert] Mueller is still having difficulty with it because I think the Bureau suffered from what this country is suffering from.

This is really an editorial comment. When I look at the voting problems in south Florida, it goes back to the fact that we do not have enough people with the skills necessary to understand cyber issues in this nation. We're having to import people with H-1B visas, with this knowledge. I saw it more in the FBI than almost anyplace.

Riley

There is a cluster of issues you had to confront almost immediately when you came into office. An awful lot has been written about a lot of these, so it's I think important for us to get your sense of how you were approaching these issues, what you considered to be important, and more importantly for our purposes, what historically is important for us to understand as we look at some of these things like Waco and the World Trade Center and the Sessions issue. We've got about an hour before lunch, maybe we can take bits and pieces of some of these things. I don't know whether it makes sense for us to do an entire chronology over again, but just to get you to reflect a little bit--if you want to take it from the start and map them through to conclusion, we can do it that way.

Reno

Sessions was one of the primary issues I had to confront. I read the report. The OPR [Office of Professional Responsibility] report did not impress me as a document for firing the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Meador

You mean it didn't contain facts that in your mind justified firing him?

Reno

That, and it was not of a quality in terms of its professional approach to it that I would want to fire him. It was clear to me though, in my conversations with him, that he had lost the confidence of the FBI and he did not have the strength or the position to recover that confidence. I had several conversations with him, tried to get him to resign, was not successful. My recollection of the letter I wrote to the President recommending his removal was framed that at the very best he does not have the confidence of the FBI sufficiently because he was a man of great good will. He worked hard. He was concerned. He was concerned about honor and such. But he didn't have the confidence of the Bureau sufficient to lead it.

That was the direction I was going when Waco occurred. I thought we had to work through the issues of Waco before I--the buck stopped with me. If anybody was going to be fired or resign over Waco it should be me. So it was delayed into the summer as we went through the Waco issues.

Baker

Did his presence exacerbate the FBI's handling of Waco at all do you think?

Reno

No. It didn't. He was sort of out of the loop by that time in terms of--he was there on the fringes but--

Meador

Had you recommended his removal before the Waco incident?

Reno

No, I had not. I may have told the President, "I think he's got to go," but my impression was that we owed it to him to give him a graceful exit, whether it was by termination or by permitting him to resign.

Riley

Was it your sense that his loss of confidence in the agency was based on a blind spot about his own personal behavior or was it more fundamentally rooted in his professional leadership of the institution?

Reno

Both, a little bit.

Morrisroe

What response did you get from the White House from either Nussbaum or the President?

Reno

I think when I was nominated, the President was asked what he was going to do about Sessions and he said, "I think we should let the Attorney General make a judgment and review the matter." I never got any pressure from the White House one way or the other. I submitted my letter to the President. I think I talked to the President after he'd gotten my letter. The response came and I never felt under any pressure.

Riley

You indicated that Waco intervened while you were weighing this. Can you step back and tell us, I'm trying to recall the chronology. I guess when you took office, the trouble with the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] had already transpired?

Reno

The ATF had already gone in. Stuart Gerson had met with me, said he had met with the President and the President's instructions were that he had had a similar situation in Arkansas, and we were to wait it out. When the FBI came to me in--the chronology will speak for itself--they said the men on the front lines were losing their keen edge. They explained it to me that they had weapons in the compound that could fire the distance from the Justice Department to the Capitol. I remember using that as the basis. If they could not walk away from the compound, neither could they stay there forever. At this point they were losing their edge and it was going to be important to draw back.

I asked what other potential they had for going in, assuming we couldn't do anything. They'd have to have some backup. They felt that their backup in non-HRT [Hostage Rescue Team] units was limited. I asked about the military and that was the first issue with respect to Posse Comitatus. You realize, and you saw it again and again, with respect to Osama bin Laden or other issues, we need a capacity to address these issues that is not military, that's not law enforcement, but that has a mixture, if you will, of both.

So I told them what the President had said, that he wanted to wait. They came back to me, talked about the fact that negotiations were going nowhere. I asked Webb, and I think Mark Richard from the Criminal Division to go down and talk to the negotiators themselves to make sure. I think the position of the negotiators was that if we had been there from the beginning, we perhaps could have charted a different course, but with what we inherited we had reached the end.

Baker

So the negotiators at this point were not saying, "Give us more time"?

Reno

No. I asked when they would run out of water and food supplies. They checked that and they had some means of infrared identification of water supplies. It looked like they had a significant supply of food and water that would last for some time. They then came in with the proposal for the gas. I remember asking them what effect it would have on the elderly, what effect it would have on children. They brought in--I wasn't supposed to refer to the name of the unit that they brought in because it was so highly secretive--from the Army, and they reviewed it and they agreed there needed to be, as I recall, you couldn't keep people on that line for an undue period of time.

They got experts on gas. I weighed everything. The information I had, and Webb asked them, they said the children were being sexually abused. I asked that they prepare a statement, and the statement does not support that. Subsequently the testimony we had during the congressional hearings indicated that the abuse continued in some very descriptive testimony, but I reached the conclusion that we could go in.

I remember the morning, feeling frustrated because you could see the windows, the gas inserted and then the windows, I think to the west, were open and the curtains were flying out almost parallel to the ground and I thought, Gas is not going to stay in there that long and they've misread that. But what they told me before we went in was, "Once we go in, you lose control over it. You cannot make decisions from Washington about what we do. We're going to have to." I looked as they pushed down some of that and even then asked questions about it, "Why are you doing this? We want to make sure, are people in there?" The other issue, and I should have known it before because we always have problems with wiretaps and what's heard and what's not heard, is that they had not cleaned up the wiretap transcripts from the milk deliveries and things like that. They had transmitters within the milk delivered to the compound.

Riley

I didn't follow that.

Reno

They would have been little chips. But if we had been able to, we would have heard that they were setting the fires. I had been scheduled to speak to the Third Circuit. The FBI encouraged me to go up there because if I did not appear it would look like something was about, and what we were trying to do was wait them out and we did not anticipate action. When I got back and saw what the tanks had done, that seemed to me to be an erroneous statement, but you could look at what they were trying to do.

I don't remember the sequence and this is an example of the sequences in the White House logs of when I talked to the President. You'd have to go back over that. But I remember people discouraging me from going to the press and I said, "No, I've got to go down there." You've got to accept responsibility. I went down and talked to them and tried to answer questions and understand.

Riley

During this period of time, who were you relying on most for professional advice? I'm not talking about the intelligence gathering and so forth, but there were people you were consulting with--

Reno

Mark Richard and Jim Reynolds were two key people from the Criminal Division. Floyd Clark and Larry [Potts] from the FBI.

Meador

When this was all over, were you surprised at the reaction? Did it seem to you to be overblown for what was really involved, out of all proportion to what had happened?

Reno

I don't understand your question because in proportion to what happened, what happened was awful.

Meador

Yes, even so, granted that, did you think the reaction--for example, was there any indication or thought in your mind that this was a politically motivated reaction as a way to get at the Clinton administration?

Reno

No.

Meador

You didn't think that was behind it.

Reno

No.

Baker

Did it take much for you to convince the President of the FBI plan? Did the President talk to you about the standoff he'd handled in Arkansas?

Reno

He talked to me. He and I had a conversation prior to all of this in which he reiterated what he had told Gerson. But when I talked to him, he seemed to--I went through with him what I've gone through with you.

Baker

The way it played out, did it undermine some of his trust in the FBI or in your judgment? Did you get any sense that there was negative fallout in terms of your level of credibility with the White House or the FBI's credibility with the White House?

Reno

I can't speak for the FBI, because I don't know at the time, with the White House travel or whatever.

Baker

That's right.

Reno

I had no sense from the White House that their confidence was diminished.

Baker

There was just an understanding that this was something that had gotten out of control and there was no way we could have anticipated.

Reno

Not even out of control, because one of the things that interest me--John Danforth, after reviewing everything in Waco, wrote me a handwritten letter shortly after I left office, saying, "I think you did exactly the right thing," which surprised me in the assertiveness of it. I will never know what the right thing was because if I hadn't acted, he would have probably done the exact same thing two weeks later, or could have done the exact same thing. I don't think it would have happened if Louis Freeh had been on the scene from the beginning. His handling of the Montana Freemen case was just storybook in terms of patience. I don't know what would have happened if I had been at the command center watching them tear down those walls. I think I would have ordered them back and been criticized for not letting them do their job.

Riley

But you'd made a conscious decision that you were not going to do--

Reno

And it made sense, because I couldn't tell. There were television banks around and what was happening there, you could not have all of it. I knew. But I also knew that they were pushing their luck to try to tear it down.

Baker

But the presence of Sessions may have--you didn't have good leadership at the top of the FBI so that--Because you're saying Freeh might have made a difference in how this was handled.

Reno

I use Freeh as an example of somebody who either because of his own sense--but it could have easily been seeing what happened in Waco that gave him that experience.

Riley

That was going to be one of my next questions. Was there any relevant experience that the main actors could draw on, not with [David] Koresh in particular but with other hostage-type situations?

Reno

There were behavioral experts who could draw on their experience in hostage-type situations, but it was a situation in which another agency had started it. There had been representations made leading up to that. It was a new administration.

Riley

In your conversations with President Clinton, did you talk about whether there were any relevant similarities or differences between his experience in Arkansas and what you were confronting in Waco at the time?

Reno

I explained to him that Koresh seemed to be a being of his own making. I will never know what the right answer was.

Riley

In retrospect, did you have a lot of confidence in the technical advice you were getting? You asked questions about gas and psychology and so forth. Did you feel that you were getting what you needed at the time?

Reno

I felt like I was getting what was needed at the time. Subsequently people have so many questions about gas, but sometimes it comes from conspiracy theorists, so it's hard to sort out the issues.

Morrisroe

Were there any institutional lessons learned from your experience?

Reno

The institutional lessons learned were that the ATF should have turned it over to the Bureau initially. I don't think the Bureau would have gone in. They had enough information concerning the guns in the place that I think the Bureau--and they had some good negotiators, but they had some prior negotiations by ATF that sent mixed signals from one agency to another. The FBI was already there when I got there. The better thing is to try to provide continuity in terms of effective law enforcement efforts so there's not a mixed signal sent through the negotiators or otherwise. The signal is, don't count on people to be rational. He warned of his own Armageddon, and this is what Danforth wrote to me. He said, "You couldn't walk away from it. You couldn't stay there forever, and he was out to create his own Armageddon."

Riley

I want to ask a follow-up to Darby's question. We've asked you about your own working relationships with the people under your charge in dealing with this and also about your relationships with the White House, but there are some other institutional actors. We even talked about the ATF. Were there other executive branch agencies or actors that had a piece of this that is important for us to understand?

Reno

The military.

Riley

You've already described why there was a difficulty in overrelying on that particular arm of things. What about Members of Congress? Were you feeling pressure from the Hill to deal with this in one way or another?

Reno

Jack Brooks thought it important to have a hearing as soon as possible, and that hearing I think was important to follow through with accountability and to show people. I was obviously under pressure from [John] Conyers and that exchange with Conyers, when I got back to the Justice Department after that hearing, the phones had been ringing off the hook, absolutely irate at Conyers. The next morning Conyers appeared in my office at 8:30 and has been supportive of me ever since.

Riley

What about the role of the media in this? Is this the kind of event that would have happened 20, 25 years before when you didn't have a CNN camera that could stay on with people watching? Maybe that's an unfair question.

Reno

It could happen. Jonestown happened.

Baker

Coming from your background with a positive predisposition toward news media and understanding the role they play in a free society, what were your relations like with the news media, and are there any particular reporters who were especially adept at understanding what was going on and others of course who were sort of fabricating these tensions between you and Webb Hubbell?

Reno

Carl Stern, I think it was his first day on the job and he was superb, but it goes to the larger question of the media and press availabilities.

Riley

Did you feel the media did a reasonably good job of covering Waco as you were dealing with the problem and then with the aftermath, or did you feel it was--?

Reno

I thought they were generally fair. You've obviously got--the media, I can't talk about Rush [Limbaugh] because I don't listen to Rush, but from what people tell me there's a large segment of the media that's not fair.

Riley

I also want to ask you a question about your own decision to hold the press conference when you did. Are there any insights you can give us into your thought processes as you were trying to decide?

Reno

I have the feeling that anybody who makes decisions like that has got to be accountable for them and can't hide and has got to be responsive. It was just that. As state attorney it had been my practice not to hold press conferences, because press conferences were mostly announcements made to announce indictments and things like that. I just resisted that except in massive cases where I knew I would have to answer questions and better that I do it en masse, otherwise my time would be drained. But I just think people should be accountable.

Riley

Did you think that this might cost you your job?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

How long was it before you realized that you were going to stay where you were?

Reno

I never assumed I was going to stay where I was.

Meador

At some point did the President offer you reassurance that you would be remaining?

Reno

After Ted Koppel, I got back to my apartment and I got a call, first from my sister and then from the President. He didn't say, "I want you to stay." But I never saw anything from the White House point of view that changed the White House's--

Meador

Do you remember what he said in that conversation when he called you on the phone?

Reno

I think his first remark was "Atta girl." I think he was meaning it in terms of follow-up.

Baker

You'd been on the news almost constantly that afternoon and evening. Was that at your own initiative? Or were you responding to calls from ABC [American Broadcasting Company] to get you on Nightline?

Reno

The press conference that afternoon at about 5:30 was my doing. Carl suggested not.

Riley

He suggested not doing it?

Reno

Not doing it. I don't recall how Koppel and the other news shows got set up that night.

Riley

Two other follow-up questions. After the immediate problems had been dealt with in the press, what resources did you call on for your own resilience?

Reno

Talked to my sister.

Riley

Your sisters and your family were the support mechanism for working your way through what must have been a terrible time for you. The other question, this is a follow-up from Dan's, were you at all surprised at the reaction in Washington, not to Waco itself but to the way you were treated by the press in the wake of Waco? There was almost a heroic element in the media coverage.

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Do you know how to account for that, not your reaction but the press attention to it?

Reno

I'm not so sure that it was the press reaction as people's reaction that surprised me.

Meador

That surprised you? In what way?

Reno

I think it probably is due to the fact--because more people have come up to me and said, "You're the first person I've ever heard just take responsibility for something like that."

Riley

It's not often you see that in Washington.

Meador

While we are talking about media, may I ask you a more general question about the media in relation to you and your time in office? Are there any individual members of the press, on TV or print or electronic media anywhere, who stand out in your mind as having given particularly good coverage to Department of Justice activities generally?

Reno

I forget the date of the first press availability, but I found what happened before we'd established the press availability was that when the media wanted to talk to me, they would get my daily schedule and find I was going to be at the XYZ Hotel at 9 o'clock for a meeting. I would get out of the limo and the television cameras would be in my face and they would backtrack and fall over potted palms. It didn't seem to be a very sensible way of doing things.

Carl and I came up with the idea of a 9:30 press availability every Thursday morning. I thought that the Justice Department regulars, Pete Williams and others, did a great job of covering the Justice Department and did it fairly.

Baker

Did the media react well when you issued an interpretation of the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] that gave the predisposition toward disclosure?

Reno

They acted like "we'll see," and when we showed them that we meant it they seemed to react well.

Baker

I would think that would generate a more positive predisposition on the part of the press that you weren't hiding documents. How about news leaks? Did you have problems with news leaks? We know the White House did.

Reno

Horrible problems. That's the reason I don't think, no reflection on you all, just don't think anything is--

Meador

Did you take any steps to try to stop leaks?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

What did you do?

Reno

Explained that we could be much more efficient and effective if we conducted investigations the right way. It has been fascinating to me to see how the Bush administration enforced against it for the longest time.

Riley

Do you want to elaborate?

Reno

I don't know how they did it.

Baker

The White House also, I think under President Clinton, was plagued with news leaks. A lot of the appointments, things we've touched on already. There's really no way of handling it effectively without draconian measures, and if you're trying to have an open and accountable administration it goes against the control of news leaks.

Riley

The other thing that was churning at this time was the World Trade Center.

Reno

Another thing that was churning at this time was Ruby Ridge. It's amazing how many people think Ruby Ridge occurred on my watch.

Riley

Churning in the sense of the aftermath.

Reno

Fallout.

Baker

In fact, it should have taught the agents something about Waco.

Meador

Didn't so-called Travelgate come along somewhere in this time zone?

Riley

Dan, if I can hold off on that just for a second because the White House, the independent counsel, the investigations, we'll want to deal with in more depth, but I don't know whether there's anything to talk about with the World Trade Center investigations. Historically people will look back on that as a premonition of things to come.

Reno

I was briefed by Mary Jo White and her people on the World Trade Center from the beginning. I don't know how long Tom Corbett chaired the advisory committee, but she took over as chair of the advisory committee as I recall. I have a great respect for Mary Jo and I think she's one of the most able people I served with.

As the FBI pursued--and this gets into how you prevent and that law enforcement is important in terms of prevention as well as accountability--they identified the blind sheikh [Omar Abdel Rahman] and others as plotting to blow up the UN [United Nations] and some of the tunnels and other sites. They were able to develop a basis for an indictment but used a little-used provision of law. And they brought it down to me and said, "You're going to have to make the decision." I made the decision to determine that we had sufficient evidence. That was during the summer when I think the indictments came in. But when I got into that, I recognized just where we were at. I didn't have the expertise, the details, but it was clear that this was going to be something we had to deal with for some time to come.

Riley

The provisions of which law was it that you--

Baker

It had to do with having sufficient evidence to bring an indictment.

Reno

Yes.

Baker

How about communications? Were you already seeing problems with communications between the FBI and intelligence or did there seem to be a good working relationship?

Reno

We had developed--[James] Woolsey was in there, we met regularly with him. But where I saw problems developing more--I would get something from the Southern District of Florida concerning a particular issue and I would ask Larry Potts, the second in command at the FBI under Floyd Clark. I would call him and say, "What is this? We don't know anything about it," and work through it. FBI office in Miami would let somebody in Washington know, but this person wouldn't know. You'd see things like that and I'd say, "You've got to get it coordinated, you've got to develop the capacity." You can't just say, "Wait for automation," because it's not going to do any good even if you have automation if you don't know what to put into the stuff. When the campaign finance issues arose, the right hand obviously didn't know what the left hand was doing and we began to see that. It was something we talked about with them from those early days.

Riley

But there wasn't overall a significant enough sense of urgency for anything really systematic to be done?

Reno

They worked at it, but trying to find what was in everybody's computer, trying to break down the individual offices so that they linked together, just changing the culture. The whole thing the 9/11 commission has talked about. And toward the end to try to impress on Louis, I sent him several different memos just describing what needed to be done and that we could not wait for automation, that that was important but that we had to develop the links and the capacity to share. But I think it has been part of their culture. The same thing that was a one-way street for state and locals is a one-way street too often within the agency itself.

Baker

But there were some successful prosecutions, and I think that was a real tribute to some hard investigative work and a good legal team.

Reno

That was one of the problems though. New York was a perfect place for it to be situated with the World Trade Center and the sheikh and prevention and Ramsi Yousef and all that followed. But you then ran into the problem of sharing grand jury information and again, people so into their case that they didn't want to share it with anybody for fear of leaks.

Morrisroe

This may be a good place to ask whether you can comment on Freeh's selection.

Reno

Bernie was the first person I heard mention Louis Freeh. I'd talked to Freeh, he had concerns because of his family, and I said, "My feeling is we can work together. Family is important to me. If you think you can do the job, I understand that people have family responsibilities too." That was the only reservation he had. I was a great admirer of Ray Kelly and had hoped that he would take the job. I contacted him and he said no.

Meador

Were any other prospects considered?

Reno

I think a number of others. We looked at police chiefs and others around the country, federal judges. I don't remember any other.

Morrisroe

This was a collaborative decision with the White House?

Reno

Yes, and Bernie said, "Make sure you're comfortable with it."

Baker

That must have improved relations between the FBI and the White House, having Freeh in place initially.

Reno

I'm not sure. I think White House travel had already started so I'm not sure.

Meador

Somewhere along the way I believe there was an understanding reached, I may be wrong in this, between you and the White House and Bernie Nussbaum that White House communications would go only to the Attorney General, the Deputy, or the Associate. Is that correct?

Reno

That's right.

Meador

Was that reached early on or did that come later?

Reno

It came very early on with the furor that developed from White House travel.

Baker

So you hadn't inherited a policy from an earlier administration that simply rolled over on how White House contacts should be made with Justice.

Reno

I don't think we focused on earlier policy.

Meador

The trouble with that is, you get a new team in like Nussbaum and company and they're unfamiliar with it, I suppose, and Justice.

Baker

Because I was thinking in the Carter administration [Edward] Levi had a real--

Meador

Levi was forward.

Baker

That's right.

Meador

Griffin Bell was very strong on that point.

Baker

On their contacts.

Meador

That's right, and he had that same rule I just mentioned. I don't know whether it followed down through Reagan and Bush or not, I don't know.

Riley

Can you tell us your perspective on what happened in the Travel Office situation? Briefly walk us through how you got to the pass that this had to be policed within the White House.

Reno

I have the dimmest recollection of it. I really should go back to the papers or whatever exists in terms of it. But we quickly reached the conclusion that the contact with the FBI should have been through the Attorney General. In talking to people--again it was Bernie used to a different world, different action, not understanding the nuances and how important it was that the White House not be involved in directing investigations except when national security and other issues were involved.

Riley

Let me shift gears a little and ask you about your services as a member of a Cabinet team, especially in the first year or so. Cabinet meetings were held frequently or infrequently?

Reno

Infrequently.

Riley

What was your perception of the value of those meetings for your own purposes?

Reno

They were not especially helpful. Arthur Fleming had called me and asked me to have breakfast with him. He described the [Dwight] Eisenhower Cabinet meetings and it was fascinating to listen to his description because Eisenhower came with a prepared issue for the Cabinet as a whole, made a point of either making the decision after listening to his Cabinet or getting back to them that afternoon regularly.

I think President Clinton used his Cabinet a great deal. I remember one evening when we had dinner together at the White House along with some experts from academia. I forget who the experts were, who said it was one of the most collegial Cabinets, most effective Cabinets. I don't know whether it was or not.

Meador

You said you met infrequently though. You thought they were effective meetings?

Reno

No. The experts surprised me by saying they thought it was of the most effective Cabinets and collegial Cabinets.

Meador

And you didn't agree with that?

Reno

I agreed with it because I think, on so many issues, we would get together and it would be [William] Perry, [Lloyd] Bentsen, myself, and somebody else.

Baker

More informal sub-Cabinet groupings over particular issues?

Reno

Those issues, and there would be a lot of really good decisions. With respect to the National Security Council (NSC), they would bring us in on legal issues. I was never clear on whether--I was clear that I was not a member of the National Security Council but in effect I became a member of it. I think a more careful definition of that could have rendered it more effective.

Meador

Was there a typical format to these Cabinet meetings that you can describe or did they vary greatly from one time to another?

Reno

There was sometimes an event that they would want to see the Cabinet in action. One Cabinet meeting I remember was when he made the decision with respect to the budget and what he was going to do and he had opposition on the Cabinet. He used it as a chance to rally people around, bring them together and get the message out. But I think the formal Cabinet meetings were more communicatory than policy deciding.

Meador

You mean they were occasions in which he announced or described what he was going to do rather than occasions for genuine deliberative discussion on an issue?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

Now you were able to use, somehow through the Cabinet though you did build some good networks like with Donna Shalala at Health and Human Services [HHS] and also Education, in terms of policy initiatives like the Council on Youth Violence.

Reno

We had a meeting early on in the Cosmos Club near Dupont Circle. Donna suggested that. I think [Richard] Riley, Donna, myself, [Robert] Reich may have been there and Henry [Cisneros] may have been there, but it was how we took these agencies and linked them together.

