WASHINGTON (March 9, 1999 2:00 a.m. EST nandotimes.com) - Janet Reno was Bill Clinton's third choice to be attorney general, but she now must be No. 1 in his heart.
The former Dade County (Fla.) prosecutor, whose family has a history of alligator wrestling in the Everglades, has managed to get a hammerlock on at least two of her boss's major nemeses - the campaign funding scandal and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.
By stubbornly refusing to trigger an independent inquiry of the financial scandal despite a law that was designed for just that kind of official hanky-panky, Reno has managed to defuse a bomb that potentially could have done far more harm to Clinton (and, for that matter, his entire administration) than Monica Lewinsky.
The need for an independent investigation into, among other things, Chinese contributions to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign through the Democratic National Committee has been heightened by recent disclosures of Chinese spying on the U.S. nuclear weapons program in the late 1980s. The Clinton administration has been slow to accept the allegations of severe security damage and, while there is no evidence of a link between the giving and White House policy toward China, there already is speculation about such a connection.
And now Reno is in the midst of investigating the investigator, Starr (while pushing for the end of the Independent Counsel Act altogether), lending aid and comfort to Clinton's forces who have been trying to discredit him from almost the outset of his several probes. The three-judge panel that appointed Starr has stepped into the case to determine whether she has the power to do so even though the law gives the attorney general the right to remove an independent counsel and presumably to conduct an investigation to make that determination.
The Justice Department contends there is absolutely no political motivation in Reno's decision to conduct the investigation to determine whether Starr has overstepped or abused his authority. That's difficult to buy under the circumstances.
Even if it were true, it is action that is clearly welcomed by the president's lawyers, who are still concerned about the possibility that Starr will seek an indictment of Clinton in the Lewinsky matter once he leaves office.
If Starr and his staff are busy defending their tactics, it seems bound to slow down their continuing pursuit of the president.
The attorney general can't be utterly insensitive to the appearance of political vengefulness her actions leave, coming as they do on the heels of the president's Senate acquittal of the House impeachment charges.
Also, this investigation lends credence to the yearlong, almost daily White House lambasting of Starr. Should Starr be removed or reprimanded, the White House believes it might help the president's standing in history, portraying him as the victim of an unscrupulous prosecutor allied with the president's political enemies - something Clinton very much desires to convey.
One can imagine the glee with which Clinton hatchet man James Carville would greet such action. The very mention of Starr has Carville foaming at the mouth like a rabid Louisiana swamp rat. Vindication would be in every word he utters.
Furthermore, as a former local prosecutor, Reno is well aware that Starr has used tactics commonly employed by prosecutors everywhere. The difference, of course, is that this isn't a normal prosecution and that it probably called for far more caution than Starr has demonstrated. Some of that can be chalked up to Starr's lack of prosecutorial experience.
At the same time, the daily drumbeat against Starr from the White House and the president's lawyers is an equally common defense tactic when there is no way to deny the facts of the case.
Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., who led the Senate investigation into the campaign-funding irregularities, recently noted that it has been the history of the 20-year-old act that the party whose president is being investigated attacks the independent counsel.
Thompson also accused Reno of sabotaging the act. He said that by refusing to name an outside prosecutor in the fund-raising scandal, she had turned the act from a sword to make sure high-level wrongdoing is addressed to a shield from prosecution of wrongdoing.
Reno's refusal to follow the law in that case, much to the advantage of Clinton and others in the White House, makes her motive in the Starr investigation far more suspicious. Most of her predecessors have left office long before their bosses. This attorney general seems to have nowhere to go.
Her failures - and there have been many, beginning with her poor decision in the infamous Waco case - were once an embarrassment to the White House. It was said that Clinton wanted to fire her, but that Hillary Clinton objected. That obviously hasn't been the case of late, when the president has been up to his rear in alligators and she has helped hold them off.
Dan K. Thomasson writes this column twice weekly for Scripps Howard News Service.
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