Baker

And you did that on your own initiative.

Reno

We didn't make much headway till toward the end. Then I think aided by the fact of Columbine, we were able to develop what we called Healthy Children, Safe Schools grants where Department of Labor, Education, HHS, and Justice joined together. Education administered it, but we tried to funnel money into a comprehensive application project where they would make one application for a community initiative addressing health and job preparation issues and education issues and justice issues. I think that proved very effective.

We had an excellent working relationship with Carol Browner. She recently introduced me saying that Janet Reno was always there for the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA].

Baker

Then you, as this sort of informally gathered subgroup, eventually created a policy initiative that you took to the White House rather than waiting for them to collect you into Cabinet councils.

Riley

Did these Cosmos Club meetings occur--

Reno

There was only one.

Riley

I'm sorry, only one, but that occurred fairly early?

Reno

Very early.

Riley

But the illustration you made was a payoff that occurred much later.

Reno

It took them a long time.

Baker

I think that policy came out in '99.

Riley

I'm just trying to think through the members of the Cabinet, if there were other members you had worked particularly closely with.

Reno

[Robert] Rubin was a person I really enjoyed working with. He didn't know law enforcement but he had a large law enforcement responsibility, and he was smart, shrewd, effective, a lot of common sense.

Riley

Was he somebody who during the Cabinet meetings was likely to speak out a great deal or did he keep his own counsel?

Reno

He had his regular morning meetings with the White House so he didn't have to speak out. One of the things that I discovered, I don't recall speaking out except when asked generally because, no matter when it was, whether it was at the height of the Monica Lewinsky thing or otherwise, I always felt I had direct access to him or to anybody within the administration.

Baker

By being part of the inner Cabinet?

Reno

Not by being part of the inner Cabinet, but by being Attorney General.

Baker

That's what I meant. It's considered to be one of the top four Cabinet spots. Not an inner circle within the White House, but an inner Cabinet. Some Cabinet Secretaries I understand would go over for coffee with the President, or to walk the halls after five in the evening and press their cases. You didn't. Was that because personally that doesn't fit your style or because the Attorney General shouldn't be doing that?

Reno

I'm not a schmoozer. The President could talk about so many different things, but I always had the feeling, there was always somebody there. It was Bernie, it was Chuck Ruff, it was Rahm Emanuel. I could pick up the phone and call. If I needed to talk to the President I could call.

Meador

Can you say how many times, if ever, you actually met with the President personally, just you and the President?

Reno

No. I never counted them.

Riley

But your contacts, based on what you just said, were not all exclusively through the counsel's office, Rahm was--

Reno

No.

Meador

On this point did you feel that not having known the President personally or been associated with him in any way before the appointment was an advantage or disadvantage in your work?

Reno

I didn't find it one way or the other. What I found was a man who was always available when I needed him. And I didn't go to him. I would try to work through the counsel's office. If it were another issue, if Rahm Emanuel was calling us and Bruce Reed wanted something for the Domestic Policy Council and it was a bunch of spin, I'd say "No!" It would come back, toned down and in proper form or if they wanted us to come up with some cockamamie idea.

Meador

Did the President ever call you himself on a matter and direct you to do something or not do something?

Reno

I don't remember whether he called me or sent the message, but we had an issue pending before the Supreme Court and the question was the position the department should take. It had to do with bankruptcy trustee and the power of the trustee to recover a tithe given by somebody who was insolvent at the time. We had had the conversation we usually had with the Solicitor General's office when it was questionable what position the department would take. I heard from the Solicitor General's office, from people on both sides of the argument. I reached the conclusion that the bankruptcy trustee should be able to recover the tithe.

The President--I think he called me and said, "Janet, I feel very strongly about this. As you know I feel very strongly about religious freedom issues, and I think the other position should be taken." I looked at it. It seemed to me absolutely right that he ought to be able to call the shot as he wanted to. He had an informed and valid reason for doing it. His advisors in the Justice Department were split almost equally on it, and I think that's the only time I recall him directing me to do something.

Meador

I take it that was the position you then took.

Reno

Yes.

Baker

On the flip side of that same question, was there ever a time when you had to tell the President that he did not have the legal authority to do something he wanted to do?

Reno

I don't think I had to tell him that. I think again there was a close working relationship between the Office of Legal Counsel and White House counsel and that always seemed to work very well. Walter established a great pattern and people who were Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel when Walter became the Acting Solicitor General continued that effort, and it worked very well.

I recall one other instance. I don't think the President called me directly, and I don't remember the details of it, but there should be a written record. Drew took the position on some pornography issue that he could not argue for the constitutionality of an act passed by Congress and that he would have to notify Congress. The Third Circuit happened to take the case at the time, as I recall, and came down with the decision Drew disagreed with. Again, I'm not sure how it ultimately evolved, but the Third Circuit had what appeared to be a valid argument--one that I might not agree with but was valid. Drew refused to make that argument and said he could not in good conscience make that argument. I signed the brief and prepared a statement as to why I did it. I think that may have come from the counsel's office. I don't think that came from the President.

Meador

Was that the only time you and the Solicitor General disagreed on a position or took a different position?

Reno

I believe so.

Meador

While we're on the subject of the White House counsel's office, what were the circumstances of Bernie Nussbaum's departure from that office? Do you know anything about how that came about or why?

Reno

Somebody can tell that story, I don't have a recollection. That would be something where I think I might be able to add something to it if I had my recollection properly refreshed without leading.

Riley

Let me pose the question from a different angle. Did you find some of the counsels were relatively easier for you to work with than others during the course of the administration?

Reno

Bernie was just a brilliant lawyer who was used to private practice and not used to the processes of Washington. He was a pleasure to work with. You could sit down and talk with Bernie, you'd get right through it, cut through the issues, get to the heart of it. But his lack of sensitivity to process sometimes caused problems. Lloyd and Ab [Mikva] and Chuck were great to work with.

Riley

Can you comment on their relative strengths in that position as you saw them?

Reno

I should also add Beth [Nolan]. Beth was very impressive toward the end. She had a marvelous way of bringing people together.

Meador

Lloyd Cutler was the man you identified earlier as thinking he could give you some help that you didn't appreciate--how did that play out?

Reno

I appreciated it, I just said, "You're talking to me about conflicts, what are you doing here?"

Meador

How did that play out when he became White House counsel?

Reno

Lloyd and I had an excellent working relationship. For each of them I felt very comfortable.

Baker

It's interesting because years and years ago when I interviewed Griffin Bell, one of the things he was complaining about was that the White House counsel's office would serve as a competing power center with the Justice Department. I think that institutionally they were a competitor for the President's ear in terms of legal advice, which is where you get the reports showing up, even the news reports, adamant to find that you have tension with the White House counsel. If you got along personally with them, were there any institutional challenges?

Reno

I never found any. There may have been underlying it, but when it's done right--the Justice Department can't camp at the White House. The White House counsel who gets along well with, and works professionally well with the Office of Legal Counsel and with the Solicitor General and is at home and comfortable with the language of the Court, I found it a plus for us as opposed to a minus. I didn't have the sense that I was engaged in a power struggle.

Baker

Then you had people, Lloyd Cutler when he was considering say, executive orders or something, he would come over to the OLC to have things checked with them.

Reno

You would have to check with Walter, with people who came after him, but my recollection was that Walter was AAG [Assistant Attorney General] when Lloyd was there.

Baker

But there was a sense of respect that the White House shop had toward the specializations in the Justice Department, especially, I guess, the OLC.

Reno

The other issue was, particularly with the Solicitor General, when Walter and Seth [Waxman], the years they served as either Acting or Solicitor General, particularly Seth had an extraordinary ability to synthesize the opinions and feelings of the different components of the Justice Department that had an interest in the issue. That was so extraordinarily important. Then they would be able to synthesize with the White House what position should be taken and understand it. Again with the White House never telling us.

Meador

You're saying basically you didn't sense any real problem with the White House counsel's office in your time there?

Reno

It was clear to me that Bernie didn't understand some of the processes that should be followed to make it work better. But with Lloyd, with Ab, with Chuck, with Beth, you had people who understood what the White House was doing. Beth clearly, Chuck clearly understood what the Justice Department was doing. Ab would give me advice before he came to the executive branch on who was really good at the Justice Department. It was fascinating to watch them work together. But I think we were all aided and abetted by the fact that the President was a darn good lawyer.

Riley

Can you elaborate on that?

Reno

For example, when we had to make a decision as to what to do in the Dickerson case on Miranda. We prepared carefully. The Solicitor General, all of us, we talked to police groups. We tried to understand the basis, made sure that everybody was heard, that U.S. attorneys were heard. I reached the decision that we were going to support Miranda and that 2531, or whatever the section number was, was not going to prevail. This was when the Fourth Circuit on its own motion took the case.

Eric Holder seemed to have reservations and I didn't quite know how it was going to work out. But we asked to speak to the President because we thought it was important enough for him to hear where we stood. We convinced Eric on the way over. Walked into the Cabinet Room. The President sat down opposite us. He had the papers, he'd read them all. He said, "That's fine with me," and gave us an excellent description of just where we stood and why we should be doing what we were proposing to do.

Meador

Who was present at that meeting?

Reno

Eric Holder, Seth Waxman, myself, and I don't know who else from the White House was there.

Riley

Are there any other instances you can recall where you were impressed by the President's legal turn of mind in quite this way? It's fascinating for us to get a window onto that particular point.

Reno

No, he just was well versed in the law.

Riley

Did you ever have occasion to witness Mrs. Clinton's legal skills?

Reno

No.

Riley

Were you at all involved in the health care issue?

Reno

Yes. The Cabinet was asked to get involved in the health care initiative. In that situation I would feel uncomfortable, and I would say, "I don't have the expertise to talk about this particular issue. Find something I can be supportive on." Nobody ever forced me into anything.

Baker

In terms of going out and talking to communities or testifying.

Reno

Or doing press availabilities.

Riley

So you were involved but only tangentially once it was clear to them that this wasn't an issue area that you felt naturally fit in with your portfolio. Why don't we go ahead and break now for lunch.

[BREAK]

Riley

Do you recall, Ms. Reno, having any conversations, before you were nominated, with President Clinton or the key people on the legal team about the renewal of the independent counsel statute?

Reno

I can't distinguish between before and after I was confirmed because I remember discussing the issue--When people asked me what my reaction was, I said, "I'm governed by my experience in Florida. We have 20 judicial circuits, a state attorney for each judicial circuit, and the Governor appoints if they are recused." The Governor usually tries to appoint, and--I can't speak for since 1992, but up until then, even [Robert] Martinez tried to appoint a person who was a Democrat or you couldn't--I never had occasion to question any partisan nature of these appointments.

It was a wonderful system because the Governor could appoint another state attorney--not another individual, but another state attorney--who would have to conduct the operation out of his or her budget. So it would become one of the regular cases with regular budget controls, with the experience of that state attorney. So you didn't have somebody who'd never been a prosecutor who was making decisions. It worked well. They said I utilized it a lot. Oftentimes state attorneys would try to use it to get rid of the case. We never tried to get rid of the case, but where there was a clear conflict, we would seek it. My experience with that caused me to tell people, leading up to my confirmation, that I thought that system was a good system and therefore I supported the independent counsel proposition in theory. Should I go on now?

Riley

Yes, I think so. The preliminary question is the kinds of communications you had back and forth, particularly with the White House, about the desirability of having an independent counsel statute.

Reno

At the time I thought it was desirable.

Riley

And were you getting the same messages from the White House, do you recall?

Reno

We worked closely with them because I think again that's something that the White House, particularly then, when there was no question about it and it could be viewed one way or the other, I think the White House should make the judgment.

Meador

May I ask a broader question. On that and any other matters, to what extent did you take into account or think about previous departmental positions? Did that have any influence on you, or did you feel you were writing on a clean slate and didn't even want to know what previous departmental positions had been?

Reno

I don't recall what the previous departmental positions were, but I recall being briefed on them.

Baker

Didn't Bill Barr really object to the independent counsels?

Reno

That's my recollection.

Baker

But he didn't talk with you at all about--

Meador

Hadn't every previous Attorney General before you objected to it?

Reno

I don't recall how many--

Meador

I know Griffin Bell did, but I don't know about William French Smith, or--

Reno

I don't know about Smith or [Edwin] Meese, but Barr, and I don't remember [Richard] Thornburgh.

Meador

I had the impression that most of them objected to it, but I'm not positive about that.

Baker

From a Presidential power perspective?

Meador

A matter of policy. They just thought the Department of Justice could handle these things with integrity and if it needed to the AG could appoint a Special Counsel on his own.

Riley

I was just trying to refresh my own memory about the early position of the administration before all of these controversial issues came up and whether in fact this was a point of firm discussion with you.

Reno

It was a point of discussion. I don't know what you mean by "firm discussion" and I don't remember whether the President and I directly touched on it.

Baker

The bill that went before Congress, did the Justice Department participate in any of the drafting of the reauthorization?

Reno

My recollection was that the bill had already gone. I think, rather than my opinion, I think you have got to look at the record to see what the administration's view was. I don't remember having to persuade anybody. I remember having put into words my personal reason for supporting it, but I don't think I had to persuade anybody to come to my side. I'm wondering whether he made some statement in the campaign.

Riley

I think you're probably right and again, this was more a point of clarification as a baseline for further questions. And an honest question about whether you had any recollections about discussions with them on this.

Reno

We had discussions but who it was with--

Meador

May I ask one more question about this? Were you involved in any of the discussions concerning the specific wording of the statute? For example, I seem to remember some discussion about tightening the trigger for it and so on. Were you involved in any of the details about wording?

Reno

I don't know. I don't have a recollection because I was so involved in what the language as it was finally passed was in implementing it that I don't remember. I remember being questioned at length on the language as it was finally passed.

Riley

Can we go back and ask you then about the episodes of your having to name individual independent counsels and your thought processes and how--

Reno

Before the act was reauthorized, issues with respect to Whitewater had arisen. Demands had been made on me to appoint a Special Counsel. As Dan said, I had the inherent authority. I said, "No, because if I appoint a Special Counsel somebody is going to say I'm controlling it and far better that if the act is authorized, that would be the time. But now it wouldn't resolve the conflict."

The pressure kept building and I was getting beat up and continued to do that. The President was leaving on a trip to Europe as I recall. He called Webb. My recollection is that Webb told me of the President's call--he said, "I would ask her to go ahead and appoint a Special Counsel so we can get this behind us and get on with it and have no questions." Jo Ann Harris, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, did a wonderful job. We quickly settled on Bob Fiske, working it out with Bob Fiske so he was comfortable with it. It was a great opportunity to sit down, "This is the authority you will have," and he outlined what he wanted and we were able to give it to him. He began the investigation, quickly concluded that Vince's [Foster] death was a suicide, was moving on. At that point, the act was reauthorized. We felt we should apply under the act. As I recall we recommended Fiske's appointment under the act, but the Court specifically said to avoid the appearance of conflict they would appoint [Kenneth] Starr.

Baker

Was their view that Fiske was technically associated with the Justice Department, was that their concern?

Reno

All I recall is the reference to avoid an appearance of conflict.

Meador

What was that conflict though? That was never clear to me.

Reno

The issue I raised when I was asked first to appoint, before we appointed Fiske after the President asked, is if I appointed Fiske it would say that I was appointing somebody who was my lackey and he was going to do what I wanted.

Baker

Not be truly independent.

Reno

Not be truly independent.

Meador

Even though the Court appointed him later. Is that the idea?

Reno

No, the Court appointed Starr.

Meador

But even if the Court had appointed him, there would have been a shadow of conflict hanging over it. Was that the idea?

Reno

That's what I think the courts concluded.

Riley

Were you surprised?

Reno

I was surprised because Fiske had such a reputation for integrity and seemed to be conducting a very professional investigation. I was very surprised.

Riley

Were you surprised at the person they chose as a substitute?

Reno

Yes. He had no experience as a prosecutor and that seemed to me to be something that was important in an arena such as that.

Baker

Then when Fiske left, a lot of his staff prosecutors left as well.

Reno

That's my understanding.

Baker

Which of course made it even more difficult I think for Mr. Starr. So this was at the President's request. How about the expansion of the Whitewater probe? At certain points you acceded to Starr's request for expanding his authority. That was not at the White House's request?

Reno

No.

Baker

But that initial certainly was.

Meador

It was the Court that had to expand his authority, wasn't it?

Reno

But I had to seek the expansion in some instances.

Baker

Did you have any concerns about the Court, the three-judge panel being completely independent themselves in approaching these questions related to the administration?

Reno

How do you mean being completely independent?

Meador

Do you mean unbiased?

Baker

The relationship between Judge [David] Sentelle--

Riley

There were news accounts at the time that Judge Sentelle had been seen having lunch with Jesse Helms and [Duncan] Lauch Faircloth that raised questions about whether there might have been a bias in their selection.

Reno

From all I had heard, Judge Sentelle, whether he had lunch with the two Senators or not, might well have made the same decision. I don't think the two Senators were necessarily an influence.

Riley

There are obviously a lot more questions here, but I wanted to ask you, you mentioned Vince Foster's death. What was the atmosphere in the administration like in the aftermath of that tragedy?

Reno

Bernie called me that night and told me. Webb had told me that Vince was depressed prior to that time. I was shocked and very saddened, because Vince was one of the more thoughtful, fine people I had met.

Meador

Other than depression, did you have any theory about what brought it about?

Reno

I had speculation but it never focused on one solution.

Meador

Do you mind saying what those speculations were?

Reno

That he knew what Webb had done and didn't know what to do about it. That he somehow or other blamed himself for not seeing the pitfalls of White House travel and didn't properly serve the President and Mrs. Clinton. In all my dealings with Vince he was just a kind and thoughtful gentleman, and he saw the meanness, the mean spirit of Washington and that just got him down.

Riley

You and Vince both came to Washington as outsiders. What prepared you in a way that it didn't prepare Vince?

Reno

Well, each person is different, but Vince wasn't state attorney in Miami/Dade County for 15 years during the drug wars.

Baker

Yes, in the crosshairs of all the criticism. How did the White House counsel's office handle that period after Vince Foster's death as things started getting more contentious, a lot of conspiracy theories?

Reno

They were protective of Vince. Again, people were hurting because he was well liked. All of us thought, Could we have done something to prevent it? I think Bernie particularly felt that way. I think he understood that there were separation of powers issues but I don't think he understood the dimension of blocking the investigation. I clearly think in something like that there needs to be an investigation in order to address issues why somebody?.

Baker

Can you explain what he was doing to block the investigation?

Reno

I can't remember the details. This is one instance where I stopped reading the newspaper accounts because I didn't have an independent recollection of it and I think you should just?.

Riley

Is there anything you can tell us about your conversations with Bernie or others? Did you make an appeal to them that your investigators ought to be given access to materials or--

Reno

I don't recall talking to Bernie. I don't remember how we worked through that.

Riley

That's fine. I don't want to press you on that if you don't want to talk about it.

Reno

I'm happy to talk about it. I just want to be careful because I am sure that that would be something, whether it would be Webb, Walter, whoever else was involved with it, whether it was Jo Ann Harris, whether Jamie had come in there yet, if we sat around the table, we'd put the pieces together in the right way. So it's not that I don't want to talk about it.

Riley

I understand. If you're a sympathetic outsider looking in on this, you see practically an unprecedented event within a White House, which has enormous emotional connotations for people involved. It's accordingly not easy to get a picture of how people reacted in the White House.

Baker

And how that might have had a play further in on the administration that may have heightened a sense of secrecy in the White House or toward a media that seemed to be getting caught up in these stories that Vince Foster had been murdered. Did it set a tone then for the way the White House handled other things? I'm sorry, I jumped in on your question.

Reno

The tone was there because if you go back to White House travel, it had started in the concern with the FBI. My recollection is that there were some issues with respect to what the FBI could see and not see, and that is a legitimate issue that has to be addressed because the FBI shouldn't be able to see--there should be some threshold. I think Jo Ann Harris may have been involved in some of those discussions.

Riley

But you yourself were not directly involved in those discussions?

Reno

My recollection is that much of what we tried to work out was worked out so that I didn't have to get involved.

Riley

Fine, I understand. Anything else on that? I'm relying on some of the information in the briefing book because I'm not an expert on the independent counsel, but there were a number of others named.

Baker

Six within the first four years, is that it?

Reno

[Mike] Espy, Cisneros--

Baker

[Ron] Brown.

Reno

[Mark] Siegel?

Meador

Alexis Herman, she was Secretary--

Baker

That was later.

Meador

She was second term.

Baker

And Bruce Babbitt was second term as well.

Riley

Am I correct in remembering that there were a couple of sealed investigations also, or am I mistaking that with the Bush?

Morrisroe

Siegel, I think.

Riley

Siegel had been sealed early and then--okay, and the cases, I'll just go down one by one. Was there anything particular about the Mike Espy situation that you want to talk about here?

Reno

No.

Meador

Let me ask you this question on that one as well as all of them for that matter. Was there any White House pressure not to move for a Special Counsel?

Reno

I don't recall.

Meador

Nobody in the White House called you and said--

Reno

Nobody ever called me.

Meador

There was no White House contact with you while it was pending. Is that what you're saying, along that matter?

Reno

I cannot think of a time, and it would have been very clear if it--I think one of the problems was that they knew if there was contact it could--so they never, ever. But I think I can go beyond that. Except in one instance, I never got any adverse feedback from anybody. Henry Cisneros was a gentleman about it, just super. The President never, by inflection, by body language, never reflected at all about it. I was interested to read his book in which he talks about the toll that such investigations took on people and how it hurt him. That hurts anybody. The only person--and I regretted it, because I admired him then and I admire him now a very great deal--is Bruce Babbitt, who could barely speak to me.

Baker

And yet you felt that the law was such that in order to, just as the campaign finance allegations did not rise to the level of triggering an investigation, that when were there allegations that did trigger, your hands were tied, essentially it was something you had to do.

Reno

What I regretted was that they were--some of those cases could have been so easily resolved in such a straightforward manner.

Baker

Like Cisneros.

Reno

Yes.

Meador

What you mean by that is in contrast with the way they were resolved?

Reno

Spending thousands, I don't know what the total cost of the Espy investigation was, or the total cost of Cisneros--

Riley

Twenty-three million dollars.

Baker

Ten million for Cisneros.

Meador

Is it your position that it could have been conducted much more expeditiously at less cost?

Reno

At less cost with an appropriate resolution of the matter.

Meador

Why do you suppose it wasn't done that way?

Reno

Because I don't think the people were experienced in managing a prosecutor's office, because they had an unlimited budget, and because they felt they had to dot every "I" and cross every "T" and--

Baker

And justify that kind of money.

Reno

Then got caught up in it.

Meador

In arriving at your decision that the statute triggered an investigation, did you have input from one of the people in the department, advice or consultation? If so, who were they?

Reno

The way it usually worked was that the Criminal Division made an initial recommendation to the Deputy and then it would come to me. We would usually have conferences around the table, hear from everybody concerned.

Meador

Was there usually a consensus of view about it or were they divided on these?

Reno

Sometimes they were divided. Jack Keeney was usually involved in it. Lee Radek was head of Public Corruption. Sometimes it was a matter of a Cisneros-type thing that doesn't rise to the level of a great state issue. It could have been handled straightforwardly. Other times it was that they had a case and you had no choice. It didn't say "may," it said "shall" or the equivalent thereof.

Riley

In a couple of instances you've mentioned the unlimited budgets, and that was something you elected to point out about the Florida statute, so that is one of the institutional flaws that you saw in the way the--

Baker

And the lack of prosecutorial experience of the head prosecutor heading the independent counsel.

Riley

That's correct.

Baker

Now you didn't always accede to all the special prosecutorial requests, and we can get into the campaign finance one in a minute or so. But there were a number of other ones. Nor did you always accede with Special Prosecutor requests for expanding authority. Can you talk a minute on why you didn't within, say, the Espy case? I think Don Smaltz was the independent prosecutor.

Reno

I'd have to look at the exact reason for it. I think--

Baker

Did you also have a triggering notion in mind before you would expand authority?

Reno

You would have to look at what they were expanding, whether it was a separate issue or the same issue.

Baker

Some of the same players or not.

Riley

In one of the treatments I read in the briefing materials, there was some indication that the prosecutor in the Cisneros case had been especially problematic, at least according to the analyst's view, in terms of being a bit more aggressive than he should have been. Is that consistent with your own recollections of that instance? David Barrett is the person who's named.

Reno

I think if in the ordinary course you had the regular prosecutor handling the case, it would have been handled in a much more straightforward, effective manner.

Meador

On the expanding authority of an existing prosecutor, wasn't Starr's authority expanded into unrelated matters, so to speak? Starting out with Whitewater, it went on to other things that seemed to be unrelated.

Reno

If you take each specific, that was always an issue. I don't have an independent recollection of each one, and I'd have to sit down and look at our papers.

Riley

I realize this gets us on down the road pretty far apiece, and there are a lot of things we want to come back and touch on, but we might as well go ahead and press on this issue. The Lewinsky expansion is the one I think people will focus on the most. Was that a difficult decision?

Reno

It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made.

Riley

Can you tell us about that, about how you were approached in that instance and the decision-making?

Reno

The investigation needed to go forward. If it was going to be conducted according to the independent counsel in an appropriate and thorough manner it would have to go forward at that time. They had the information. I asked people to review it, went over it in detail, and made the decision. I made it with part of me knowing that we ran the risk of an independent counsel who did not have the judgment to handle a matter like that in an effective, straightforward manner. The feeling that the spirit of the Independent Counsel Act, of all those things, required an independent counsel in that situation, based on what had been presented to us, and if they could not go forward with it in the next matter of days, they would lose that opportunity. That's the basis for it.

Riley

The reported element in triggering the expansion was that there was a pattern of behavior in earlier instances, I guess in the Hubbell case in particular, of rewarding people for not cooperating with an investigation. I seem to recall it was jobs then too, but certainly in the Lewinsky case it related to jobs. Is that consistent with your own recollection or am I--

Reno

Relating to jobs?

Riley

I'm trying to refresh my memory about the elements that made the evidence that they had on Lewinsky correlate to Starr's initial charge dealing with Whitewater and land transactions. My vague recollection on this was that the arguments that they had been making within the independent counsel's office were that there was evidence people had been rewarded for not cooperating with the investigation. At least that's my recollection. I must be really bollixing this up. What I'm trying to do is get a picture of the rationale of the Starr investigators for moving from an investigation of land transactions into an area where the President's personal behavior on sexual matters becomes relevant to the investigation. If you can help me with that then I'll get myself out of a thicket here.

Reno

I can't help you with the exact language. I think we need to get the copy of the application.

Baker

But that certainly must have helped to--Starr's connection with the Paula Jones attorneys and the fact that he had not disclosed it to you in January of 1998 when you were considering all of this must have really led to some sense of disappointment--

Reno

Disappointment is a gracious word.

Baker

It really felt like a manipulation of the process. But at the time in January of '98 you'd not yet seen him that way. In the early stages it was going all right? There was all right cooperation?

Reno

I don't know when the excesses started.

Baker

But certainly you did not have a sense of it at the time that you expanded his authority into the Monica Lewinsky, potential pressuring of her or that she was going to lie before the grand jury, the Paula Jones deposition.

Reno

I think I had concerns before then.

Baker

It certainly would have been a different investigation if Fiske had stayed--sorry, understatement again.

Meador

Did there come a time, along about this time or thereafter, that you sensed your relationships with President Clinton had been adversely affected by this?

Reno

The only time I recall him being in any way short with me was when I walked in one morning to a meeting in the Oval Office. It was an earlier morning meeting. He looked very tired and he was short with me. I've never known whether it was because he was very tired or all this was happening. But there were so many instances where I had the chance to talk with him during that time that he never, by any indication, evidenced concern. I think there have been a number of descriptions of the meeting where he called his Cabinet together, and it was in the Oval Office upstairs if I'm not mistaken.

Meador

Were you present at that meeting?

Reno

Yes. I don't know what he thought during that meeting, but he didn't show any reaction.

Meador

Do you mind saying what your reaction was at that meeting to what he said?

Reno

Disappointment.

Riley

Just to be clear, this is the meeting at which basically he revealed what had happened?

Reno

No, this is when he sent Donna and Madeleine [Albright] out--

Riley

So this is the meeting that occurred in January, not later in the year. You told us that it didn't have any demonstrable effect on the President. Is the same true about other people on the White House staff with whom you routinely dealt?

Reno

There were people on the White House staff, I'm just trying to sort through them all because the people, I'm trying to think who would have been Chief of Staff at the time.

Riley

In '98 it would have been John Podesta.

Reno

Podesta was always a pleasure to deal with. Got good answers, straightforward. Erskine [Bowles] was good to deal with. Rahm Emanuel was given to excess and all I would have to do was call Rahm and say, "What are you doing?" We used to have a conversation because he had a little girl just about that point and was going off to Chicago to have fun. I really was going to miss him, but I felt very comfortable with him.

Riley

Tell us about how you developed a relationship with Rahm because he wouldn't be the natural link you would think.

Baker

He was doing crime policy.

Reno

He was big in crime policy, policing and the like, and he'd come up with some new--but he was always so good about taking the argument and listening to your argument and working it out with you. He wasn't as nearly as outrageous as he sometimes presented himself.

Meador

Back to the question I asked a moment ago. Were your relationships with the White House staff adversely affected by these developments?

Reno

I'm trying to think of the individuals and I can't think of anybody. I think there were probably people on the White House staff who took exceeding umbrage but they didn't show it.

Baker

How about within the Department of Justice? Did any of this affect relationships within the department, was there a sense of lower morale, a feeling of being--

Reno

You had the whole issue of the FBI, which is within the department, and the [Charles] LaBella memo and Freeh, and the hearings and the pounding.

Baker

That arguably diverted some of the attentions in the Justice Department by having these Special Prosecutor probes going on.

Reno

In answer to that, the Special Prosecutor probes produced tremendous amounts of work in preparation for congressional hearings and answering questions and responding. That's a given.

Riley

I want to ask a general question about your view of this in retrospect. Is it your sense that the career people are situated to handle these kinds of things better than, as it happened, the independent counsels were in your experience?

Reno

The best thing to do in a situation like this--and it comes to my ultimate conclusion that the Independent Counsel Act should be sunsetted. With Danforth and with Fiske we showed just how it could work. It's interesting to me to see Pat Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney, a part of the administration--the great respect of all of us, I would have every confidence in Pat's ability and willingness to conduct a proper, straightforward investigation.

The best thing in these situations is to have somebody appointed, such as Fiske or Danforth, who has the confidence of the other side and get it done.

Riley

Of the counsels you appointed, Fiske, Starr, Radek, Smaltz, Barrett, [Dan] Pearson, [Curtis] von Kann--

Reno

I didn't appoint all of them.

Riley

I'm sorry, these were all Clinton.

Meador

The courts appointed--

Riley

Of course, I'm sorry, but in your experience with them, could you look back on any of those and say this is about as close to getting it right as you could under the circumstances?

Reno

I think Fiske was doing it in a very thorough, professional way. I think Danforth did it and Danforth sat down just as Fiske did and negotiated with us for what he wanted in terms of his authority, his jurisdiction, his ability to tell us to get lost, and it worked.

Baker

Now internally, the Justice Department would have to have some procedures in place, in order to at least ensure the appearance of independence in the absence of having someone appointed, say, under an independent counsel law.

Reno

We developed regulations that permitted the appointment.

Baker

That would shield that person from political pressure, et cetera.

Reno

Again, we shielded him--and I forget exactly how we reduced it to writing--but we were able to reduce Danforth's specifications and conditions to writing and it worked out. Now I've lost my train of thought. What was the question pending?

Riley

The original question was basically about the relationships with the staff.

Baker

You were asking if there was anyone whose appointment did match with her ideal.

Reno

The person who did Alexis Herman's and Dan Pearson with Ron Brown, I think both were done in a thorough, thoughtful, professional way. I think what Carol--

Riley

Carol Bruce.

Reno

Which one was she?

Riley

She was Bruce Babbitt.

Reno

I think she did it in a fine, straightforward way.

Meador

Let me ask you a question not unrelated to this. You mentioned a moment ago that you had read Clinton's book, My Life. Was there anything in there about his perception of matters with which you would disagree, that your view of it, your take on it so to speak, is different from his?

Reno

I've read it once, not thoroughly enough to answer that question in detail, but nothing that I saw that was obvious.

Meador

Nothing leaped out at you and said this is not the way it was.

Riley

There are probably a lot more questions about Starr.

Reno

What I would say to you on Starr and all of those, that would be the classic example of where I should have--and they ought to be available from the system--if you pursue those, I'd be happy to try to cooperate with you.

Riley

I appreciate that. Most of our purpose here is not in completely reconstructing histories of various issues because we just don't have the time to do it. What we try to do is to hit the high points of areas that would have some institutional consequences. You've given us a very sound and thorough answer about your perception about what didn't work well and why. I think for our purposes in Presidential oral history that's the key thing. If we had days and days and days, then we very easily could go back and examine that.

Baker

Are we leaving special investigations--

Riley

No, we don't have to and we can come back to it later.

Baker

I just had one more question. This was on some of the ethics questions raised about Ken Starr and the role of the three-judge panel sort of insisting that no, you both had to file briefs with them laying out why you thought you had the jurisdiction to remove Starr. I thought it was clear under the statute that you would have authority to do an investigation to determine if there was cause.

Reno

But what is "cause"?

Baker

So that's what they were--but you don't know if you have cause unless you investigate to see if you have cause.

Reno

Right.

Baker

I was really puzzled by that action of theirs and how they could even, with a straight face, have requested briefs to be filed in that.

Riley

If you want to come back to bits and pieces of this, we certainly can. I had not intended for us to track all the way through, but we got on this subject and I thought, Let's go ahead and see where it goes.

Reno

Just to summarize, because I'm not sure I finished giving a complete statement about my ultimate conclusions--the argument for an independent counsel was to take it out of the Department of Justice. I was used to a system in Florida where the Governor could take it out. It was not an Attorney General taking it out. The Governor could remove a state attorney for cause and then appoint another state attorney. That state attorney had to operate within his or her budget, there was not unlimited spending. They had experience as prosecutors, they had a staff of prosecutors. The experience with the Governor was that these appointments were generally good appointments and the investigations were conducted in a professional manner.

What I looked at was, even as long as I was the person who had to trigger the application, the question under Morrison was what were the remnants of control in the Attorney General's office that would support the constitutionality of the act, and it was the requirement of the Attorney General triggering the act and the removal for cause. I got blamed for triggering the act, I got blamed for not triggering the act. I got blamed for not removing for cause, for suggesting I could remove for cause, and as long as I was going to be blamed, I would rather be responsible for the person who was appointed the Special Counsel, for the budget, and for the limitation of the office, and I thought you could get in more.

Meador

Did you have a conception of what "cause" should mean in that context?

Reno

I developed a concept of what I would remove a United States Attorney for.

Meador

You would apply that to the Special Counsel also?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

You had a negotiation I guess with Starr over--

Reno

Now, I can't track you beyond that, that's what I basically came down to: what would I remove a U.S. attorney for?

Baker

So after the three-judge panel came and asked you both to file papers, you and Starr negotiated a resolution?

Reno

I don't remember the sequence of it, when we filed papers, but we tried to work out something. Whether it ultimately worked through the issues, I don't have a recollection.

Meador

Did you ever meet face-to-face with Starr?

Reno

Yes, on two or three different occasions. One of the things that got me, and I've never understood it. I don't say this in a critical way of him, I just say that I never could get an answer, that Starr was most upset with us because we didn't defend him when he was criticized and he thought we somehow or another had an obligation to defend him.

Baker

He didn't want to be that independent.

Riley

There has been an interpretation floated that some of the excesses of his investigation can be traced to the fact that he was not a believer in the statute that authorized him in the first place. Does that resonate with you at all or do you think that's a far-fetched interpretation?

Reno

I think that's a far-fetched interpretation. I think he was in over his head as a person without prosecutorial experience.

Riley

That's something you focused on on several occasions. Were the people he brought on board with him, to your mind they didn't have that kind of talent either or--

Reno

He brought on prosecutors, but I think the person, you've got to start someplace. I started as an assistant state attorney. If I had become state attorney with no experience, I'm not sure--

Baker

Because you learn from experience what really makes a case and what is not worth pursuing.

Reno

You understand, one of the hardest cases we had was the Vienna sausage case. We had a brand-new Metrorail. The lady took the Metrorail to the end of the line to a department store. She had a small child. The small child was sleepy and crying and wanted something to eat. So as she came back and got on the metro rail, she opened a can of Vienna sausage and started to feed the child. And she was arrested for having food on the Metrorail. Trying to get Metrorail to understand that you could achieve compliance without prosecuting this lady with a screaming baby--

Baker

That's what discretion is for.

Riley

And a sense of proportion. Anything else on that right now? Let's dial back more generally to the question of judicial selection, get on something that may be more appealing as a subject matter. My colleagues here are much better versed in this than I am so maybe I'll throw the general subject out and see if somebody wants to rise to the bait.

Baker

Oh, yes, we have pages, I'm sure. I'll just start with the overview. One judicial scholar once said, "When we elect a President, we're electing a judiciary." Do you have any thoughts on this in terms of the Clinton administration? You're electing a judiciary, is that a fair way of looking at it?

Reno

If you're lucky.

Baker

That's true. Now reportedly Clinton initially used a private vetting process. That would have been before you came in I think, 75 private lawyers going through people's records. Was that system still in place when you were confirmed or had they started to move away from that?

Reno

First I've heard of 75 lawyers going through--

Baker

Don't know where I ran into this, to analyze the records of potential lower court nominees.

Meador

That was reported in a newspaper--

Riley

Is this during the transition?

Baker

It would have been very early.

Meador

From the beginning, I think, which really gets to a more specific question, and that is, when you came in, what system was in place? As I understand it, authority or responsibility for it was placed under Eleanor Acheson.

Baker

But she wasn't confirmed yet, she came in after.

Meador

I know that, but until then--I take it, let me ask this question. Until Eleanor Acheson came on board, what was the system for appointing district judges and court of appeals judges?

Reno

I don't remember how many were appointed prior to the time I came on board, but basically it had to do with how fast your United States Senator responded. Some of the Senators were quick and got their recommendations into the White House early. For example, we were blessed, Mary Jo White had been the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. She became the Southern District nominee almost immediately, got confirmed quickly and so the system for reviewing it was get the nomination in quickly, get the background done quickly, and I'm not sure who was reviewing the background, but you had strong senatorial support. Senator Graham I think may have had one or two in there quickly because they moved faster. They got the FBI background investigations done more quickly.

Baker

And there were a number of openings.

Reno

Yes.

Meador

Once you were there and in place, can you describe the role of the Justice Department in this district judge, Court of Appeal judge process?

Reno

We went through it, looking at--Eldie, Sheila Anthony, Walter Dellinger, I can't remember the sequence in which the people were confirmed or when Eldie was confirmed.

Baker

In the notes I had it was eight months into the President's first year that she was confirmed. So there would have been about half a year in there that you were Attorney General before she was confirmed.

Reno

I do not recall who was doing the vetting within the Justice Department.

Meador

In each case, what was your role in the process? Did you get involved in each nomination or just some or none?

Reno

I signed off on each to the best of my memory. I can't recall any that I did not sign off on.

Meador

They came before you with a full set of papers about them so you could see the picture and you actually signed off on them yourself?

Reno

That is my recollection. There may have been some that I didn't, but I think I did.

Meador

Was there any instance in which they came before you with a recommendation for a nomination but you disagreed and did not sign off on it?

Reno

I do not know whether it was, there's something that sticks in my mind about one case, whether it was a U.S. attorney or federal judge, that I said, "I can't sign off on this" and said why, but I cannot remember whether it was either of those or not at all.

Meador

Were you ever involved in any negotiations with Senators over their suggested nominees for district judgeships?

Reno

I don't think I talked directly to the Senators. I think I was briefed when we had to talk to the Senators suggesting that, based on what we were hearing, they were going to have problems.

Baker

And that was from Peter Erichsen or Eldie?

Reno

One or the other.

Baker

And it was Erichsen who was working full time on collecting these packets on mostly district judges but also Appeals Court. Did the President ever come in with names on these lower court appointments?

Reno

Usually what would happen is we would have a joint effort with the President coming in with the names or there would be a Senator.

Baker

That's where the names came from initially. Then the professional qualifications, the vetting process for that was done in your shop. The likelihood of senatorial confirmation was done in the White House? Is that the kind of calculation they were looking at more than you?

Reno

Eldie and Peter would have to describe the day-to-day issues of it. Usually, if it became a cause celebre it would be the White House counsel and me or Jamie and the White House counsel or Webb and the White House counsel.

Meador

Did you ever feel that the White House counsel was taking too large a role in this process as distinguished from the Justice Department, that the function was usurped to too great a degree by the White House?

Reno

I don't know whether it was the counsel's office. Sometimes Eldie could get herself crosswise from people some of the time.

Baker

You talked about her a little bit.

Reno

She would come in upset by some action, but I think on the whole it was a good balance.

Baker

Was she on this--I think there was within the White House a judicial selection group? Someone from Justice was also on that.

Reno

I don't know.

Morrisroe

I think usually it's the Deputy or Associate who sits there with the Office of Presidential Personnel and Political Affairs and the Counsel.

Baker

Senatorial courtesy started to play more and more of a role in the Clinton administration than it had under Reagan or Bush, and that created some grief for you, for the Justice Department administration? She's nodding.

Riley

Any particular cases you recall that you want to tell us about?

Reno

No.

Riley

That's unfortunate.

Meador

Was there a difference in the way you handled district judgeships as compared with the appellate judgeships?

Reno

Yes, you would have different Senators, and the Senators' influence would be less in some than others and you would be looking--diversity was a critical issue.

Riley

Let me phrase my question a bit differently. Can you tell us who among the Senators you enjoyed working with, that you found it easy to work with, and can you tell us any instances of cases where you felt you had some difficulty working with individuals?

Reno

On judges?

Riley

On judges.

Reno

I can recall we had problems working with Senators. Eldie would probably be the best person to describe them.

Baker

Did things noticeably change after the midyear elections of 1994?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

Especially Senator [Orrin] Hatch's. I guess he contacted Eldie and said, "We're going to filibuster liberal judges."

Reno

He said something to that effect.

Baker

Was the strategy changed within the Justice Department over what kind of candidates to look for, or did it really affect the process at all?

Reno

My recollection of what we tried to do, particularly if there was a strong support senatorially, is work with the Senator, see what he or she could do working with Hatch. We tried, if the candidate was a good candidate, we tried to work it out so that it happened.

Riley

How was your working relationship with Hatch?

Reno

Hatch was as kind and as gracious to me as he possibly could be. I like Orrin Hatch. He was just as thoughtful as he could be to me.

Meador

To shift to the Supreme Court nominations, when [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg came along did you have anything at all to do with that nomination?

Reno

The President called me over and talked with me and asked me my views on Supreme Court Justices.

Meador

You mean he asked you for suggestions for nominees?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

Did you give him some?

Reno

I talked to him about Ruth Ginsburg. I told him that Chesterfield Smith, for whom I had a profound respect and admiration, thought that she would be one of the best Justices we could possibly appoint. I was interested to see that shortly thereafter he nominated her. I think he was already onto that.

Baker

He went through evidently a number of, according to the press reports, so we may need a grain of salt here, but consideration of [Mario] Cuomo, [Stephen] Breyer, Babbitt, and back to Breyer, and then finally coming around to Ginsburg. Was this generally understood that he was struggling with different--

Reno

I also recalled a number of the women judges that he would consider. I mean he considered [inaudible] and she--

Baker

Patricia Wald.

Morrisroe

Amalya Kearse?

Reno

But that was, he considered a variety of women in that first appointment.

Meador

Were you involved in the Breyer appointment to any extent?

Reno

I don't think I was involved. I think I was asked what I thought of it and said I didn't know him well but by every indication, from what I'd heard, he would be excellent.

Meador

You were not asked to make suggestions for the nominees, is that right?

Reno

For the Breyer.

Meador

Right.

Baker

On the first one you were part of--with Bernie Nussbaum and Mack McLarty, is that right? The three of you were invited to--

Reno

I don't recall who was there, but I specifically remember being invited to come over and--

Baker

To help with the initial list of candidates.

Meador

Was that also true with the Breyer nomination?

Reno

No.

Riley

Were you surprised that you weren't asked a second time?

Reno

No, because I think I had made my opinions with respect to Breyer known just in the conversations about Ginsburg because his name came up there.

Baker

But the Breyer nomination was more of a West Wing decision with less Justice Department input. Is that fair to say?

Reno

I think it's fair to say, but I think we had our input--

Baker

Because it was just a few months before, really.

Reno

Yes.

Baker

How about the vetting process, the preparation before they go through senatorial grilling. Did the Justice Department participate in that? Did any of your folks assist them?

Reno

I think we assisted them.

Morrisroe

If I could step back and ask a broader question, did you ever have conversations with the President regarding his priorities in judicial selection either in terms of ideology or of demographic considerations, what were his priorities?

Reno

I never heard him prioritize. It was very clear to me that he was looking for somebody with a strong position in civil rights whom he could get confirmed. With respect to Ruth, he wanted somebody sensitive to women's issues, and her track record as an appellate advocate I think was important to him. I think it was important to him that he had somebody who was going to be their own person, and I think he got it.

Morrisroe

What about for the lower court selection? Was there a general set of principles under which either he explicitly conveyed to you or the counsel's office or gathered over the course of your tenure?

Reno

I think again it was not explicit, but diversity would be an important factor. Civil rights--

Meador

Did you ever discuss policies and priorities of that sort with Acheson or her staff, give them directions as to what sort of people they ought to look for?

Reno

I never gave directions to Eldie as to what sort of person to look for because so many of what we were looking for were coming from the Senators. So most of our issue was we would get generally good people from the Democrats. The major issue was trying to work with the Republicans to get them to understand that we weren't going to appoint this person no matter what and what could we do to help them address the vacancy in a more reasonable way.

Baker

Well, they did win on a few, I believe. Wasn't it Ted Stewart or a couple of the other, Barbara--I don't remember her name who was another one championed by the GOP [Grand Old Party], a Republican Senator I think was able to get confirmed. So I think in other words, being a Republican or even a conservative did not automatically sink the nomination.

Reno

No.

Baker

Was it more difficult to recruit talented minorities to come to the Justice Department after what happened, after Ronnie White's hearings?

Reno

I don't know, I never--

Baker

Did a follow-up on that?

Reno

No.

Morrisroe

Could you talk about the end of the administration and the backup in nominations and your recollections about any of the negotiations with the Senate on that issue?

Reno

I remember addressing the issue with the ABA [American Bar Association] and trying to use the bully pulpit to force the issue. There were negotiations. There was discussion. I spoke of it at one point I recall. It seems to me two or three press availabilities in a row discussing it and what the backup was and what "justice denied" meant.

Meador

I understood you to say that you yourself did not get into discussions with Senators on the judicial nominations, is that correct?

Reno

Generally.

Meador

There was the Walter Dellinger case, I remember. Did you get involved with that one in any way?

Reno

That was on judicial nominations. With Dellinger I think I spoke to Hatch about it, just saying that the problem with Dellinger was Helms, and I couldn't break that one.

Riley

Didn't have any relatives in North Carolina?

Baker

Might be a good time for a break.

[BREAK]

Riley

I want to ask a question about the priorities of the White House in the first couple of years you were there. Were you at all a party to the debates and a participant in the debates about the general sets of priorities that the administration would move on in the first couple of years? The decision to move on the budget first and then NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] and health care, and not to do welfare reform at that stage but to hold off until later.

Reno

I was not party to the health care debate, nor NAFTA, nor the timing of welfare reform.

Riley

Were there Justice Department initiatives that you were attempting to move front and center on the legislative agenda in that first couple of years, and if so, can you tell us a bit about how you went about positioning yourself to get their attention on these things?

Reno

I may not answer your question directly, so ask it again if I don't address the issue. When I came in the major issue with respect to the White House and the Department of Justice was the crime issue. A hundred thousand cops had been the key. It was framing that, addressing that so it was real. One of the things I kept having to do during the course of the 100,000 cops was make sure we put out good information and not spun information. That's where Rahm and I would oftentimes have discussions.

Riley

So Rahm was the driving force in the White House on crime as early as that first year?

Reno

I don't know whether it was as early as that first year but in the course of time. How we framed 100,000 cops, how we got the dollars out and got it out with accountability so we didn't waste it and didn't have a boondoggle at the end. What we did about the death penalty. He knew where I stood on the death penalty. I tried to avoid supporting the death penalty in my testimony. I said I would go down, and when I did, I would say that I personally opposed it.

Baker

That's on the Omnibus Crime Control Bill?

Reno

Yes. The Violence Against Women Act. But at the same time, and people say that we didn't accomplish much. I don't know, I haven't evaluated it, but when I first took office and started talking about zero to three at my confirmation hearing, people, Senator [Phil] Gramm from Texas said, "She's a nice little lady, but she sounds more like a social worker than a prosecutor."

The Cosmos Club effort. We saw a change where people were beginning to focus where grants were given out where there was a real difference. The National Association of Counties [NACO] gave me the best indication. I spoke at the National Association of Counties meeting in Chicago in '93 or '94, as I recall. I talked about this issue and how counties were the prime group to come together to blend the different levels of government and private sector in health care delivery, education, public safety, housing, to give children a firm foundation.

Shortly before I left office, I saw the president of NACO and he said, "When you first started talking to us about this, I thought, What have we got to do with this? Now it's our number one agenda." Occasionally I would hear gripes from the White House, "There goes Reno again on zero to three," but I think they understood it and I think we made progress. I don't think it's wishful thinking.

Baker

And Rahm Emanuel you think was willing to listen to you?

Reno

I think he was willing to listen.

Riley

In the case of the zero to three, that was something that was more or less your initiative that you were pitching in the direction of the White House.

Reno

But they did not discourage it.

Riley

They didn't discourage it and in fact, you got encouragement from other members of this informal cluster of Cabinet officers.

Reno

Dick Riley was very supportive. I think it was aided and abetted in the second term by Columbine and recognition that we had to take steps there.

Meador

You mentioned testifying on something. Do you have a rough estimate as to how many times you testified before congressional committees?

Reno

No. I could count them.

Meador

Are there dozens or--

Reno

Yes, I would think so. Because you had the perennial budget on both sides.

Meador

Would you say it was an undue intrusion into your time and work?

Reno

What I told them was that I found the oversight function of the Judiciary Committee to be extraordinarily constructive and positive. Some of the House, like [Daniel] Burton from Indianapolis and others, I could do without. But I found the oversight function of the Judiciary Committee to be positive and helpful, and I don't think it was intrusive. I think other committees could have done more and I'm a great supporter of the oversight function, much to my amazement.

Meador

Did you find that testifying in Congress was taking too much of your time?

Reno

To keep going back to Burton and repeating myself three times when John Mica asked me about the gas mask and Waco--there's some wasted time.

Baker

Can I jump back to the Omnibus?

Riley

Sure, please do.

Baker

That particular measure included an expansion of federal authority including the application of the death penalty in areas that were unique. Were you unhappy with that bill?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

As it was drafted. Did you have to testify in its defense?

Reno

No.

Baker

It has been reported that that was one of the reasons Philip Heymann left, that he was unhappy, he felt that measure did not reflect the priorities and the approach to law enforcement at the Justice Department.

Reno

That may have been one of the reasons.

Baker

Rahm Emanuel said that you generally were deferential to the White House in the setting of crime policy. Can you explain your view?

Reno

My view of crime policy is that for career criminals who commit violent acts where it's not three violent acts committed when you're 18 and then something when you're 60, but there's a connection in time and seriousness and opportunity, you should prosecute them as vigorously as possible. As a local prosecutor I took armed career criminal cases to the Feds and offered them my prosecutors as well because I could get substantial time. We made sure that they were clearly armed career criminals, and I think that had a real impact on crime reduction.

Baker

Sentencing enhancement.

Reno

Yes.

Baker

The three strikes law, you were in favor of that?

Reno

The three strikes is what I talk about with the armed career criminal and trying to focus on it in time, not three strikes over a 40-year period, but three strikes within a reasonable period of time, or where somebody went to prison, had the opportunity to get straightened out, and didn't do so.

Baker

And with violent crime and felonies.

Reno

With violent crime, period.

Baker

So not the California--

Reno

Not the California.

Baker

Let me jump ahead here. So you did see yourself as a team player on the administration's crime policy?

Reno

I saw, with respect to the 100,000 cops, the President had made that a campaign issue and I thought I had an obligation to make that program work as best as I possibly could. I think to make that work we had to form partnerships with state and local law enforcement, and I think we did a good job of that. We built trust, they understood our application form, we were accountable.

With respect to the death penalty, they knew my position. I stayed out of the death penalty argument as much as I could. With respect to minimum mandatory sentences, we made a good hard run at trying to expand the safety clause that eliminated minimum mandatories for lower level criminals who didn't belong in the system but got sucked up in the system. Hatch cooperated with us and worked with us, and we were able to design a safety clause that removed some of those people from minimum mandatories. That was one of the things that bothered me, and I don't know what the answer is. So in those situations we took action.

Another issue is the crack-to-powder ratio. We convinced people that they should be treated the same or roughly the same, so the Republicans said, "Bring the powder up to the crack." That was going to produce a more draconian effort. So we undertook, with respect to our prosecution's guidelines for U.S. attorneys so that they didn't prosecute crack in situations where other jurisdictions, the Feds weren't prosecuting crack. The locals were prosecuting crack and there was more of a balance.

We were able to address a great array of crime policy because we worked with state and locals. We had contact with the IACP [International Association of Chiefs of Police], with the National Sheriffs' Association. We could get the message out about prevention. The sheriffs' offices were coming to the Office of Justice Programs and BJA [Bureau of Justice Administration], and it was exciting to see what was being done. One of the things I think we should sometimes take note of is we get an awful lot of legislation passed that can oftentimes be done once you get through the money issue and get with actual hands-on work with state and locals implementing efforts as opposed to just struggling to get legislation passed.

Riley

Let me interject here. That was one of the questions I was going to pose for you, talking about the cooperation that you got from people out in the field. Are you talking about cooperation in the business of getting the legislation passed, or are you talking about cooperation after the legislation is passed and you're executing--

Reno

We got cooperation with people getting the legislation passed. The 100,000 cops and the like. But I am talking about the cooperation you need not to get legislation passed, not sometimes to get legislation implemented, just to use what you've got in the most effective manner possible to get it done. Work with Donna Shalala to see what can be done in this jurisdiction that needs home visitation programs and Medicaid waiver--

Baker

Some of it could be done through administrative rule changes also.

Reno

Administrative rule changes. Some could be done by the U.S. attorney just convening a meeting of law enforcement within the community and saying, "These are the crime problems in this United States."

Baker

So you don't always have to wait on Congress to react.

Reno

Exactly.

Baker

How about with the Omnibus Crime Control Bill? It had included the section that became the Brady Bill and it had included the ban on assault weapons. Did you agree that that would be a good strategy to pull those things out and pass them separately?

Reno

I deferred to others as to the best strategy for getting things past Congress. My concern continually with our weapons issues was that we won the battle in passing the legislation but lost the battle in having legislation that really had teeth to it. I think we lost politically because people didn't understand gun show loopholes and things like that. What they understood was you ought to have a license that demonstrates that you know how to safely and lawfully use a weapon, and if you're not capable of doing it, that license should be revoked and you should be prosecuted.

Baker

I think your parallel with a driver's license was an interesting analogy. This is a privilege, not a right.

Reno

And they understood the ban on assault weapons, but we permitted that. Not permitted it, we tried to avoid it being watered down, but it was watered down so that it was very difficult for people to fight for it to be extended.

Meador

Speaking of U.S. attorneys, if I may interject a question here before I forget it. Griffin Bell took the position that U.S. attorneys ought to be appointed by the Attorney General instead of the President. His reasoning was that in practical effect today, U.S. attorneys are selected by Senators and their loyalty runs to the Senators, not to the Attorney General. The Attorney General needs to have greater leverage over them. His analogy was over the Internal Revenue Service, where at one time these district directors were appointed by the President, but then they switched over and were appointed by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. Do you have a view about that?

Reno

There's also a problem in terms of disciplining U.S. attorneys, because I had one who socked somebody, and the argument was I couldn't remove him or do anything. I finally worked it out. But I think a good U.S. attorney appointed by the President, nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, has a political power, good political, with a good "p," capital or small, that gives them credence. There's something to be said for Judge Bell's position, but I think it's important for people to know that the authority of the United States government is there in the form of a Presidential nominee.

Meador

You think he has more clout than an Attorney General appointment.

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Were you effectively put out on the road to speak and generate public support for the Crime Bill of '94 in the congressional districts?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Did you write your own speeches?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

So you could avoid the parts you disagreed with.

Riley

Which elements of the bill did you elect to focus most of your attention on?

Reno

I focused attention on the cops and that program on some of the penalties that went with it, three strikes. But mostly on the cops and what we could do with careful utilization.

Riley

Were you coordinating your appearances with people in the White House?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Were there other members of a kind of law enforcement team or community from the White House that were being spread out over the country to sell this?

Reno

I don't know what other people were doing, but we were on the road a good deal.

Riley

What about the politics of the gun issue at the time? Was that problematic for the administration? Was there a concern about spinning out NRA [National Rifle Association] opposition at that point?

Reno

I didn't hear much concern. I think if I were to read the White House correctly, it felt toward the end--and I've never talked to the President about it so I don't know--but that by choosing the gun issues and not--people didn't understand gun show loopholes and didn't understand what it was like to support a rise in the assault weapon. But the White House jumped in feet first. Sarah Brady was strong. She was at her best. I had not campaigned for the President, but Sarah and I met on a cold day on the courthouse steps in Miami with Gil Kerlikowske, who was chief of police in Fort Pierce at the time, subsequently chief of police in Seattle. The three of us were lone voices supporting the Brady Bill.

I think the President got into it because he saw a political advantage and because he thought it was right. But there may be thoughts on the part of the people that we didn't get enough in terms of substance at the expense of the political issue.

Baker

We often talk about Presidents having a bully pulpit to educate, and certainly the White House could have done it on this issue. How about the Attorney General? Was that a part of the role that you saw as raising people's level of understanding on issues related to law enforcement and crime control?

Reno

If you tried to explain gun show loopholes to voters listening to you, it is very difficult to do it in small, old words in a short period of time that shows how it's going to save us. What people understood was the licensing issue, and licenses generally were controlled by the state. It was very difficult to come up with something.

Riley

Did you have much interaction with NRA politics in south Florida?

Reno

The interaction I had with the NRA--the legislature had passed a sorry gun law, and so I campaigned against it. I was invited to something like an Elks Lodge. It didn't say NRA meeting, it didn't say gun meeting. I forget what its title was, but I clearly knew I was going to meet a bunch of NRA types. It was fascinating because I saw again what I had learned. There are two categories of NRA members. One is the "don't let the camel's nose in the tent," and the other is "reasonable regulation of guns is quite all right because we don't want people--" I make that distinction when I talk to people and say, "I don't know that I will ever convince the camel contingent, but there are an awful lot of hunters who don't want that old lady who has never used a gun, and never been trained to use a gun, carrying a weapon."

Riley

Did you find in dealing with people in the White House and organizing toward passage of a bill that the people you were dealing with by and large had that kind of visceral understanding of the gun issue that you had, or did you have the sense that--to go back to Lyndon Johnson's time--there weren't enough people there who had ever run for sheriff to know that this was something that was too delicate to fine-tune?

Reno

There were too many who didn't know how delicate it was.

Riley

Prison construction was also a big part of this bill if I'm not mistaken, right?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

What are the politics of prison construction at the national level?

Reno

The politics of prison construction that I ran into almost immediately was the privatization of prisons. One of the people I came away with great admiration for was Dr. Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, the head of the Bureau of Prisons [BOP]. She and I worked together on a number of issues. This again is an interesting problem in Presidential appointments. She was in limbo for a while. There was nobody to tell--I thought she had been appointed and that she was properly in office. I don't recall whether she had to be confirmed or not, but there was a question. She operated for the longest time not knowing whether I was going to appoint her or not. When I heard about it, I said, "Of course." But she came to me concerned because of the effort to privatize medium-security facilities and was violently opposed to it.

We had had an experience with an INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] detention where the group had hung the keys on the door, said, "Call the police." They called the police and said, "We're leaving." If you don't have the backups or the means of backing up privatized prisons--we were able to effect a compromise whereby minimum security or community facilities were privatized. My concern from what I'm seeing is that the states would be doing a lot to eliminate prisons as an item in the budget except for the vigorous lobbying of the private sector. You talk about industrial-military complex, I think you better talk about industrial-correctional politics.

Riley

So there were barriers to your getting what you wanted?

Reno

The mix on privatization was always a delicate balance for us to follow. What I was committed to doing was making sure I had done everything I could to get a safety valve developed, to get as many people out of prison who didn't belong there under minimum mandatories. More needs to be done on that, but I think we went as far as we could go and if we went further, we might get adverse results from the Republicans.

But what I was committed to doing was to forecast what the prison population would be and make sure I had asked for adequate funds to house those people in appropriate circumstances and with appropriate conditions. Also, that was the time they passed the provision that eliminated prisoners' eligibility for Pell grants. I continued to fight to try to bring that back in. That was always one of my regrets.

Meador

We're touching here on executive-congressional relationships some and I wanted to ask you, are you familiar with or did you hear of a Brookings [Institution] project in which they held annual or semi-annual interbranch seminars on the administration of justice?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

Was that still going when you came into office? I forget the year it stopped. Did you ever participate in one?

Reno

What I'm trying to remember, Dan, is whether the Brookings Institution was the sponsor of the three-branch conference we had. They may have been, but I'm not sure.

Meador

They ran them for a good many years--I'd say 15 years at least or more. A man named Warren Cikins at Brookings was in charge of it, and they organized it each year. That was, I thought, a very beneficial thing. It brought together, there were Congress, DOJ people, and judges from the courts.

Reno

That's what we did with the conference on federalism and the three branches. It may well have been done under the auspices of the Brookings Institution.

Meador

This was an annual thing for several years, then it went to a semiannual status. That's where things like this were taken up and discussed, like that crime bill would be one on the agenda. Mostly it related to courts, but it also related to any kind of legislation in which any one of the three branches was really interested and they would take it up and discuss it together. I thought it was a very useful thing, and then Brookings discontinued it.

Reno

I don't know whether Brookings covered the three-branch conference or not.

Meador

What year was that? Do you remember the year of that?

Reno

Ninety-four, I believe, '93, '94.

Meador

I don't know the exact year Brookings stopped. It was back in there somewhere.

Baker

I'm going to jump in here a little bit on one of the early anticrime measures, and that was the Violence Against Women Act you mentioned. Later on there was a Supreme Court case that came up, U.S. v. Morrison, where the Supreme Court struck down part of the Violence Against Women Act--the part where a victim of a gender-related violence could bring a civil suit--because they said Congress did not have that authority under the commerce clause. Any reflections on that measure? Was that something that people in the Justice Department thought might prove to be a constitutional problem or was this kind of a surprise?

Reno

My sense was that it was a surprise.

Baker

So there was no question about defending that when you got--I guess the previous year they had U.S. v. Lopez, which also struck down part of that gun-free school zones act for the same grounds, that there was no commerce clause power. Is this a break with how the courts had been interpreting the commerce clause? It seems to me it was, and it was a surprise because both of these areas were--

Reno

We were surprised with both decisions.

Riley

Not pleasantly surprised I take it.

Reno

No.

Baker

Another thing that came up early in the administration was the "don't ask, don't tell." Given your real commitment to civil rights, were you at all involved in those discussions?

Reno

That one was about done by the time I got there.

Baker

I guess we can keep moving over. I have a list of various pieces of legislation that occurred and I was interested in your role on them. The Religious Freedom in Schools Protection Act, religious freedom in schools protected in '95. Do you remember that measure? Did you participate in that at all? I know that was one of the areas President Clinton expressed some real concern about. Did the Justice Department do anything on that?

Reno

We worked on it, and Walter and the Office of Legal Counsel worked on it. I don't know how successful we were in achieving the fixes that they thought were--

Baker

Because the bill that came over from the White House had some potential problems?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

Constitutional problems.

Morrisroe

That was an issue on which there was inner-Cabinet cooperation if I recall. You and Secretary Riley had been asked by the President to prepare a statement of the administration's policies.

Reno

And the Office of Legal Counsel, as I recall, prepared an extensive statement. I think the Department of Education adopted that, it's what they did. But I always thought OLC did a nice job on that.

Riley

That was something the President himself clearly took as one of his issues, correct?

Reno

Absolutely.

Riley

Did you have conversations with him about this particular area?

Reno

We had several conversations because he cared a great deal about religious freedom issues. The one time, as I mentioned earlier today, that I have a recollection is when he directed us to change our policy in the Supreme Court.

Riley

On the tithing issue.

Reno

Yes. But my recollection is that Walter bore the brunt of working out the issues with the White House. One of the things that I did, I just had faith and my faith was never abused--when Walter talked, even if he talked so much, I understood him. He could put the law in terms, he could make it clear. I trusted his judgment on issues of covert actions, on issues as fundamental as religious freedom. He was good on the facts, and he could make sure the issue was sufficiently defined so that it was not overbroad in scope. I think I was blessed to have somebody like Walter who had contact with the White House, knew the White House, had been active in the administration, and in the transition leading up to the administration.

Baker

And then he had a level of trust with the White House too that another appointee might not have had.

Riley

Were there others at the uppermost levels but beneath you who you recall having any trouble with the White House on given issues at a particular time? Were there occasions where one of the assistants--

Reno

Eldie would get mad at the White House every now and then--

Meador

Over judgeships?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Nothing out of the Criminal Division or out of the Civil Division?

Reno

Criminal Division didn't--theirs was a distant--Deval [Patrick] was at the White House a good deal as was Bill Lee on issues of civil rights. Antitrust, one of the things when we brought the Microsoft action, I'm not a good person on finances or the economy, and I wanted to make sure that what we did would not have an adverse effect on the economy unless we understood what it would be and the impact it would have. I thought it was appropriate to talk to the White House about that and make sure we had input from Treasury and that we handled it correctly. I tried to stress to them, "I'm not saying that you can veto this. If this is an important action that must be taken under the law then we should do it, but we should understand the consequences before we do it and have a plan of action to deal with it if necessary." Joel Klein did an awful lot in terms of talking those issues through the White House and working with the White House on that.

Baker

The Archer Daniels Midland antitrust wasn't so--it was a huge antitrust but it didn't have the same economic repercussions. So you didn't feel the need to work through the White House on that one?

Reno

No.

Meador

May I ask a question on another line about departmental policies by way of a specific illustration. In 1998, Congress created a commission with the awkward title of Commission on Structural Alternatives for the Federal Courts of Appeal and Justice. Byron White chaired it, so it became known as the White Commission. It held a wide range of hearings and consultations and so on and invited DOJ to appear and present a position. The problem being addressed was, what do you do about very large Courts of Appeals such as the Ninth Circuit with 28 judgeships and so on, in order to maintain coherence?

They came in, Seth Waxman came, and I think Eleanor Acheson was with him and maybe somebody else, and presented a position on that question. I just wondered, was that left entirely to Seth Waxman--

Reno

No, I had something to do with it. It was a subject of our morning conferences. That was a difficult one to walk through.

Meador

But you did take it up and discuss it with them. Did you all reach a consensus on what to say?

Reno

My recollection is we figured out something to say. What the exact term was I don't remember now, and I'm not sure that it was that helpful.

Meador

The basic proposal had been put out, there was a draft put out, and this was in response to a draft, which proposed that in large Courts of Appeal, such as the Ninth Circuit, the Court be reorganized into adjudicating divisions. So that was the basic idea. Seth Waxman's position was basically in opposition to that.

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Can I ask you if there was such a thing as a typical day at the Justice Department?

Reno

No.

Riley

There goes that question.

Reno

The typical day was I would walk early. The FBI met me at my door at six. I lived not too far from the department and we would walk down the Mall, usually about two miles each morning, and then get over there about 8 o'clock and have time to look at my papers. Usually there was a staff meeting at 8:30 of the whole department--Criminal key people, not, however, the Deputy, the Associate, but people at the next level. Those two meetings. We might then have a conference in the AG's conference room on what position to take with respect to certain litigation, the crisis of the day, an update on terrorism, a meeting with the FBI Director, a speech at noon, more meetings during the afternoon. Quiet time meetings, as I called them, were after five when we had less interruption.

Meador

Did you have any regularly scheduled meetings with all of the Assistant AGs and maybe other people where you met, say, once a month or something like that?

Reno

We tried to meet once a month with respect to all the AGs. It probably lengthened into once every two months, if that often.

Baker

And your AGs all got along with one another, a shared sense of purpose?

Reno

They seemed to have a great sense of spirit.

Baker

Good morale?

Reno

Good morale. The reason it lengthened into every two months is that so often the issues were confined to one jurisdiction. For example, we might have done a perfectly wonderful thing with the EPA and environmental litigation or advocacy. We would bring in Civil Rights and Environmental and Natural Resources to address the issue of environmental justice. Bringing in everybody else, you'd have people falling asleep on the side.

Baker

Like subgroups would meet on particular policy similar to what you were doing with the White House Cabinet members.

Meador

Did you ever have to sort out conflicts between divisions?

Reno

Yes. I would bring them in, I would get my talking points from the Deputy's office. I would try to read them, understand the issues, bring them in, hear from everybody concerned. And I tried to make a practice of involving people who had written on the subject and who were involved in research on the subject, even from the junior level, so that they could be heard. I would hear from as many people as I could and then make the best decision that I could. I tried to make it then. When I didn't, I tried to get back to them and let them know the basis of my decision and to make sure that everybody who had been there had that opportunity.

Riley

What kind of disputes might you end up dealing with? I'm not the expert on Justice Department politics.

Reno

Civil rights issue with respect to affirmative action, what we should do. The Solicitor General's office has one view, Civil Rights Division has another view, the White House has raised a question, there's somebody there from the White House.

Meador

Speaking of Solicitor General's office, did you leave the Solicitor General free to operate on his own or were you involved fairly regularly in discussing positions to be taken?

Reno

I met regularly with Drew. He was at the morning meetings, and they were fairly regular while he was there in office. I had gotten to know Seth. I got to know Walter very well, as I have said, so when he became Acting Solicitor General, I felt I could rely on him. He and I would meet as the need arose.

Seth and I had worked together on immigration issues, on so many issues that he had addressed as the principal Associate Deputy Attorney General. He had been responsible for the administration of the divisions; now he, as Solicitor General and a confirmed Solicitor General, had the opportunity to bring these people together, and it is a talent that is so important and is neglected. When you think of a Solicitor General you think of a great scholar and a great advocate, but he was also very good at helping to shape the policy in the best way he possibly could. I relied on him a great deal.

Meador

After you were there a while, did you ever find an occasion to think about the organization of the department or possible reorganizing in some way?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

What were your thoughts about that?

Reno

We talked about reorganizing Immigration and Naturalization Service to break it up into enforcement and service, but Doris [Meissner] convinced us that the balancing of those interests was so important that there needed to be coherence within and not two separate agencies doing it. In the end we saw the handwriting on the wall and tried to fashion as effective a proposal as we could that Hal Rogers would accept before he reorganized it, much to our dismay.

Meador

He reorganized it?

Reno

He was the leader in the effort to reorganize it. We spent some time early on considering the merger of DEA and the FBI, but I was convinced afterward that it would be pushing boxes around, that it would take eight years to effectively achieve, cost a lot of money, and wasn't the right thing to do. I can't remember other issues.

Meador

Something that has puzzled me for I would say 40 years is the apparent inability of the INS, of the United States government as a whole I guess you would say, to control its borders. I wonder if you had any thoughts on that. Why is that so difficult? Why has no commissioner or head of that ever been able to get his arms around that whole situation and get it under control?

Reno

If you compare INS with the Bureau of Prisons there are probably two answers to that question. One, the Bureau of Prisons has the potential for being one of the most problem-wracked agencies in government. Corrections at any and almost any state level is one of the more problematic agencies of government. BOP has the reputation of growing carefully--of not being able to control its growth, but growing carefully as it grows--and has the knowledge of how to present to Congress the need for additional resources to match the growth and warning them of prison riots and the like. They have done a marvelous job of growing. They've grown with excellence, they've grown with a person at the top, in each instance, who came up through the ranks or who was a noted correctional expert. It is a classic example of an agency that grew like Topsy but grew strong.

INS has been everybody's stepchild. You do not have the political clout or the correctional aura to force Congress to give you the moneys to do the job. And they have never provided the moneys. When I was interviewing Doris Meissner, I asked her, "What should be done about the border?" She said, "The fact is you cannot control that northern border and the southern border and the airports. You have got to give people the impression that you are controlling it." I have never forgotten that. You can build an armed border, but I don't think we were prepared to do what is necessary in terms of dollars to properly staff that border. You can put up sensors, but you've got to have the people who respond to the sensors. You've got to have the people who respond to the beaches.

One of the trips I took that left a profound impression on me, during one consecutive trip I flew from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico stopping at Nogales, El Centro, El Paso, Laredo, Brownsville, Del Rio, and it is one long, lonely border.

Baker

I can affirm that.

Reno

Congress would put the money into Border Patrol and that was the thing they liked to do, but then trying to get radios and cars and things that would make the dollars for Border Patrol agents translate into action, they wouldn't. Trying to develop the technology, they wouldn't.

For example, when they formed the inspector general's office in the Department of Justice, they took the INS internal review capacity out of INS and put it into the inspector general's office, leaving INS without an internal capacity to police itself and therefore delayed reaction in getting to problems. Doris ran INS with three other political appointees, as I recall. They wouldn't give her more.

Meador

Did I understand you to say that Doris Meissner said, "You can't control the borders, you have to give the impression--" Does she mean even if you've had adequate appropriations it's an impossibility?

Reno

She meant that Congress would never give them the appropriation necessary. We could barely control the southern borders and ensure against loss of life. We weren't even beginning to cover the northern borders. The question is, do you set up armed military might along the borders?

Riley

Ms. Reno, do you recall any heightened attention to this after the peso crisis in Mexico? Did that ring alarm bells?

Reno

Did what ring alarm bells? We knew with the peso crisis we were going to see an exodus.

Riley

Did you take any action? Were there additional efforts made to shore up the borders?

Reno

Let me give you an example of what you're doing. You've got Border Patrol agents along the border. Some of their cars don't have radios in them. You see a massive number of people. The Attorney General of the United States stands on a mesa looking down over the river south of the last station on the line, I forget what it is. There is just a mass of people waiting to come across. As soon as we leave, they're coming, and you're going to have one agent chasing five people through the brush and four are going to get through. You can't shoot them. How do you stop them?

Baker

Silvestre Reyes had operation Hold the Line in El Paso, I think, that came to some--

Reno

Reyes, what he did, the 14 miles from the Pacific to--

Baker

Reyes is in El Paso, Texas.

Reno

He had Hold the Line. It was a limited--

Baker

Yes, it was a very limited area in the El Paso area.

Reno

And you got down south of it and before Del Rio, they crossed there. Or in New Mexico, there's a sliver of New Mexico just west of El Paso and they would come across there. As you took the 14 miles from the Pacific Ocean in and built that up, it became much safer in the area south of San Diego and you had far fewer offenders. As you moved them into the desert you developed the problems of how we protect their lives as they came across in the cold and in the heat.

Baker

That's right, and in southern Arizona that's a real problem too. People cutting across the desert and lack of water.

Reno

And yet they continued to come. Gus de la Viña and I took a trip down to the border, and he said, "I want you to see one guy." He took me to a fellow at Brownfield. This fellow could take more Army salvage stuff and turn it into equipment that could help, that could translate into a sensor. It looked like Mickey Mouse contraptions but you could tell somebody was coming across. They just paste it together with baling wire.

Baker

The alternative is, perhaps, the militarization, and that's something that we're very uncomfortable with, having a border militarized.

Reno

Your problem is not just militarization and not just the fear of a military border, but the cost of it. To put a sufficient number of military along the borders, to staff them correctly, to make them effective without being menacing, is going to be--

Riley

Aren't the politics a bit more complicated than that in that there was a demand for the labor of these folks who were coming up? Did you have to confront that?

Reno

We confronted that and met with the Pete Wilson response. As Doris warned me, immigration varies. The public attitudes toward immigration vary as the economy varies. As the economy improved, we heard less and less about immigration.

Meador

There's a similar question I've had about INS and that is its apparent inability to deal with illegal aliens already in the country. What amazes me, and has for years, a lot of these illegal aliens make themselves known. They speak out, they say, "I'm an illegal alien, we ought to get driver's licenses." INS doesn't do a thing about it. They're identified publicly. Why do you suppose INS can't move on--?

Reno

Because so much of the resources were taken from the interior to the border where the hue and cry was greatest.

Meador

So fundamentally all this comes down to resources.

Reno

It comes down to resources and it comes down to management authority to get the resources used the right way. It also comes down to something more, Dan, it comes down to the fact that your policy might--when you begin the two-term office, the economy may be lousy. By the end of the term they don't want anybody in the interior because that's their workforce and that's what is sustaining the economy.

Baker

While we're on the INS is this a good time to get into the Elian Gonzalez case?

Riley

I'd rather hold off on that for right now, but I wanted to pose a question to you again. This is from naivete in terms of the internal composition of the Justice Department. Were there any other subunits within the department that proved to be as complex a managerial issue as INS was for you?

Reno

The Bureau, just because of the traditions of the Bureau involved.

Riley

We talked a bit about the business with the directorships earlier, but maybe I ought to throw out a general question for you. What were the kinds of issues you had to confront while you were dealing with the Bureau during your time?

Reno

How we got the NCIC and IAFIS systems built and operational without having to go back to Congress for more dollars and how we got it on budget and on time. How we automated the FBI. How we ensured exchange of information because they'd say, "Oh, we've got to get automated to do it." You don't have to get automated to exchange information. It's still a matter of this part of the Bureau knowing what that part of the Bureau knows in order to make an effective decision. How did you provide security for that? How did you address the issue of finances, trying to get the Bureau somebody with budget experience, who knew what they were doing with the budget, to handle it so we didn't have overruns and overhiring? How did we ensure the control of personnel?

How did we get the FBI to accept and cooperate so we could have success in the inspector general's review of the lab procedures of the FBI? And the major problem with the FBI is how you use your office to control the FBI without losing the respect of it and without--it was interesting. How did I stand up to Louis on the LaBella memorandum and the steps he wanted to take. I have the greatest respect for Director Freeh but he and I disagree about this. Much to Louis's credit, he always said, "She's doing it because she thinks it's right, and it's not politics." What he said behind my back I don't know, but he was consistent in hearings.

Meador

There's a telling bit of usage that struck me about that. Around Washington you often hear it said, they speak of the FBI and then the Department of Justice as though they're two separate entities. Taxi drivers--you going to the FBI? Department of Justice? People in general, out in the jobs in the public, they think of the FBI as something separate from the Justice Department.

Reno

Exactly.

Riley

Do you think there were any additional challenges to you because you are a woman?

Reno

Some people have said that people like Burton hammered at me because they thought I was a woman and they could get away with it. I don't think I ever saw anything.

Riley

You didn't feel that as a part of your relationship with the FBI?

Reno

No. One of the reasons I think things worked out, the FBI, after Waco, couldn't have been--field agents and special agents in charge and people at headquarters really felt like I had--

Riley

You took one for them.

Reno

Not that I took one for them, but that I didn't cast them as the bad guys.

Meador

On departmental entities, do you have a view of the Office of Professional Responsibility and how it performed during your time?

Reno

When I took office there was a great backlog of investigations. Things happened one year, and two years later we'd get an OPR report on it, which is certainly not sufficient to correct unwarranted behavior. So I started keeping a timeline on it. I was told they didn't have enough resources, and we tried to get more resources. I tried to reprogram some resources into OPR. We were making headway. Mike Shaheen had created his aura in the Post. When I got the report it oftentimes was not instructional and not helpful in correcting what needed to be done. There was conflict between the OPR and the inspector general. I think Glenn Fine is doing a nice job now. I've been impressed with the fact that he remained as inspector general, that he conducts himself in a very professional manner, doesn't get involved in the equivocations, and I think can make a real difference.

I don't know where OPR stands at this point in terms of caseload, but if it is ever going to work, it is going to have to have a far more prompt disposition of matters.

Baker

That of course requires staff resources.

Reno

I think it also requires perhaps some greater diligence.

Riley

You had mentioned very early on Lani Guinier's name. We never came back to that to talk with you about the way that that ultimately worked itself out. Were you uncomfortable with what happened in that instance?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Could you tell us why?

Reno

My understanding is that she had been vetted in the White House, that the White House knew of her writings, knew what she'd said, but I gather that the President didn't and then was reading some of the writings and got concerned.

Meador

Had you read her writings?

Reno

I had not read all of her writings. I had read the problem in question. They could have caught it a lot earlier. She got hung out there and she didn't have to be hung out there. If he felt politically, and he has such a good political sense, that he wasn't going to be able to carry off a confirmation of her, then he could have gotten her pulled at a much earlier time with less--it was a very wearing experience.

Meador

You said earlier that you signed off on the nomination. Did you join in or participate in the decision to pull the nomination?

Reno

No, I went out and supported her until the end. I didn't criticize the President for doing it.

Baker

Was there a sense that he should have stood up, and would her nomination have gotten through, do you think?

Reno

I have such respect for his political judgment, I think the worst thing he could have done was to drag her through the confirmation process and have her end up unconfirmed. I think he saw that.

Baker

But the folks doing the political vetting should have alerted him earlier.

Riley

I guess there was a bit of a problem here and I don't know this from any testimony I've gotten, but she was a longtime acquaintance of his, and I wonder if that doesn't signal to the vetters that there is a comfort level where it means that you don't have to be as meticulous.

Reno

Maybe.

Riley

I think that's an important episode. Can we draw back the frame a little bit and have you tell us about the Civil Rights Division during your tenure there?

Reno

The first person, was it Jim Miller? John Keeney was the Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division, longer than most other people served as Assistant Attorney General. James [Turner] was the Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. He was a curmudgeon, and I dealt with him a great deal. He educated me a lot in civil rights policy, litigation, and I tried to work with him to back him up.

One of the issues that we took on early before we got Deval Patrick confirmed was the Americans with Disabilities Act [ADA] and the enforcement of that. We moved both in terms of community efforts--it was amazing to me to watch disability advocates organize and say, "We want to take you through a community that is disability friendly." And they'd take me to Tacoma Park, Washington, with the media trailing behind, and show just what steps can be taken that are relatively inexpensive and reasonable to ensure appropriate enforcement of the ADA. He was great at that.

A couple of other issues. Police patterns and practices, I think he started talking about that. He was instrumental in bringing the issue of the Los Angeles/Rodney King and what we did in following up on that decision.

Baker

And started to collect data also, right, for the "driving while black" allegations of--

Reno

Profiling.

Baker

Racial profiling.

Reno

I don't know whether he started it, but he did not let his acting status stop him from being a vigorous advocate.

Meador

Did your relationships with that division change after Deval Patrick came on?

Reno

No. Jim had spent an awful lot of time educating me, sometimes with a curmudgeon-type approach and sometimes with a fatherly approach. When he'd get impatient with me, he'd be a curmudgeon, when he was being expansive, he'd be father-like.

Deval came into office and his first challenge was, do we end affirmative action after the Supreme Court decision or do we mend it? He worked very closely with the White House. I think he did a good job. I will never forget, the scene had been set at the Archives and we were going to have the meeting there. They were coming over from the White House. The President was on his way. It was all at the last moment putting it together. I think they did a good job. The last I heard, this was following the [Amir] Attaran decision that they, the Civil Rights Division, had been successful in protecting amended affirmative action plans and programs so that it was working.

Riley

Was Patrick your suggestion? I don't think we covered this earlier.

Reno

No, I believe it was Mark Fabiani who worked with Eldie and then worked in the White House and then worked in Los Angeles for something. He mentioned to me, the day after Lani's nomination went down in flames, that we should look at Deval Patrick. He had a life story and a background that just made him perfect for Hollywood and the Civil Rights Division. Deval came in there and did a nice job of helping work through the issues of mend it, not end it.

Meador

Did you say a meeting took place in the Archives?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

Why was that location picked?

Reno

I don't know. It's the only one I've--

Riley

This was the public unveiling of the decision, is that correct?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

The public announcement of it? I see.

Riley

You mentioned that Deval was pretty much in the driver's seat on that--

Reno

I don't know whether he was in the driver's seat or not, but he was instrumental in working through the issues with the White House, and he would keep me posted as he came back from the White House.

Riley

So he was the primary point of contact between DOJ and the White House.

Reno

I forget at the moment who the Associate Attorney General was, I think it was John Schmidt who was Associate Attorney General at that time, and John and Deval would have been--

Riley

Okay, now tracking through from there, can you tell us a bit about the experience after the affirmative action decisions?

Reno

Deval left and I'm not sure what time he left. Bill Lee had, I think, two or one and a half years. One of the issues I think he dealt with was police pattern and practice authority that was given to the Justice Department, which I found very helpful because there were so many instances in which, with proper education, proper support, proper training, the police could do so much. You didn't have to sue them and you didn't have to litigate in terms of criminal matters. You could by positive urging achieve your goals. I think we made progress on pattern and practice, but we left office just about the time it was coming to fruition.

Riley

Was Lee your choice for that?

Reno

Lee was presented to me as a White House choice and I became one of his strong supporters. He's just a great guy.

Baker

Did he feel hobbled because he was not able to get confirmation and had to be a recess appointment?

Reno

Who was the other recess appointment? There were one or two others. I think everybody felt hobbled because of that.

Meador

Wasn't there a problem or legal question about how long he could carry on with the recess appointment?

Reno

Yes, but I think it was until the expiration of the term. I think it was ultimately resolved.

Riley

Are there any other aspects of that division's operations that are particularly noteworthy from your perspective?

Reno

The Civil Rights Division, early on, Barr had filed the first piece of litigation aimed at lending discrimination, and I think it affected a consent decree. Barr started it. We carried forward, and it was really rewarding to see the comeback and the increase. Now, part of it was due to an increase--the economy was getting better--but it was clearly more home ownership. What I had hoped we could achieve was more--we were talking about mortgage lending, but there were other lending sources that would also benefit from nudging by the Department of Justice and I don't think we were as successful there.

Riley

You mentioned on a couple of occasions that your shared commitment to civil rights was something that had attracted you to President Clinton in the first place. In looking back at the department's legacy in civil rights do you have a fairly high level of satisfaction with what you were able to accomplish?

Reno

I think with lending discrimination, with housing issues, with police pattern and practices, profiling, we were able to do a great deal. I think we still had backlogs within the department on EEO [equal employment opportunity] issues that we could have done better with. But, for the issues that, for quick reaction, for response--one of the things we saw was the church arsons. The commission that was formed to deal with that I think took effective action. I think it made a statement; it made it clear.

With respect to clinic violence, I've had more people tell me that one of the things we did that was good--some of them more grudging than others--was in response to the clinic violence.

Baker

Both the black church violence and the clinic violence were handled by the Criminal Division?

Reno

The Civil Rights Division. But for the church violence we formed a larger task force that included ATF and Jim Johnson from Treasury, who was a very good colleague, and Deval formed the core. There were people there from not just the Criminal Division.

Riley

One further question along the same line. The President started his One America initiative in the second term that really didn't see a lot come to fruition. Were you at all involved in either the decision to begin the initiative or in the execution of the initiative?

Reno

We did something in terms of the execution of the initiative, I don't remember what. I don't know the extent to which we were involved. It never seemed to get off the ground.

Meador

You mentioned a minute ago Barr's having filed a suit; earlier you said that you and Gorelick, I believe, met with Barr nearly a year after you took office. Can you describe what went on in that meeting and what was the purpose of it?

Reno

Jamie suggested that we invite Barr and Thornburgh, I think she invited them all. Barr came. We had a very pleasant lunch. I'm trying to remember, this is an example of timing. It had to be before the election, if my memory is not playing tricks on me, because Barr warned me. He said, "You'd better hope that you keep a majority in the Senate or you'll find yourself up there all--"

Meador

You said Thornburgh was invited but he didn't come?

Reno

That's my recollection.

Baker

You coauthored an op-ed piece with Thornburgh on the ADA.

Reno

He had a lot of personal interest in the ADA because his son had been--and Mrs. [Ginny] Thornburgh was wonderful and they were always extraordinarily thoughtful.

Baker

So did he contact you and say, "I want to write this"?

Reno

No, Public Affairs would contact and the ADA would reach out and contact him. We went to a number of different fora together, commented together, and he was always supportive.

Riley

Since you raised the '94 election again, did the results of the '94 election come as some surprise to you or did you see it coming?

Reno

I can't say that I saw it coming, but I don't recall being surprised.

Riley

You had begun to register significant rumblings in your own political communities about what could happen that fall. Do you remember having conversations with the President or meetings with the Cabinet fairly soon thereafter, and what those meetings were like or conversations were like?

Reno

I believe it was at the Summit of the Americas or it was something in Florida, and the President and I flew to Florida together. He was really down in the dumps about the results of the election. I think getting out and getting to Florida, I think it was the Summit of the Americas, he seemed to be in better spirits as he came back.

Riley

Did he talk with you about how to go about reading the results or how to go about regaining the initiative after that kind of body blow?

Reno

I don't remember specifically what he said. I talked to him about the need to look at health care and that we had--one of the things I was always taught by my mother was that you've got to use "small, old words." She always said that was what Winston Churchill said. The health care discussion and debate were not that. People couldn't understand it. They were afraid they would lose what benefits they had. It was an uncertain time. They didn't see results.

Baker

So was the administration planning to continue to push with health care at this time?

Reno

No, but it was how we talk about things, how we put it in terms people--because the President had a capacity to sit there and go on. If you knew what he was talking about it could be very interesting, but it didn't keep--

Riley

Exactly.

Meador

Didn't keep what?

Reno

Didn't keep people's attention very long. When he talked to people themselves, instead of just talking to them, he could sell them anything.

Baker

He didn't always read his audience.

Riley

We've had a very full day, and we covered an awful lot of ground and we'll have a full morning tomorrow. But this evening is a chance for us to relax and enjoy each other's company so we'll break here.

September 28, 2004

Riley

Ms. Reno, typically what we do at the beginning of the second day is ask if there are any areas that you thought about since we completed the first day that you'd like to talk about or if there were any things that you wanted to revisit. Often we find people have slept on something and they woke up and thought, Gosh, I wish I'd said this, or talked about that. I know in our discussions over dinner last night, you mentioned two subject areas you thought we ought to spend a bit of time on. One I believe was Indian affairs and the second one was electronic or cyber issues, specifically I think cybersecurity. So if you want to, we can start there, and if there are any other areas--

Reno

A third area would be how the Attorney General related to the White House, the State Department, the National Security Council, on issues. With cyber technology, borders are becoming meaningless and it becomes--I spent an awful lot of time at Ministers of Justice meetings, and I think the White House did a nice job of trying to coordinate what was happening, but that's an area I think is important.

Riley

Good, okay. That actually matches up with one of the things we had on our list. So why don't we begin with the Indian affairs question. Tell us a bit about how that issue presented itself to you during the course of your service as Attorney General and historically what would be important.

Reno

My mother had written articles concerning Seminole Indian issues, Miccosukee Indian issues back in the '50s and '60s.

Riley

And became an honorary member of--

Reno

The Miccosukee tribe.

Riley

And her name was Princess Apoongo Stahnegee.

Riley

And that means?

Reno

Princess Rumor-Bearer.

Riley

Princess Rumor-Bearer, which indicates a--

Reno

Healthy skepticism of the press. I had been sensitive to Indian issues and had some basic understanding of the trust relationship and the sovereign relationship that should exist. I had the sense that the White House had campaigned in Indian country, but they were sensitive to the issues of Indian country. My sense was we oftentimes went and talked and did all the talking, and it was time to listen. So, I believe it was '94, we had a listening conference at Albuquerque. Henry Cisneros joined me for a while, others were there, and we'd listen. My rule was listen, if we have time to talk afterward--

We used the materials gathered at that listening conference and addressed issues. For example, one of the issues was, "We don't have access to the Solicitor General and our voice cannot be heard in some of the decisions with respect to which cases you're taking in Indian country, what your position should be." We developed a liaison so that we were sure Indian country issues and concerns could be addressed. We continued that listening conference in several other areas of the country. I had hoped to go to Alaska to consider the issues with respect to Native American villages but was unable to because of the embassy bombings.

With gaming and with the success in gaming and with the diversification of gaming proceeds, this is going to be an issue that this country is not prepared for. I really tried to build relationships. I tried to encourage tribes to recognize that you cannot have sovereign-to-sovereign relationship with 450 different tribes unless we do it in an organized way. If you develop the concept of circuits and the court systems could be coordinated in a far more useful way, but we had to do something about Indian country because we had historically failed in our trust obligations. We've got to recognize that tribes are going to emerge in stronger and stronger numbers and have a real voice.

Baker

This is a real area of interest to me as well, of tribal sovereignty and tribal systems of justice. Was the federal government, at the time you were at the Justice Department, permitting greater tribal sovereignty in law enforcement and justice issues at lower level?

Reno

We were trying to encourage Native American courts, tribal courts, recognizing that tribal customs and traditions might not square with what federal law enforcement would do. There were problems because there was a lack of resources in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. People felt that there might be more resources coming from the Justice Department if we took more responsibility and tried to get the funding issue addressed in our subcommittee.

But what we basically did was try to strengthen and support the tribal courts, have federal investigators available for complex cases--homicides, child abuse, and the like--so that there was competent law enforcement investigative capability. It worked in some places where people were coordinated, but it was particularly difficult for example, in Alaska, where you had six people in a village wanting their sovereign-to-sovereign recognition.

Baker

So even in things like murder cases they were not assumed by the Feds.

Reno

The Feds assumed responsibility for the murder cases, but the FBI agents who were assigned in Indian country were spread so thin that we had to constantly seek to reinforce it and to let people know how important it was.

Baker

How about another issue, similar to gaming: tribal decisions to take toxic waste sites and other things like that onto tribal lands. That's been a real hotly contested sovereignty issue in parts of New Mexico.

Reno

I haven't heard that. I don't recall that coming up in the listening conference.

Riley

My memory fails me about where the Bureau of Indian Affairs is placed.

Reno

Interior.

Riley

And the relationship with Interior, from your perspective, was a good working relationship on this issue?

Reno

It was a very good working relationship as I recall. It was rendered more difficult after the independent counsel issue with Babbitt because of his feelings, but we continued on through the relationship.

Riley

Did you have a contact person in the White House on Indian affairs issues?

Reno

I don't think there was a single person, but there was a good knowledge in the White House of Indian affairs. My recollection is that there were at least one or two events at the White House where the President attended with tribal leaders.

Riley

You felt that the President had--

Reno

The President had a good grasp of the issues.

Baker

Was there anyone in your administration in the Justice Department, any native peoples?

Reno

Yes. They were instrumental--these were the people we used--

Baker

They weren't just window dressing?

Reno

They weren't window dressing. You went to So-and-So, and I don't remember their names, to make sure that the tribal perspective was heard in the Solicitor General's office and elsewhere throughout the department.

Riley

Just projecting into the future from what you were saying, what is it about the growth of the gaming industry that you detect as being so difficult to deal with?

Reno

It's not the growth of the gaming industry per se that is the problem. But you look at the Miccosukee, they have two casinos now. They are sponsoring the debate at the University of Miami. They made a sizable contribution to the University of Miami to enable us to get the debate there. They just opened a Hard Rock Caf? casino on I-95 that's just booming. They're into purchase of property throughout the community. They are taking--I don't know all the facts of this case so take it with a grain of salt--but for example, an Indian was accused, I think, of child abuse. The local prosecutor pursued the case and the tribe objected mightily. It has been a very difficult issue with local law enforcement since U.S. 41 runs through tribal lands, what can be done on U.S. 41. You have Indian speed traps that are causing real concern. The more they exercise their sovereignty over lands that people have fished on, the more difficult it is going to be.

Morrisroe

Were the initiatives like the listening conferences and others, were these at your own initiative, or was this a White House--

Reno

We proposed it and the White House liked the idea.

Riley

Anything else from that? The cybersecurity.

Reno

I think this is an issue people still don't understand. I'm not fluent in cyber issues. I can deal in concepts and I had great people coaching me, if you will, in the section of the Criminal Division that focused on this issue. We had some wonderful people there, we tried to expand it, we tried to work with other agencies of government. And we tried to work with the private sector. The Bureau was butt-headed about encryption and did not have the expertise necessary to really address the issues.

The White House was supportive of our efforts, but I don't think this country truly understands what's at stake here. It goes back to the public school system and educating people to develop skills that are necessary to fill the jobs. We're importing people with H-1B visas because we do not have sufficient computer skills. So what is a remarkable tool will not only go to waste in some instances, but this is the time we should be developing standards and developing a proactive, positive approach to how we utilize cyber technology in communication, education, commerce, better understanding of people.

We can't even do an election in south Florida because we didn't have people with the skills necessary to run the polls. The poll workers we had known for a long time--good people, you always saw them at the polls--didn't know how to make the computer work. We saw the results in 2002. We put a lot of effort into it, much more needs to be done.

Baker

When you had international conferences, what were the main issues? What were the main concerns raised internationally?

Reno

Cyber technology was one of the issues we raised.

Baker

And particular types of cyber crime?

Reno

We were interested in cyber terrorism and threats on the information infrastructure, the critical infrastructure. We focused on that. We had one great meeting, which was by computer around the world. The Japanese and I had to get up early. It was fascinating. But we spent a lot of time trying to educate other leaders around the country, around the world, in the private sector.

We found with the private sector that the IT [information technology] people needed our help to persuade the CEOs [chief executive officers] that this was a critical issue. I don't know what has happened in this ensuing time, but this has really got to move ahead.

Baker

So you were starting already to have international conventions on cooperation, treaties--

Reno

We were trying to develop procedures and the White House was very attentive to this issue. They had a number of meetings with the IT industry and with the industries reflected in the critical information infrastructure.

Baker

Was this an area where Vice President Gore really led the effort in the White House?

Reno

He did a lot of the work on it.

Riley

Can you talk a little about the Vice President and his role in this administration? He's somebody whose name I don't think we've mentioned until just now, and I wonder if you could give us your picture of the place he held in this constellation of figures and what his relationship was with you and the President in particular.

Reno

Up until Lewinsky, the working relationship between the President and the Vice President seemed to me to be one of the ideal relationships. They had great mutual respect. The President understood how bright the Vice President was, the Vice President understood the reverse. They got along together, they were congenial at meetings. They were in sync. It was just a pleasure to be around them.

The Vice President when there's "no compelling authority" or whatever the line was--

Riley

No controlling legal authority.

Reno

--got himself into one of the most--he was really a pleasure to deal with, but there was something a little strained about it. When he was trying to give everybody the hammer, the Golden Hammer Award for reinventing government or something like that, the people seemed to be forgotten and it was just the structure and the orderly approach. I wondered about him because I had seen him at the Gridiron Club when he led one of the skits, and he was absolutely hysterically funny. I flew to South Africa with him and he was a riot on the plane. It was always a puzzle to me. I think the best description I got was from Meg Greenfield who said, "Albert Gore grew up in the Ritz-Carlton with his mother and father and all the other establishment people, and it was a difficult place to grow up and to be yourself."

Meador

I thought I heard you say, "Up until Lewinsky" Gore and Clinton got along very well. Did that change after Lewinsky?

Reno

I don't know whether it changed during the time, I didn't see that. But as we came to the end of the administration you could see the toll that had been taken.

Meador

Relationships toward the end were not what they were during the first few years?

Riley

From your perspective, did that also influence the people who were effectively the Vice President's people as opposed to the President's people? Did you detect that there were separate communities developing?

Reno

No. I never felt there were separate communities.

Riley

Since we're at this point, let me go ahead and ask you the question about proceeding into the 2000 election. Did that tension remain a feature between the President and the Vice President as the Vice President was launching and moving off on his own on the campaign in 2000?

Reno

The President seemed to regret--we flew down to Norfolk for a service for those who were killed in the Gulf of Aden bombing. He was speaking out loud about how he thought he could help the Vice President.

Riley

The inference being that there was some frustration that he was not being asked to help.

Reno

Yes.

Meador

Focusing on the end of the administration raises a question I wanted to ask of the famous pardons at the last minute, the 11th hour. Did you have any role in that? I know there's a pardon attorney in the Justice Department. What role did he play or did you play in that?

Reno

What had traditionally developed when Jamie Gorelick took office as Deputy was that the Deputy supervised the pardon process. Eric Holder supervised that pardon process, and he should speak to it because at one point he expressed frustration about what the White House was doing.

Riley

Expressed to you?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

What was the White House doing that he was frustrated over?

Reno

Some of the pardons that they seemed to want to grant. It was two or three days before the end of the administration and I didn't get the details. One of the things I regret is not getting into it and trying to say, "Let's watch what we're doing."

Meador

Had the pardons that were granted been processed through the Justice Department in the regular procedure?

Reno

I don't know whether it was the regular procedure or not, and that's what is disturbing to me.

Riley

I'm trying to recall whether there were pardons issued in advance of this. My assumption is that there must have been some.

Reno

He didn't grant many pardons at all. And that was frustrating because there were some pardons that should be granted.

Riley

Were you involved in the processing of those and in attempting to make an argument to the White House that he ought to act on these?

Reno

We made some decisions with respect to the pardon attorney and looked at the process. We never got anywhere in terms of urging him to grant pardons.

Morrisroe

Was the resistance coming from the counsel's office staff in forwarding the recommendations to the President, or in the President himself or political advisors?

Reno

I don't know.

Riley

Did you ever get a sense of why there was some resistance or could you speculate about why there would be?

Reno

I never understood.

Baker

Were any of those people's pardons then included among those that were issued at the very end of the administration?

Reno

I don't have a recollection of--

Meador

Focusing on the end of the administration, were you involved in any way in a transition team looking toward the coming in of the new administration?

Reno

I set up a process, my chief of staff, Ann Harkins, was coordinating, trying to make sure that we provided support, that people from the administration could come to somebody. [John] Ashcroft wasn't confirmed right away, so we dealt with Paul McNulty. I think I may have met once with McNulty to say, "If there's anything that you need, let us know."

Baker

You did that also with John Ashcroft.

Reno

I called John Ashcroft, after he was nominated but before he was confirmed, saying, "I understand you probably don't want to get into it now, but whenever you want to, I'm happy to meet with you and go over the details." He called after he was confirmed, said that he would like to come to Miami to meet with me and I said, "You're the busy one, I'll come up there." We had lunch and I went over a list of things with him. That was that.

Meador

Did he ask you any questions?

Reno

He seemed surprised. It was interesting to me because I had a long list and I had some memos that I had sent to Bree describing what needed to be done with the connecting-the-dots problem. He turned as I was leaving and said, "Now we must really get on this." The implication of his statement was, "I thought this was just going to be a pro forma thing, but we need to do something."

Riley

Were you at all surprised at his selection as Attorney General?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

You had worked with him when he was in the Senate on the Judiciary Committee.

Reno

Yes.

Baker

What was your impression of his understanding of the big legal issues that the Justice Department would be facing?

Reno

I thought he would have an understanding of the issues, a different perspective than I had, though.

Riley

Dan, is there anything else you wanted to ask about that transitional period? I want to dial back, we've got a lot of stuff to go back and pick up.

Meador

During your meeting with him, did he manifest any interest in any particular aspect of the Justice Department or ask any questions about certain aspects of the operation?

Reno

No, he seemed to just listen to me.

Baker

Did he contact you again after the lunch?

Reno

No.

Baker

So that was it.

Riley

There are a lot of things we've dropped in the process. One was Oklahoma City, we didn't talk about that at all. I wonder if I might ask you two questions as a way of getting into the subject. One is do you recall having very much of your time devoted, in advance of Oklahoma City, to questions of domestic terrorism and these domestic extremist groups? Secondly, can you narrate for us how you heard about this and what you did over the next couple of days after the news came?

Reno

Following Waco, Louis did a nice job of reaching out and identifying people who were members of the militia, people like the Montana Freemen, and developing information.

Riley

Was most of that done internally with the FBI, or was he consulting with people like Morris Dees' operation in Montgomery?

Reno

I think local law enforcement and state law enforcement utilized Dees more than the FBI did. But they did, it seems to me, a good job of reaching out and identifying militia who were not supportive of illegal actions or criminal action but shared their more extreme colleagues' feelings about the government. Louis and I would spend time talking about what they were doing, who they had been able to identify. I think it gave us a good sense of what was happening with the militia.

Baker

In tracking weapons, tracking--

Reno

Tracking who was doing what.

Riley

And the basis for this, I'm thinking, surely you were sensitive about questions of surveilling or reviewing.

Reno

We met reasonable--I forget the exact language of the [Edward] Levi issues, but enough to keep in touch with people, understand what was going on. The first I heard about Oklahoma City, my chief of staff, John Hogan, came in and said, "Turn on CNN," and there was the Murrah Building. I called Larry Potts at the FBI. They had not heard about it. We coordinated with the White House, arranging for me to come out and say what I could about what we were doing. Worked with Louis immediately, identified a person who was leaving Oklahoma City, I forget his name, but he immediately became a suspect. He was taking a flight from, I think, Oklahoma City to Chicago to London. We worked with English colleagues to find out as much as we could about him, determined that he was not the person.

Meanwhile there was a really remarkable effort underway to try to rescue people but also to find the VIN [vehicle identification number] number. The trooper who arrested [Timothy] McVeigh was again key to the issue. I went out on Sunday with the President and Mrs. Clinton to the service, and I visited the U.S. attorney's office. There had been some families affected in that office. We formed, with the state and locals, a coordinated effort headed by the FBI. They did a splendid job of the forensics and all that was involved. There was an issue as to who was going to prosecute the case, and I made the decision to form a team.

I personally interviewed the persons we were going to select and asked them to participate and persuaded them in some instances, because they realized it was going to be a drain on their family.

Baker

Were the people you were bringing in from outside the government?

Reno

No.

Baker

They were elsewhere in government. Mostly the Justice Department?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Can you tell us what you were looking for, or had you already made up your mind just based on--

Reno

We got suggestions from people, people who could work together as a team, people who were good lawyers, not just good trial lawyers but good advocates of the law. They put together a tremendous case. For [Terry] Nichols' prosecution I had to meet at the airport with one of the prosecutors I had to try to persuade to stay on. The staffing issues were incredibly important. The group that did it was extraordinary. We also focused on victims' issues and developed a victim support effort and victims' issues group headed by the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, which really did a remarkable job.

Baker

Do you have the name of the person who headed the team of prosecutors?

Reno

Joe Hartzler, I think.

Riley

I have one question about the immediate aftermath. Was the person that you had tracked to the UK [United Kingdom] of Arab descent?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

And the second question, there was considerable speculation immediately thereafter that this was an attack from an outside source. Can you confirm for us that that was something that was very much on your mind?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Can you say anything about why you ruled that out at the time?

Reno

I think we were able to identify where he was, what he was doing.

Baker

I'm interested in the legislative aftermath. Is that a good thing to go into at this point? The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, were you involved in the framing of that legislation?

Reno

We talked about that. That's the crime bill, isn't it?

Baker

No, there was an earlier crime bill in the administration, in '94, the Omnibus--

Reno

This was Oklahoma City?

Baker

This is right after Oklahoma City.

Reno

They presented to me a list of things they wanted.

Baker

The team did?

Reno

No, this was the Criminal Division.

Baker

And said, "If we're going to confront this effectively in the future, this is what we need, these are the tools we need"?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Let me ask a general question. Nancy, it may be that you could come back and punctuate this with some specifics. I don't think I'm violating any confidences by saying that when Philip Zelikow was in the room yesterday, he said he had commented to others that you were an Attorney General who had devoted a lot of time to the question of terrorism, which historically will be of some interest to people looking back after 9/11. I'm wondering if you might again tell us, in as much narrative as you can, about your own work on the issue of terrorism. Can you say anything about the relative priority it took in your own work, and take us through the points at which that became a more prominent issue?

Reno

When I took office, I was facing the first World Trade Center issue and Ramsi Yousef was still at large. So it became an immediate focus, an immediate focus that continued with Mary Jo White, who would brief me regularly on what was happening. As the information developed, New York became the repository of the Osama bin Laden information.

Riley

So at the earliest stage, bin Laden was somebody on your radar screen?

Reno

Not by name. I don't think I ever focused on the name. I think the name may have come up early on. But then I had to make the decision that summer, the summer of '93, with respect to the blind sheikh and whether he should be charged, and I again focused on the issues. We focused a great deal on domestic terrorism, what the militia or others might do. But one of the things I thought was important was to keep an open mind, because you saw what somebody could do in Waco. While we traced this Arab person to the UK, it was still clear--and I remember when Louis called me, and Louis put additional security on me because of what was coming out as a connection and what we were learning about McVeigh.

Riley

I want to make sure I'm hearing you correctly. You said because of what we had seen with Waco, you're indicating here that you were taking the lessons from Waco--

Reno

That terrorism could be a domestic action.

Riley

What I wondered whether I was hearing was whether you were indicating that because of what you had seen in Waco, it had in some way led to perhaps an increased scrutiny on your part about what your professionals were telling you as you were dealing with some of these other very complicated issues. Is it fair to suggest that?

Reno

I don't understand.

Riley

The thing that immediately comes to mind as a political scientist is that the people who studied the Kennedy administration often said there were lessons learned from the Bay of Pigs that made dealing with the Cuban missile crisis more--

Reno

My lessons from Waco, again, are that it is important to have continuity, to have the best available behavioral experts. I think we had done a good job with what we had, but we expanded our efforts with behavioral experts to better understand what motivates people, what they might do.

Riley

Forgive me, I interrupted your train.

Reno

I was briefed at some point, in '95, '96, I think, I'm not sure of the date, by people from the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] on bin Laden. One of the difficulties we had was that New York had become the forum for the bin Laden issues because they all related to the World Trade Center. Experts were there trying to make sure that the Bureau knew what New York knew, recognizing that when New York indicted it was grand jury information and who should know about it was a problem when you considered the FBI structure. If it had been in Washington there might have been a better sense of coordination. But we tried to address that.

At some point, I don't remember the exact date, Fran Townsend became the Director of the Office of Intelligence Policy Review, and she was from New York. She tried the Pizza Connection case with Louis in New York. She knew John O'Neill, who was the FBI person really spearheading the effort. She could find out what was going on and that was a tremendous step for us. It was interesting to me because she was exiled by John Ashcroft and went to the Coast Guard, and she's now the Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security.

Meador

In this connection, did you have many applications filed with the Foreign Intelligence Wiretap Court?

Reno

I don't have the numbers. The record will show that, but we increased the filings tremendously. It was frustrating though. For example, on the heels of the embassy bombing, finding and picking up the paper this morning and reading that the Bureau still has thousands of hours of untranslated tapes. It's just so frustrating, particularly since they've gotten so much money to do it.

Meador

After this CIA briefing, you became aware of or conscious of bin Laden, were you left with the impression that this was a serious domestic threat?

Reno

I knew of bin Laden before the CIA briefing. All you had to do was to understand what they tried to do in New York to understand that he was a danger. I don't know where people were if they didn't think there was a danger. When you saw that they could blow up a garage, and when you saw what they were planning to do with the blind sheikh and when you saw what Ramsi Yousef did with the planes in Manila, you knew they had the capacity to strike in this country.

One of the things I tried to do was to be as honest as I could with people. I can't tell you that we can prevent every terrorist act, but we're going to try to do everything we can, not just to bring people to justice, but to try to prevent it in the first place.

Meador

Did you talk about this directly with the President?

Reno

We had a number of meetings, and I don't remember the exact chronology, but following the embassy bombing, we had meetings in the Situation Room with respect to what our actions should be.

Riley

I want to pose a related question. I'm trying to check my timeline to see when the embassy bombings occurred.

Reno

August of '98, is that it?

Riley

That's correct, August 7th of '98. There has been a lot of discussion in the recent investigations about the compartmentalization of contacts, the stovepipes and so forth. You said that you'd had this briefing from the CIA. Was it unusual for you to have communications back and forth with the CIA?

Reno

No, we had a good working relationship with [John] Deutch and with John Hamre, the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Baker

Was Jamie Gorelick, as your Deputy, one of the main contacts on these--

Reno

She left.

Baker

She was gone by then?

Reno

She was very key; she put a lot of time and effort into those issues. She worked with Michael Vatis and tried to build a real working relationship. An awful lot of effort had gone into the CIA. What you saw in these situations when there was an embassy bombing, we'd go to the SIOC [Strategic Information and Operations Center], the command post of the FBI. It was remodeled. Oklahoma City produced dollars that created a really magnificent SIOC, called the George H. W. Bush. I will never forget walking over to see it for the first time and looking at it and just trying with all my might and main not to say, "You named it what?"

Meador

Can you describe what this is you're talking about?

Reno

This is a super-duper command post with computer connections, closed-circuit TV connections, benches where analysts can work, and different offices where people can meet. It is the fanciest thing you've ever seen.

Meador

Is this in the FBI Building?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

Does it connect them with other people and units and--

Reno

It connects them with units. You can have the CIA and other agencies there. But that's just the command post. Then you have centers throughout--you needed a book to see who was on first. The reason I describe all that, one of the things you learn--and I think that's what Philip was alluding to--is I would go over to the command post and I was beginning to learn--Have you gotten every transcript that might have some information on it that's available now? Have you gotten it translated? You have a rough translation. Have you made sure you have somebody who is really sophisticated about this particular dialect so that they know the usage that might give special meaning to what was involved? Have you checked with New York? What have you done about this? What about this lead? I just saw in the briefing this morning about this person, and what do you know about this person? What connections have you made? Are our legates getting the cooperation they need? It was almost like having a checklist.

Meador

Did you get satisfactory answers to those questions?

Reno

I never got satisfactory answers to the questions of, "Have you finished the tapes?"

Baker

So for all that fancy center, they still didn't hire the interpreters or the translators.

Reno

They didn't have the money to hire the translators. But trying to press those issues, to go over it, to make sure they had the resources was extraordinarily important.

Riley

You were doing this before the embassy bombings or was this after the embassy bombings?

Reno

I think the embassy bombing was the first time because I had learned enough about that point. The other thing is that I saw the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] applications and had some sense of what was happening. What are you doing with these FISA, have you checked it? Have you checked? What are you getting? What are your legates getting from their contacts?

Meador

Had this setup been created before the embassy bombing or was it after?

Reno

It was created as a result of Oklahoma City. I think it's funding that was made available--you should check that.

Riley

Could you tell us a little bit about the institutional cooperation or lack thereof between the FBI and the CIA?

Reno

There was great cooperation. Louis and [George] Tenet and John Hamre and John Deutch, there was really good cooperation at the top.

Meador

Why have we heard so much about a lack of sharing information?

Reno

My argument is, you don't wait until you've got automation. You've got to teach people to share and to understand that this information is vitally important. That comes to the issue of the wall, the so-called wall. The wall was not created--the memos that they say created the wall said, "You shall share." And you've got to develop a mechanism for sharing so that we can protect the Fourth Amendment rights that are available here but ensure an exchange of information that is vital.

Baker

That gets us to the legislation I was mentioning, because that measure really started to shift, I think, the federal legal approach to terrorism. It began to permit, at least on the face of it, the FBI surveillance of group activities, the use of some secret evidence in deportation hearings of suspected terrorists and began to really expand the types of crime, like giving aid to groups that might be identified by the State Department as terrorists. So those were all efforts to restructure the federal legal powers available to federal law enforcement.

Reno

These were issues, for example secret evidence, what I was told was, "We have people in this country we need to deport, but we can't deport them because we can't use the evidence against them." The research indicated that we could possibly deport based on that secret evidence. My experience with the secret evidence confirmed my fears that we are ill advised to use secret evidence because it cannot be examined with--it was just not done well. There were some technical things with respect to cell phones that didn't bother me as much. I think it was keeping up with the technology.

There were other issues that were constitutional but needed guidelines to make sure they were not abused, and we were prepared to try to develop those. What we didn't do, though--One of the issues was with respect to FISA warrants. The issue was, is this being done for the purposes of criminal prosecution and if it is the main purpose, if the principal purpose is criminal prosecution, then you can't use it.

Baker

How about the FBI attending group activities? There's historically a ban on the FBI, coming out of the late '60s and early '70s, of infiltrating groups. The current Attorney General made a great show of "No, now our FBI agents can go out into these organizations." But it seemed that that power had been there since 1996. Were some of the authorities given in 1996 really not implemented by the Justice Department because of concerns about civil liberties, that the powers are there but they have to be used very cautiously?

Reno

As I recall, and I can't remember an incident, in each of the situations we were able to develop the reasonable suspicion, or whatever the language was of the guidance--

Baker

To meet the constitutional test.

Reno

The issue is not the constitutional test because--I would have to go back over the legal briefs and the like. For FISA it was clear that the Constitution did not prohibit a FISA warrant aimed at protecting national security and aimed at a foreign power. But that foreign power did not have the constitutional protections and so it is not to keep it constitutional, it is what was done and what the [Frank] Church Committee and what Attorney General Levi has, as I understand it, developed were guidelines to limit, and it didn't reach constitutional proportion.

What we could have done to avoid this problem is to seek the legislation that Ashcroft sought. But we were already being sniped at about the use of FISAs, and there were threats to limit the FISA applications--

Baker

From Members of Congress.

Reno

So we were concerned about losing some of our authority under the FISA act.

Baker

You were seeking more FISA warrants than previous administrations.

Reno

Yes.

Baker

Who in Congress was opposing that?

Reno

Members of the Judiciary Committee had expressed concern.

Meador

Going back to Nancy's earlier question, what role, if any, did you or anybody in the Justice Department play in shaping this legislation?

Reno

The Criminal Division was responsible for preparing the wish list.

Baker

The FBI had issued a wish list?

Reno

The FBI had a wish list. Criminal Division had a wish list and that was presented to me.

Meador

So you got a draft from the Criminal Division incorporating all of that.

Reno

Yes.

Meador

What happened next?

Reno

Went over it. I don't remember what issues arose, what questions were addressed, but we looked generally at ensuring that it was constitutional and then submitted it.

Meador

Was every item on the wish list included in what you submitted?

Reno

I don't think so, but I can't tell you what was left out.

Baker

And the product that finally came out, was that fairly close to what you had recommended to Congress?

Reno

I don't know.

Meador

Did you send it to the White House for their approval before it went to the Hill?

Reno

We went over with the White House.

Meador

They signed off on what you submitted.

Reno

I don't remember whether they signed off. There were no objections as I understand it.

Riley

I wanted to ask you about your perceptions of whether you felt your successors had been as diligent as you might have expected on these issues after your departure.

Reno

I really can't. I have my opinions but I have not been briefed, so I can't really answer it with--

Riley

Fair enough. It's your oral history and you're permitted to say what you wish.

Meador

Was terrorism one of the items you went over with John Ashcroft when you met with him.

Reno

Yes, I discussed that with him.

Baker

And no follow-up questions from him?

Reno

I don't recall any.

Riley

Your reactions to 9/11 as somebody who had been in a high position of authority?

Reno

I think the same as all Americans, just shock and grief and resolve to pull together, support the President, and work through it.

Meador

Did it go through your mind, I'm not surprised at this?

Reno

What went through my mind was, There's got to be something out there that showed it was coming. I was not briefed, so I really can't, and still have not been briefed. But when I saw the crop duster issue, I wondered how in the world we didn't get a FISA on that. We would have been all over that. When I heard this last April or whenever it was, about the briefing the President received, the chatter, the warnings--I would have been all over that.

Riley

This goes back to the connecting-the-dots issue that you were talking about earlier.

Reno

No, it goes back to connecting the dots, to digging at it, to making sure that we had matters in place. I don't know whether it could have been prevented, but the lack of follow-through seems to have been apparent during that spring and summer.

Baker

Do you think that was partly the result of it being a new administration and a new Attorney General? You had all these years of experience that gave you a sixth sense I guess about what to take seriously. Possibly it was a result of their na?vet? or their newness in office?

Reno

Well, I don't see how anybody could get the briefing the President received and not take it seriously.

Baker

I was interested in some of the challenges you were facing--coming all the way back here to Oklahoma City--some of the challenges the staff faced, mounting an effective prosecution of Timothy McVeigh. You were bringing in people from various--was this part of the team that had been working on this? You had some designated people, or was this handled just as a straightforward case within the U.S. attorney's--

Reno

It was Hartzler's team. It was--

Baker

That did all the investigation and then the prosecution.

Reno

Well, the FBI--

Baker

They coordinated through Hartzler's team.

Reno

Hartzler was the chief prosecutor. There was somebody from the U.S. attorney's office. The U.S. attorney himself worked on the team.

Baker

And the FBI was responding then directly to the team.

Reno

Was part of the team.

Baker

Any particular challenges that that posed? Were there any, for having an effective prosecution?

Reno

There were a massive amount of leads to follow, of legal issues to address to make sure we were fully prepared on the legal issues, coordination with victims, witnesses, making sure people were advised.

Baker

Did you think at that point that there might have been a group behind McVeigh and that you had to exhaust--is that part of what the team examines?

Reno

Well, we pursued every lead. I may be missing something.

Baker

No, I was just curious about how difficult it was to bring an effective prosecution like that with a tremendous amount of national attention.

Reno

It was extremely difficult and they did a remarkable job.

Baker

That then suggests that a lot of cases really can be handled in traditional law enforcement to prosecute some of these worst terrorism cases. Do you think the traditional way of approaching crime, does that work when we're addressing terrorists? I guess the alternative I'm seeing is what we've seen since 9/11--increasing use of military options, military courts, and military orders. To what extent is that necessary to get at suspected terrorists or can we use more of a--?

Meador

Don't you have to make a distinction here between domestic terrorism, somebody like McVeigh, and international terrorism taking place outside the United States?

Reno

I'm not sure, but let me just try to put it in my words. What you want to try to do in any kind of terrorism case or any crime is prevent the crime if you possibly can. Whether it's giving children a firm foundation from zero to three so they grow up not violent, you try to prevent it and you try to capture Ramsi Yousef before he brings down a 747 airliner, and you prosecute the blind sheikh before he does it. Law enforcement is an extraordinarily important tool. You do not want to identify the blind sheikh as a person who is masterminding a sabotage of the UN building and the tunnels and then not have sufficient evidence to prosecute him so he walks free.

Law enforcement is an essential part of prevention. We were able to use the prosecution of the blind sheikh under a little-used provision--you can check the indictments--that prevented him from walking free and remaining capable of terrorist activities. So law enforcement is an important tool. Prevention is an important tool.

Baker

I guess I'm still struggling with what might be differences in approaches between the reliance on law enforcement to bring prosecutions and then--

Reno

But they had brought prosecutions.

Baker

I know that, but we also see increasing reliance on extralegal mechanisms since 9/11. More of the military orders, the rounding up of Arab-Americans in this country, held for detention for months while they're matched up. There are some parallels with the Palmer Raids if anything from 1919, 1920, and other sorts of efforts. I guess I was wondering to what extent those are unnecessary, that we have mechanisms in place under traditional law enforcement and courts, judicial process, that will get us the information we need and permit prosecutions without having to have these extralegal sorts of mechanisms, responses.

Reno

If you have a situation where you have information but you don't have admissible evidence that somebody is about to cause this country great damage, and if you have information that it's the agent of a foreign power--the President ought to be able to devise some method of apprehending that person before he blows up the World Trade Center. You would like to apprehend him with sufficient evidence to incarcerate him, to utilize the maximum penalty for what he was going to do. If you can't, you've got--I don't know what [Yaser Esam] Hamdi, I think Hamdi was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But if there is sufficient evidence to prosecute somebody in a military tribunal, I think there is sufficient evidence to try to prosecute somebody pursuant to the Constitution. And I think American citizens ought to have the right to trial by jury. Designation as enemy combatants where there is little authority for how that's done and where there is to me grave concern about how our prisoners will be treated in future wars based on the way we treated prisoners in this war, or whatever it's called. Does that answer your question?

Baker

Yes, how to balance that liberty-security concern. That was very nicely put.

Riley

You had indicated one of the things you wanted to address was this general question about the Attorney General's relationship with the White House, the State Department, and the National Security Council, on more broad-ranging issues, and this might be the appropriate point since we're dealing with these international questions to come back and ask you to comment a bit.

Reno

What I was talking about there was the State Department usually had the lead, but we were involved more and more, particularly in Latin America and with the G7 [Group of 7 nations] that became the G8 in terms of meeting with Ministers of Justice, addressing cyber technology. We had a major meeting of the Ministers of Justice on cyber issues during the time. And we kept in touch on those issues, on extradition issues, on rule-of-law issues. How we developed, how we worked with Russia to develop the capacity to ensure that the rule of law would be available to American business interests that wanted to do business in Russia. I didn't mean it so much in the national security, but there was a lot of effort in both with Chris [Warren Christopher] and Madeleine that was an important--I felt very comfortable with both people in what we did in the coordinated effort between State and Justice to address those issues.

Riley

It was primarily on those kinds of diplomatic--

Reno

And oftentimes Treasury would be involved, particularly after the peso crisis. With respect to the National Security Council, one of the things that is not clear, the Attorney General sometimes is treated as if he or she is a member of the National Security Council but isn't really a member of the National Security Council and is in and out of the process. As to applying with respect to the legal issues, there was close coordination with the Office of Legal Counsel on those issues. But I think more could be done in involving the Attorney General in the issues, because so often the factual basis of the issues is extremely important. And the Attorney General should be advised of that.

I worked something out with Sandy Berger so that his legal counsel was Jamie [James E. Baker], he is now a judge on the military court of appeals [United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces], and he had a wonderful capacity for cutting through the facts and getting to the heart of the matter, so we didn't have cases in which we had to opine but in which the facts shifted. I think my first experience with that was in the response to the embassy bombing and the pharmaceutical factory.

Baker

So in that international crisis the White House did turn to the Justice Department for legal advice.

Reno

The Justice Department opined with respect to covert actions and other issues, and the Attorney General was oftentimes involved. I would not be at a meeting that other principals might be at and there was not a continuum that I found helpful.

Meador

Speaking of legal advice, if I can inject a question I've wanted to ask. The Office of Legal Counsel, of course, generates lots of opinions, but not everything they turn out, as I recall, is classified as an opinion of the Attorney General. They're rather special, as I recall. Did any of those opinions come to you so that you could review and make them opinions of the Attorney General rather than just OLC opinions?

Reno

I don't know. The opinions came to me both from Walter and with his successors on everything that was of any covert action, any response; those were run by me whether they were made Attorney General's opinions or not.

Meador

Did you ever disapprove or disagree with any of them?

Reno

I don't recall disagreeing with any of them because what we were able to do before they reached the point of final draft is work it out so we agreed. And we worked through the issues and where there were problems, to the extent we were advised on the facts--

Baker

"We" meaning you working with the Office of Legal Counsel?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

How were your relations with the legal staffs in, say, the State Department and elsewhere in government? Were you in close contact with them on some of these issues or in the Defense Department?

Reno

My recollection was that Conrad Harper was the legal advisor to the State Department at the outset. And then Harold Koh may have taken over from him. I cannot remember the exact chronology and we had an excellent working relationship with them. In terms of the covert action, the Justice Department took the lead. But the problem again was the facts, in trying to get the facts as clearly as we could.

Morrisroe

With regard to your periodic participation in the NSC meetings, did you rely on Sandy Berger and the NSC to advise you when your participation would be useful, or did you make that determination based on knowing what a particular meeting was going to be on?

Reno

In terms of responding to some of these issues, we had what was called a CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group], but it was Dick Clarke's operation. Jim Reynolds or Mark Richard from the Criminal Division was usually there, and representatives of the FBI, and it would come up through the Deputy's office. I would be advised of meetings through the CSG or otherwise. I have never been clear on why I was at some meetings and why I wasn't at other meetings.

Morrisroe

Touching on the issue of the Department of Justice's and your relationship with other agency counsels, was it common on even, let's say, issues unrelated to intelligence or covert operations--say, if there was an issue that the Resources Litigating Division was dealing with that involved the EPA--was it typical to work with the agency counsels in crafting the Department of Justice's policy on a particular policy issue?

Reno

For example?

Morrisroe

Let's say the Antitrust Division was dealing with a merger of Northrop and Lockheed Martin. Is that the kind of thing you would discuss with the general counsel for the Department of Defense? Or with the EPA, the application of certain regulations?

Reno

It would depend on a number of issues. I might mention it to Bill Cohen, or when John Hamre was the Deputy Secretary of Defense, he left with a year or two remaining in the administration, but I worked with him and found him just great to work with and would have raised it on an informal basis if there was an issue.

Morrisroe

This is a somewhat interesting question when you have legal policy makers in a variety of policy departments. There is a natural connection with the Department of Justice that many other Cabinet officers wouldn't intrinsically have with sub-Cabinet officers in other departments. So I'm curious whether or not there was a culture of the Department of Justice being free to, without directly communicating with the head of Interior or Defense, whether you or the Office of Legal Counsel felt free to communicate with the general counsels of the agencies in developing legal policy.

Reno

The Office of Legal Counsel should have felt free, and I never had any indication that they didn't feel free to communicate.

Baker

But there were no conflicts. Periodically in earlier administrations there have been instances where a department might want to go one way on litigation, and other agencies, maybe even the U.S. government, wanted to go another way.

Reno

There were some situations, for example with civil rights, where the civil rights people of the Department of Education wanted to do something and the Justice Department said, "We don't think this can be done" or something such as that.

Meador

Well, if it's in litigation, wouldn't it be the role of the Solicitor General to sort that out? If you're petitioning the Supreme Court or have a case in the Supreme Court--

Reno

The Supreme Court is a different issue. In terms of the litigation, in terms of policy. I understood your question to be initial litigation. Clearly when it comes to the Supreme Court, the Solicitor General will bring--Seth or Walter would bring in the people from the other agencies that had a particular focus on the issue.

Meador

When I was there, there was a proposal to create something that was called, I believe, the Federal Justice Council, which would be all the general counsels of all the agencies would come together periodically in this group to share concerns and work out ways of dealing with things and so on and so on. Was anything like that ever talked about?

Reno

We had meetings sometimes of the general counsels.

Morrisroe

At the Department of Justice.

Reno

Or I think we may have traded off and had them different places.

Riley

You've got to get out of the building occasionally.

Reno

Usually at the Department of Justice. One of the things we did, for example, we tried to promote our alternative dispute resolution [ADR] both within the department and with other agencies. We worked with general counsel a great deal on those efforts and were able to encourage the spread of ADR and the opportunity for ADR.

Morrisroe

Can I ask a related question to this because it was an issue of some import? We touched on it briefly before, but I think it's another example of an effort to coordinate legal policy across the different agencies and departments, and that's with respect to FOIA and creating a standard agency response to FOIA. You mentioned the ADR. Were there other issues on which the Department of Justice or the administration made a concerted effort to have a coordinated legal policy on an issue that would cross agencies?

Reno

The whole question of mending affirmative action rather than ending affirmative action required the Department of Energy, as I recall, Transportation, Education, HHS, Labor. They all had to be in on them.

Baker

And that was not done through Cabinet meetings themselves, it was more informal communication.

Reno

No.

Riley

If there are other questions about this, we can deal with that. Dan raised the issue of the Supreme Court, and I wondered if you would care to comment about how you felt the administration generally did, not in appointments, but in dealing with the Supreme Court. I'm not asking you for a scorecard, but did you have a sense that the Court dealt well with you or did not deal well with you in your time?

Reno

My sense is that the Court dealt well with us. When you say that, they obviously disagreed with us on a number of issues. All the issues with respect to states' rights come to mind. But in terms of respect, the sense I had from the Justices was that they had a great respect for the Solicitor General's office and felt that they ably represented the government.

Baker

The only case I could find where you argued before the Supreme Court yourself was in December of '96. I think it was a case involving police discretion in searching passengers in a car that was stopped in a routine traffic violation. Were there others?

Reno

No, that was the only one.

Baker

What was your experience going before the Supreme Court? I presume you didn't wear the morning coat.

Reno

I have a black-and-white dress that--

Baker

--mimics it well enough. And the questioning from the Court and presenting the oral arguments?

Reno

I was amicus. First, I was vastly relieved as I listened to Justice [Antonin] Scalia and others address the Attorney General of Maryland, who made the principal argument. I was glad when I stood up that I only had ten minutes, because the questions were fast and furious. Justice [Clarence] Thomas was the only one who didn't ask questions, and they were really at it. I can remember standing up to begin and then thinking, You're just going to have to get into this and let the script go, and went into it. Suddenly it was as if part of my brain were detached and I thought, Here you're standing before the greatest institution of justice in the history of the world and answering questions about, "Well, Ms. Reno," says Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor, "what happens if the baby has to go pee?"

When the yellow light went on and I asked the Chief Justice for permission to finish my answer, I was sad that it was over.

Baker

By then you were really enjoying the repartee. They were thoughtful questions, clearly prepared?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

The one case I particularly wanted to ask you about was Clinton v. Jones. The department had taken a position on that, which was not the position that the Court adopted. Were you surprised at that decision?

Reno

I don't remember being surprised or not.

Baker

In fact, there were all these other ones. I think the one that the Department of Justice supported was the case involving the Secret Service and that they should be compelled to testify or answer a subpoena by the independent prosecutor and testify before a grand jury. That was Rubin v. U.S. There were other cases, though, where the United States was not a party, specifically like the President versus the independent counsel that was dealing with the White House lawyers. How did the Justice Department or the Solicitor General's office make a distinction and determine which case to challenge, and does the Justice Department see itself to some extent as an advocate of Presidential power and the Presidency within the constitutional system?

Reno

I think the Justice Department has to be an advocate for the people. So if the President instructed us to advocate for Presidential power, it was inconsistent with the people's interest, and I can't think of a situation like that that occurred. I think we have got to be the attorney for the people.

Meador

To put this another way, who did you consider to be your client?

Reno

I considered the people to be my client.

Meador

Not the President?

Reno

Not the President.

Baker

And the Secret Service case was consistent with that?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

How was that seen as different from the White House attorneys?

Reno

We'd have to go back over it with Seth really.

Baker

And it was Seth, the Solicitor General's office that was making the determination?

Reno

It was Office of Legal Counsel and Seth, as I recall.

Riley

I want to ask a related question in an area that we talked a little bit about yesterday, but only in the strict sense of dealing with the independent counsel investigation, and that's the whole question of impeachment during the second term. Can you tell us a bit about what you were doing, if anything, related to the impeachment effort, and more generally, what your sense was about the appropriate role of the Attorney General in that particular question as it was working its way through the system?

Reno

I would have to go back and look at the chronology and what was happening at particular times, because it all becomes a blur for me. We addressed the issues, what action we should take. And there were issues, but I cannot identify them without reference to the time being considered.

Riley

There may be a way to refine this, slicing it a couple of ways that would help, and if it doesn't then we can move on to other things. You indicated that you felt like your client was the people rather than the President. Did that in some way shape how you viewed your general activities on impeachment questions?

Reno

I can't give you the process by which I reached the conclusion. The process by which I reached it began early on when, I forget what the situation was with regards to one particular issue, and somebody asked me, "What if the President told you to do such-and-such?" I said, "I don't represent the President. I represent the people to make sure that the laws are enforced."

Meador

Is that the conclusion you're talking about? You said you reached a conclusion, is that what you mean?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

When the President first appointed you and was talking about looking for restoring trust and integrity within the Justice Department, was that your understanding, that he also would see you then as the Attorney General for the people rather than for the executive branch or the Presidency per se?

Reno

That was my sense. I'd never talked to him about it.

Baker

The kind of language that he used sort of reinforced that image.

Riley

The question I'm asking may be nonsensical because I'm not a lawyer, and there's no formal role for the Attorney General in the business of impeachment.

Reno

What is at issue and what I can't answer is, there may be issues where the people's view, where what had been done by Starr might have some impact on the impeachment managers had Starr done something that was against the interest of the people of the United States in terms of a wrong interpretation of law.

Riley

Sure, I appreciate your contributing that for the record. I was trying really to move beyond the question of the independent counsel's business in all of this as an investigator and a provider of Congress information, to look actually at the formal process of impeachment once it gets underway. Posing a more general question about whether there was any place for the Attorney General in that business--

Reno

I don't recall a situation developing where we felt we should be involved.

Riley

That really does answer my question because I didn't know whether there might have been some way in which you felt that your role or your expertise or your constitutional position was of some import at that stage of the process.

Baker

Or like Andrew Johnson's Attorney General, you could quit and go defend him. Of course, he was never reconfirmed.

Reno

One of the things, I miss Chuck Ruff.

Riley

We miss him too. We didn't have a chance to talk with him and it's a great loss.

Baker

There were some wonderful Supreme Court cases, major constitutional ones that came down during your seven and a half years so I wonder--I've already mentioned U.S. v. Lopez, and U.S. v. Morrison. I'd just like to get if you have any particular sense about them or some interesting insights into the choice of the United States government, or the response of the Court on these, the U.S. v. Virginia, the Virginia Military Institute single-sex discrimination struck down. Were you surprised by that outcome?

Reno

No.

Baker

So that was sort of tracking how it had gone with that initial decision of permitting Mary Baldwin College to set up a leadership program for women and seen as being inadequate and the return then of the case.

Prince v. U.S., that state law enforcement can't be compelled to administer federal law. That was relating to the Brady Act, 5-4.

Reno

I was surprised at that.

Baker

Another one that I thought was sort of a surprise, Alden v. Maine, the one in '99, the Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity. That means state probation officers can't sue a state over violation of federal labor law, another 5-4.

Reno

I don't recall.

Baker

That was another one where it was sort of an assertion of a state immunity, an Eleventh Amendment claim. It was a strange case. And then Clinton v. City of New York, the line-item veto case, that it violates the presentment clause, a 6-3 vote. Were you kind of surprised by that or was that one that you were anticipating?

Reno

I can't say that I was anticipating it, but I wasn't particularly surprised.

Baker

I think that's it for the ones I made note of. How about the role that amicus activity played in the administration? Was your Solicitor General's office particularly active in filing amicus? After all, you argued amicus.

Reno

You really should talk to Seth or Walter about that.

Baker

Might be able to even compile figures from other administrations to get a comparative look on how active--since that's a way of affecting legal outcomes in a policy direction when you're not really the litigant. That's it for my Supreme Court stuff. Does anyone have any Supreme Court questions?

Meador

No, I don't have any Supreme Court questions, but I have a couple of other questions.

Riley

Go ahead, Dan.

Meador

This jumps way, way back to judicial nominations, just one question about that. Who decided where to place that responsibility in the Justice Department? Over the decades it has been in various places and offices and so on. Did you make a decision to place it with the Office of Policy Development, or did you just inherit that from the previous administration and go on?

Reno

I don't know whether I inherited it from the previous administration. I made a conscious decision to place it there. That really arises from the connection that Eldie had with the White House and placing it with her.

Meador

One other incidental question. Are you familiar at all with a book titled Federal Justice, by Homer Cummings and Carl McFarland?

Reno

No, I'm not.

Meador

I don't think I have anything else at the moment.

Riley

You thought you were going to get out without any questions about Elian Gonzalez, I could tell. But we wouldn't dare conduct an interview without getting your account of what happened in this instance. Let me tell you that I was living abroad when this happened, and it didn't register very much in Europe at the time. I'd be interested in your sense of the historical importance of this and what it says to you about the nature of American politics at the end of the 20th century that this became such a major issue at the time. Could you tell us a little bit about how this presented itself to you and the major points you had to deal with as you were working your way through this?

Reno

It was Thanksgiving of '99. I was home and picked up the paper. Here was the picture of a little boy who'd been rescued from the Gulf Stream, this cute little boy and I thought, What a cute little boy. The early part of 2000 the issue became, What do we do? The cousin filed on Elian's behalf. INS undertook to consider the legal issues, concluded that for a child that young, the cousin could not act. We had an investigation through the, what do you call the office in Havana, the State Department's office?

Meador

Legal Counsel?

Riley

It's not a consulate at all.

Reno

It has a special name, whatever it is. The information we got back was that he had been a good father, he participated in the child's upbringing, and he should be the one who determines whether he wants to file.

Baker

So the Cuban government did not contact the U.S. government on behalf of the father.

Reno

I don't know what the State Department did. But what I couldn't understand was why the father wasn't coming to this country immediately. First the grandmothers came. I met them. The mother of Elian's mother said that Juan Miguel [Gonzalez] was a good father and that he indicated he wanted the child back.

Riley

Your meeting was in Washington or did you go to Miami?

Reno

It was in Washington. So Doris made the decision that the father would have to be the one acting for the child if he wanted to claim persecution. The father didn't come to the country, and I always will look forward to the chance to ask him why he didn't.

Meador

Could he have come legally to the United States?

Reno

We could have brought him to this country. I don't think there was any prohibition against our bringing him as we did. We wanted to give them a chance, and I reviewed it and I confirmed Doris's opinion, that the father should speak for the child. At that point they had something pending in state court saying that the state court had jurisdiction. When we announced that the father should speak for the child and have custody of the child, they filed an action in the federal district court. The federal district court, before the state court acted, upheld my decision and said I acted within my discretion.

They immediately filed an appeal in the Eleventh Circuit. I'm not exactly sure of the chronology. The Court stayed the decision of the district court to the extent that it said no action can be taken that would permit the child to be returned to Cuba prior to the resolution of this matter. At some point during this time, we had been negotiating--there were 10 or 11 sets of lawyers and when one would leave the other would come in. It was very difficult to negotiate, but we tried everything we knew to negotiate a proper transfer of the child if the court's decision was affirmed.

Riley

Who were the 10 or 11 sets of lawyers? Their clients--

Reno

Manny Diaz, the present mayor of Miami, Kendall Coffey, the former U.S. attorney, who--

Riley

So anybody who could get a piece of the action.

Reno

Yes. Some immigration lawyers. The Eleventh Circuit ruled and affirmed the decision of the lower court and continued the stay and made it clear that the child could be transferred to the father, but the father could not leave the United States with the child. About that point Juan Miguel came to the States, to Washington, to visit me with his wife and their child.

Riley

Were you having meetings with them in Spanish? Were you speaking Spanish to them?

Reno

No. I understood something of it, but in situations like that I always used an interpreter to make sure I didn't make a mistake.

Riley

But you do have a fluency in Spanish.

Reno

I'm not fluent in Spanish. He impressed me as somebody who really cared about his son. Watching him handle his baby, he understood children, infants. He was impressive in that regard.

Meador

Let me go back to the point I raised earlier. I've never understood how he could, number one, get out of Cuba, and number two, enter the United States. How was that handled?

Reno

He just came.

Meador

I thought [Fidel] Castro didn't let people go.

Reno

Well, Castro let him go.

Meador

He just let him go.

Reno

He was at the Cuban interest section in Washington. I was in Oklahoma City with the President involved in a dedication of a memorial, as I recall. I flew back with the President on Air Force One. He asked about where we were and I told him what we planned to do and that if we didn't get the child voluntarily turned over--I gave him a description and he said that was fine.

Meador

What is it you told him you planned to do?

Reno

I told him we had INS agents who were specially trained in this regard and that we would undertake to seize the child with the proper warrant. That the experts had told us that the show of force would greatly diminish the need for force. I told him what we were going to do.

At some time, I think Thursday afternoon, I got a call from [Edward T.] Tad Foote, the president of the University of Miami, concerned about the way things were going.

Let me back up. At some point you'll have to get the chronology of the days. I went to Miami. Sister Jeanne [O'Laughlin] said, "I think you should come down here." She had already established herself as the protector of Elian, but I wanted to do anything that I could, I did not want to leave any stone unturned. So I met with the Gonzalez family at Sister Jeanne's. I talked about how important it was to resolve this in a thoughtful, peaceful way and said that if they wanted to go forward with it, the child should be at the plane at Opa Locka at the certain time.

Riley

Was the child present while you were having these conversations with the grownups?

Reno

Yes.

Riley

At their insistence?

Reno

I was aghast that he was there, sitting on laps at times, other times one of the nuns would be running around after him. I went to a hotel that night because I was going to have to fly back quickly the next morning--not fly back, I had to go to the U.S. attorney's office. I turned on the television and Lazaro Gonzalez was saying, "If she wants the boy, she's going to have to take him by force."

I then went to Oklahoma City with the President, came back. Foote called me Thursday afternoon. I told him I felt like I had been whipsawed back and forth, and I couldn't delay. He said he wanted to bring in the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Miami and another member of the Board. This was Carlos Saladrigas and Carlos [M. de la Cruz, sr.], the Board Chair, and Aaron Podhurst, a prominent Miami lawyer, who I know well and have great confidence in. I did not know the other two men.

Riley

Were they Cuban?

Reno

Yes.

Meador

What did he want them to do?

Reno

To try to work out a peaceful resolution of the matter. I said, "I want something in writing signed by the Gonzalezes." I got a paper that was not signed by them. By 5 o'clock Friday afternoon I got a paper that was unacceptable. I think one of the problems was I was trying to work out something that was acceptable to the father and to the Gonzalez family in Miami. They did not realize--They thought all they had to do was satisfy me and that the satisfaction of the father was not an issue, as best I can reconstruct it.

The father, through Greg Craig, his lawyer, did not agree. He said, "Based on the Court's decision, I ought to be able to have this child. You've got to enforce the court order." I faxed something back to Aaron Podhurst, not realizing he had gone out for dinner, apparently not understanding the urgency of it, and didn't get the fax until I called him to find out. He didn't get it till late. I understood how much this affected the Cuban community and searched for every way I could to try to effect something that would permit the boy to be transferred to his father and held in the United States until the Supreme Court ruled.

I do not have the precise chronology as to when during the course of the evening, but at some point, I said, "Aaron, that's it. We've tried everything." We'd discussed having the father come down and meet with the family in a hotel and take custody of the boy in a hotel. Or go to Washington and we would take the family to Washington so they could be nearby. We couldn't work anything out. Then I was told Lazaro Gonzalez had gone to sleep, so I didn't think anybody was really serious about trying to effect any change at all. So at about 3:30--and take that with a grain of salt, the times are not--I said, "That's it. I can't negotiate any more." Because I knew the plans were in place for the people to come in.

Aaron called one of the two Carloses and that person, whoever it was, whether it was Saladrigas or the other Carlos, knew immediately. He said, "I knew immediately." He called Podhurst back and he said, "She's going to take the child. Get her on the phone." Podhurst called me and he said, "I need five minutes." I said, "Five minutes and I'm counting, it's time now." Nobody came back to me. I was left hanging on the phone until Podhurst comes back on and then he starts screaming, "They're coming in! They're coming in! How could you do this, dah, dah, dah."

Baker

Because he was at the family home?

Reno

No, he was not, the two Carloses were.

Meador

In looking back on it, do you think you should have acted earlier than you did?

Reno

One of the things I thought I should have done was when the district court ruled, I should have acted then, or acted at the time before the district court ruled. But I forgot to mention that in the course of this, after the district court ruled, the state court ruled. The state court ruled the day after I met with the family at Sister Jeanne's. The state court gave a superb opinion as to how they did not have jurisdiction. My hope was that people would understand that the rule of law had been followed, that the state court had its chance to make a decision, that the federal district court had its chance, the court of appeals and the Supreme Court, and that it was a rare opportunity for people to see the Court consider it. I thought people would appreciate that.

If I had moved before then, I think there could have been real attacks. But at the same time, I don't think some of the community sentiment had been so ginned up.

Baker

Lazaro Gonzalez' televised comments probably generated some more public attention and public support.

Riley

There was a photograph of the extraction of the frightened boy and a firearm. Can you tell us about the decision to have armed people go in the house?

Reno

What the experts told us was that it would be better to have a show of force. The show of force would prevent the use of force. If you look carefully at the gun, the trigger finger is outside the trigger mechanism and it is pointed away from him. People ask me why I didn't get the photographer out of there. I said, "I did it as openly and as straightforwardly as I could."

Meador

How did there happen to be a photographer there at that moment?

Reno

I think they were there around the clock hoping for something just such as what they got.

Riley

So it was a press photographer who went in?

Reno

An AP [Associated Press] photographer.

Riley

Invited by the family to be there in case something happened?

Reno

I don't know how he happened to be there but he was there.

Riley

And there was a substantial group of people--

Reno

There were already, early in the morning, not a substantial group of people such as there would have been during the daylight hours, but--

Riley

But there was a crowd there and staying pretty much around the clock.

Baker

And there was some concern that some of the people in the crowd might have been armed?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

It was a very, very fast operation. Three minutes, I think?

Reno

It was amazing.

Baker

Again, that was to minimize the likelihood of a violent response, the surprise and the rapid reaction. If this had not become such a cause celebre, would this same process have been followed in terms of Elian's father being contacted, permitted to come up here and wait for him, if there wasn't anything in the news about him? Was that an unusual part of the process?

Reno

It was very unusual. We needed somebody to provide--you would just think the father would come get the kid.

Baker

When he didn't, you basically brought him up?

Reno

No, he came up.

Baker

He eventually came up. But all the paperwork to expedite his visa into the United States for picking up the child that would have been done in the case of a child that wasn't infamous at this point?

Reno

There would have been some way of getting the child home--

Baker

To his country. If the father, in your investigations, if it turned out that the father, Miguel, had not had a reputation of being a good father, would there have been other considerations?

Reno

There would have been other considerations.

Riley

But that wasn't a decision for you to make.

Reno

Well, it's a decision that we made. I couldn't understand how people had gotten so ratcheted up until I saw what I think was a Frontline documentary; I think it was a year afterward. And I think there is a clip of Castro in that Frontline documentary talking about, "We will get this boy back," and that just threw down the gauntlet.

Baker

For a kid in an American community.

Reno

It became absolutely a political issue. My statement that the little boy belonged with his daddy was just not heard because they thought that Clinton had made me do it. Even to this day, some people just won't talk to me but other people come up and say, "I know Clinton made you do it."

Baker

In fact, the White House was not particularly happy with this course of action, is that right? I know the Vice President--

Reno

The Vice President was opposed to what we did. The President was supportive based on my conversation with him.

Meador

Did the Vice President express his opposition before it happened or afterward?

Reno

I cannot remember whether he expressed it before or not, but clearly it was known afterward.

Riley

The aftermath of this, he's reunited with his father and then can you take us through what happens there?

Reno

Well, I wondered whether I had done right. I went home and fell asleep on the couch and my sister called me and she said, "Quick, quick, turn on the television." I look at the television, and there is a picture of Elian with his father that's the most beautiful picture. You can't fake it. The kid is just so happy to see his daddy.

Riley

And the political aftermath of this in Miami is significant? Do you feel--?

Reno

The political aftermath--last Friday [Mel] Martinez, the candidate for United States Senate, circulates a statement saying, and Betty Castor, the Democratic candidate for state senate, something to the effect "is being assisted in her campaign by Janet Reno, who sent in armed thugs to take Elian back." It worked out well because I just deflected it and said, "I don't think it's an issue in the campaign." Betty jumped on it and said, "I dare you to call the INS and federal law enforcement agents 'armed thugs.'" Martinez jumped and said, "Perhaps we overdid it." But it had already become a cause c?l?bre with police agencies and others.

Riley

It still resonates there.

Reno

Yes.

Baker

There was some rioting in the initial aftermath.

Reno

Yes, burning American flags. Then what happened was fascinating. Native-born Americans came out with African Americans, lined U.S. 1 up and down the highway with American flags. There was one scene that was absolutely incredible. Whites with a rebel flag arm in arm with blacks.

Meador

Why were they doing this?

Reno

This was to answer the riots that took place the day after--

Baker

Of the Cuban Americans.

Meador

This is in response to Cuban-American demonstrations?

Reno

Yes, and they went on for two or three days with just people waving flags either for Janet or against Janet.

Riley

You were back in Washington by this time.

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Happily back in Washington.

Reno

I'd been back in Washington.

Riley

There may be other questions about this, I don't know. We have about 40 more minutes. I wanted to ask you about the next big event in Florida, which was the election in 2000. Did you have any role in the uncertain legal aftermath of the 2000 election?

Reno

No.

Riley

You did not.

Meador

Weren't there calls for the Civil Rights Division to look into this thing or something of that sort?

Reno

As I recall, there were.

Meador

What happened with that?

Reno

I don't remember.

Riley

As somebody who knows something about Florida politics, do you have any comment on what transpired in the aftermath?

Reno

What do you mean what transpired in the aftermath? In the aftermath of the court decision?

Riley

Well, I guess, I'm throwing out a very general question about any reflections on the mess that had happened down there and the ultimate result of the electoral votes going to the Republicans.

Reno

Well, I was opposed to the Supreme Court decision, and I was very surprised at that. In 2002, I thought we'd learned our lesson, but the polls didn't open.

Baker

We really didn't touch at all on the allegations of violations of campaign fundraising law raised in the '96 election. You were subjected to some pretty intense pressure to name an independent counsel in that. Do you want to talk about that at all, how you reached the decision that an independent counsel is not warranted?

Reno

I would go back again, because I think the documents would be the best information on that.

Baker

I think, from what I've read, you didn't believe that it met the threshold of that.

Reno

Right, but the reasoning for it should be in the documents.

Baker

Did that help in your relations with the White House? Did some of the people who'd been cold to you earlier begin to realize that you had a principled position here and it wasn't a matter of disloyalty to the White House?

Reno

I don't know what they realized.

Baker

But you didn't sense any change from the perspective of those on the White House staff.

Reno

Remember, for most of the White House staff, it was fine. I can't even remember those--

Baker

Who might have taken it personally earlier.

Morrisroe

I have a question about something that transpired actually during your first year. Soon after your arrival at Justice you undertook a reexamination of the so-called Thornburgh memo regarding the circumstances under which a federal prosecutor could circumvent defense counsel to speak with a defendant. You took a year review, it's reported, to reexamine that memo. Can you tell us about your decision to do so and about the changes that you made?

Reno

I'd like the documents to talk about that. I looked at that in the briefing materials. It's interesting how memory plays tricks. I'm not sure. One of the things I'm wondering why you haven't asked more about, because it was one of the most difficult issues dealt with by the administration and by the Justice Department, was immigration.

Meador

I brought up something about it yesterday about the border control and deportations and so on, and your answer basically was insufficient resources. But are you speaking now of some broader policy?

Reno

I'm speaking of the legislation that was enacted, how we dealt with political issues, what we did. I don't have a memory of all of it, but in putting together a history of this administration, the legislation is critical. It was so difficult, because just as we would master one thing, they would pass another piece of legislation. The issues were really difficult.

Riley

Were you on task forces that were set up to deal with this?

Reno

Part of the problem, for example, on visa issues and developing processes with Mexico to permit the lawful entry into this country in a smooth way involved a lot of electronics.

Baker

The new electronic visa for faster access across the border?

Reno

Yes, and how the State Department worked with us, how the State Department and the Justice Department and the White House worked together. I just urge you to talk with Doris because I think she has a pretty good memory of the details and I think it's an important--

Morrisroe

Without asking you to recall specifics of legislation or events, what were the major sources of dispute and the central political divisions? Was it Congress--

Reno

It was Congress, and there are issues there with regards to the deportation of people and how the Solicitor General construed the legislation. Did everybody get deported who had a prior criminal record? How did we do that?

Baker

The Mariel boatlift?

Reno

From the Mariel boatlift and from others who had been in this country, separate--not Cubans, but Jamaicans. We ended sending people back to islands like Jamaica, some of whom had lived in this country 20 years or more, had become more American--I think we had a real impact, an adverse impact on the islands. We saw the generation of violence because people would--we got some comments from Ministers of Justice. "If you're going to send them back, send them back with the packet so we know what they did and what they're about, just don't dump them on us." It was, with respect to crime, with respect to international relationships, with respect to the moneys used to build detention facilities to keep these people until we could get them deported, it was extremely difficult.

Baker

I was interested in the Haitian policies, and this relates to it as well?

Reno

Right now what we're seeing with respect to Haiti, that this country should offer $60,000 worth of aid to Haiti--it's a cruel pittance. And then finally $2 million, but not come in. They deported 17 people to Haiti at the height of the devastation with Hurricane Jeanne.

Baker

The Clinton administration had picked up, I believe, it was a George H. W. Bush policy, about returning to Haiti people who had come across and were seeking asylum. Was that a controversial decision within the administration? Did you agree with it?

Reno

It was one of the most difficult decisions because the differential between the way Cubans were treated under the Cuban Adjustment Act and the way Haitians were treated just glared out at you right there. [Jean-Bertrand] Aristide lived in the apartment building I lived in, and I managed to avoid him the entire time he was in Washington. But the mixed signals he sent--

Meador

I take it there was never any sentiment to change the Cuban policy by legislation, to abandon that long-standing policy about Cubans?

Reno

That's one of the politically difficult issues that the administration faced.

Baker

Especially once it started to normalize relations with Vietnam and Most Favored Nations status for the People's Republic of China, it became increasingly difficult to draw a distinction with Cuba.

Meador

Did the Clinton administration address that question?

Reno

Addressed it and I think concluded that it was politically impossible.

Morrisroe

You did make some effort in 1995 to negotiate, after negotiations with Cuban officials I believe, to at least cap annually the number of individuals that would be admitted in exchange for their making efforts to ensure people wouldn't leave.

Reno

Wouldn't come, but that's--then wet foot, dry foot. Immigration was the most complex issue I think we dealt with.

Riley

Politically, among other things, there's a significant problem because the electoral votes from California and Florida create a level of attention to the way they deal with the problem perhaps disproportionate to the rest of the country.

Baker

And international relations as well, I think.

Riley

We're coming close to the conclusion and there are some general reflection questions. One is, when people write about your Attorney Generalship, they say that you were a different kind of appointee, that there had been a tradition generally of people who had been very close personally to the President. That was not your avenue into the office. I wonder if you've had any reflections about the advantages and the disadvantages of having an Attorney General who comes in the way you did.

Reno

When I first came in, I had Webb. I had an understanding of the White House and how it worked and what the President's thoughts were, so that helped a great deal at the outset. By that time I think that it wasn't my lack of knowing the President before, but the difficult issues that arose. But I don't have any reflections. Obviously, it was a different Attorney General.

Baker

On a listserv of political scientists who teach in the law and courts area, one of them was making a very strange complaint about your administration in 2000. It was a very bizarre one. He said he felt "Reno was extremely political and definitely pushed an agenda by tying office resources and personnel to the willingness of individual U.S. attorneys to pursue the Department of Justice agenda in areas such as health care, fraud, civil rights offenses, and most recently weapons offenses." Any reaction to this?

Reno

No. [laughter]

Baker

It seemed to me his misunderstanding that that's what you do when you have finite resources. Every Attorney General comes in and has particular priorities and that's where the resources go. I was very surprised to read that, because I think more in general what you find are reflecting--I see Jim Lehrer's interview with you at the end of your tenure, that you're generally seen as historically one of the most independent of the Attorneys General. Is that how you would think of yourself? Is that some of the legacy that you think you take away from this?

Reno

I got out of the legacy business a long time ago.

Riley

That's going to make this a very short part of the interview, I'm afraid.

Reno

I am amazed at how Washington focuses on legacy. They would frame questions for my press availability. I said, "What's this here for, Myron?" "It's your legacy." Other people would talk about my legacy.

As I think I may have mentioned to one or all of you, I used to love to go out to Mt. Vernon. On winter days particularly, when nobody was out there, and the ladies would find interesting things for me. One of them was a letter that [George] Washington wrote to somebody who asked a similar question, and he said, "If I were to respond to your letter I might be reduced to tears, but I prefer to drift on down the stream of life and let posterity be the judge."

Baker

That's a good response. Although you did have an impact, I think one could say, by being in office a historically long period of time for the 20th century, by overseeing the remodeling of main Justice by building a computerized system, by insisting on greater cooperation between agencies. I think that does leave a mark, if you will, if not a legacy. But it does leave a mark on the administration of justice that perhaps inserts an element of rationality into this whole process. So I think you could look at it that way, it's not a legacy per se.

Riley

You're going to let us do most of the talking. I won't frame this question in the direction of legacy, but let me ask it in a different way. What about the job gave you the greatest satisfaction?

Reno

It was the greatest opportunity that anybody could have to try to use the law in the right way to make America safer and freer and to give more people equal opportunity and to encourage young people in public service.

Baker

What about the job gave you the least satisfaction?

Reno

Congressional hearings that did not really focus on the oversight purpose but focused more on politics.

Baker

Did you have fun being Attorney General?

Reno

Yes.

Baker

You'd recommend it as a career path for other young people interested in the law?

Riley

As an interested outsider who does a lot of these interviews, it's remarkable to me how many extraordinarily difficult things you had to deal with. The kinds of things any one of which might very well put somebody in the hospital for a very long time. That's why I asked you the question about what it was about your makeup that allows you to be resilient in the face of all these difficulties. I'll ask you again, what is it? How do you manage to deal with these things?

Reno

I had experience in the riots in Dade County and know it's not the end of the earth, and you pick yourself up and you move ahead. The important thing is to address issues and try to solve problems.

Baker

Did you have a good network of people you relied on who you felt were part of that support system, or did you feel that you were pretty well lonely at the top?

Reno

No, I thought there were great people in the department. Jamie and Eric were superb. Seth and Walter were magnificent, so many people in OLC, Deval Patrick, people I've not named. There were just some tremendous lawyers and some tremendous public servants, tremendous law enforcement agents.

Riley

You mentioned your family several times.

Reno

Yes.

Riley

You talked with them frequently.

Reno

My sister particularly.

Riley

And she has a better insight into you probably than anybody else?

Reno

Yes. I think so.

Riley

Does she understand politics?

Reno

She was a county commissioner for 20 years.

Riley

That answers that question.

Baker

Yes, local politics is some of the most difficult because you're recognized locally and you can't go to the grocery store or anything. Certainly you had that experience of being recognized.

Riley

Especially on a commission like that one where she is. Anything that was left undone that you were discouraged by?

Reno

I wish we had had the time to continue with the effort to identify how we can prevent the conviction of the innocent. I think I could have pushed it a lot further if I'd had another year or two.

Baker

You also said in the 9/11 Commission that you ran out of time in terms of improving communications between the FBI and intelligence agencies. So that was another area where you felt that you needed more time.

Reno

Yes.

Riley

Did you ever seriously consider resigning?

Reno

I didn't consider resigning, but I made clear that I would be happy to resign if the President wanted me to.

Riley

Did you give any serious consideration to leaving after the first term?

Reno

No.

Riley

That's a different way I guess of phrasing the same question although--

Baker

The President didn't contact you until five weeks or so after the election. Were you anxious in that time or you just assumed he was busy doing other things and you felt--

Reno

I thought he was trying to figure out what he wanted to do.

Baker

By that time you had some champions in Congress. It might have made it more difficult for him.

Riley

What about this President is underappreciated by people who are looking on from the outside?

Baker

What about this Presidency?

Riley

What about Bill Clinton, the Bill Clinton you knew. Is there anything about him that you think those of us on the outside looking in don't sufficiently appreciate?

Reno

I think most people from your vantage point understand how smart he is and his prodigious knowledge of government and the ability to put himself in the shoes of others and talk with other people as if he knows exactly what they mean.

Riley

Those are the kinds of things that historians ought to look back on as the most important aspects of his. We know that there were some major disappointments, but you left feeling that, on balance, this was a President you were proud to have served with?

Reno

He invited us all out to Camp David one night during the last two or three weeks of the administration. We had dinner and we talked. He proposed a toast to the Cabinet and then one Cabinet member after another got up to say something. When I got up, he said, "I don't want to know." Everybody laughed. I said, "Mr. President, I think you're going to be remembered as a great President, because you knew how to take this nation just to the line of going too far to the right and were able to build a strong economy because of that. You were able to reduce crime because of that. You had attention to civil liberties issues, to civil rights issues, and you knew just how far to go, and you kept this nation from sliding into extremes with Newt Gingrich."

Riley

We're very thankful that you've come and spent a day and a half with us.

Reno

It has been my pleasure. Thank you all.

Riley

As somebody who has been through a number of these, I can tell you that we never fully exhaust all of the avenues of possible questions, but we usually do a pretty good job of exhausting our respondent as well as the people who are participating, so we're grateful for that. You've given us, and more importantly people in the future, the people who are zero to three now who will want to know something about this in the future will have access to this in 15 or 20 or 30 years. It will be a very valuable addition to our archive and to their understanding, so we're thankful.