E-Mail Us! E-Mail Us!
Special Report
Janet Reno Plays "Hyde" & Seek
Janet Reno - a "gentlelady" in a den of thieves?
The Attorney General remains pacific, but shakes 'em all up
Thursday, October 16th 1997: Yesterday's hottest Capitol Hill ticket was the House Judiciary Committee hearing room where Attorney General Janet Reno took on the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee in one of the best run and most informative campaign finance hearing yet to take place in Washington. Senator Fred Thompson, who boorishly presides over the Senate "witch hunt" committee should call Henry Hyde, the Chairman of House Judiciary, and beg for some lessons.
With the exception of a few rude and uncalled-for comments from Republicans challenging Reno's rock solid ethics, Hyde, always a gentleman, ran a controlled and informative 6 hour session which featured a few rounds of questioning by Committee members peppered with quips and asides from both sides of the aisle which served to relieve the tension created by grilling the nation's top law enforcement official for purely political purposes.
In the end, Reno and the Democrats won the day, but several issues arose during the inquisition which raised even the most partisan eyebrows on both sides of the aisle. Calls for renewed Justice Department investigations of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott were surprising, and Reno's telegraph on possible White House staff investigations was beating at a million miles and hour.
National television coverage of the hearing was disgraceful - with Jim Lehrer's News Hour uncharacteristically leading the pack featuring the usual panel of talking head news editors and reporters who's ignorance of just what happened yesterday was dismaying.
What did happen was this. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat, chastised Hyde for the now infamous letter he spun as a demand from the Committee to Reno for the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate Clinton and Gore. It turns out the letter was sent to Reno without having circulated to Democrat members of the committee - most of whom did not even see it until yesterday, let alone sign it. In a dig at Republicans Conyers quoted right-wing prosecutor Joe DeGenova as saying, "No serious prosecutor would take this case to court." Conyers also chided his GOP colleagues saying "...yeah, let's get another Ken Starr!"
Reno was graceful and in control although the sometime telltale shake of her hands evidenced her anger at some questions from Republican poseurs. She pointed out that she's already appointed several special prosecutors investigating high government officials including the president and is not loathe to do so again. She repeatedly explained to unhearing Republican members that her investigation is a planned, bottom to top investigation. "I've prosecuted more than 12,000 public officials - and never checked to see if they were Republicans or Democrats," she added in an attempt at bipartisanship during her fifteen opening statement.
To those who attacked her for a poor investigation, she pointed to the fact that she has 120 lawyers and staff on the campaign finance issue alone and has taken in more than a million pages of documents on the case.
On the charge that she has a "conflict of interest" Reno pointed out that appearance of conflict is not the law, actual conflict is.
Bill Clinton - Utah Coal?
Reno was often hard pressed or legally unable to answer the probing questions of Republican members. The first question she declined was Henry Hyde's request that she describe what the grand jury she's impaneled is doing. "I can't tell you," she replied and often repeated versions thereof as Republicans tried to get her to reveal prosecutorially protected secrets. Of course, the congresspeople knew she couldn't answer their detailed questions and that the questions were "designer-rhetorical" in nature -- More to titillate than to inquire.
Hyde's biggest gaffe was his suggestion that because national polls say Americans want a special prosecutor that Reno should appoint one. Rep. Barney Frank, whose good natured but razor sharp wit came to the fore often yesterday, quipped, "Any notion that you prosecute by poll is ridiculous, " and then followed with an attack on a recent New York Times editorial which called Reno's legal concerns "legalisms," - "What is she supposed to rely on Circus Tricks," Frank said.
Frank also made a mockery of the Republican letter to Reno laughing at their charge that Clinton was guilty of accepting bribes when he created a national monument in Utah at the request of more than 100 environmental groups. GOP fire-starters claimed that Clinton created the monument so that US companies could not mine "clean coal" in Utah and that this action favored the Lippo Group who owns the second largest deposit of clean coal in the world at its Indonesian mines. Frank continued, laughing at Republicans for suggesting that Vice President Gore was extorting money from contributors merely by calling them and using his aura of "power" as a hammer to get campaign cash.
"If we're gonna indict every congressman with power that calls supporters we might as well put bars around the Capitol." snorted Frank.
Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) got the most air play on network news last night and this morning -- not for being insightful, but for his bullying of Reno when questioning her about the now famous White House videotapes of campaign functions where the President was in attendance. Sensenbrenner spent only about $250 thousand to get re-elected in '96 and is in a unique position to go out on a limb about campaign finance issues. He referred to the Presidents praise of John Huang at an Asian-American dinner in California as evidence of Clinton's knowledge that Huang was a money-launderer, foreign agent-- and to hear him--a spy for Communist China. Reno went ballistic when confronting Sensenbrenner's well-planned and feigned ignorance saying that there was "nothing in his (Sensenbrenner's) statement" that could be considered specific or credible information that the president knew of, or was engaged with Huang, in any illegal activity.
"It is your statements that are the kind of innuendo we (the Justice Department) defend against," spat Reno. That was her way of telling Sensenbrenner that he was making a mockery of the judicial system to suggest that Clinton's thank's to Huang was evidence of anything, let alone a felony.
But Sensenbrenner didn't take the hint and went on to talk about the "appearance" of wrong doing - this time focusing on a Utah coal issue. Reno retorted, " I'm not addressing 'appearances' - we can't automatically presume that a positive outcome for a contributor means that a congressman is a criminal."
I disagree with Reno here and think that you can often presume that.
This and time limits stopped Sensenbrenner, who then returned to the same line in the second and third rounds later in the afternoon.
Bill McCollum of Florida did elicit some information from Reno and got confirmation that she was looking at most allegations made over the year including those aimed at White House staff.
Both Republicans and Democrats also explored other functional areas of the Justice Department including their oversight in the telecommunications industry, the cooperation and excesses of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the lack of an Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division -- a vacancy open for more than two years. Several members plead personal issues with Reno like Congressman Gekas (R-PA) who was still smarting from a botched FBI training session in his District during which the FBI ended up arresting a group of local kids for no reason.
Al Gore - A Victim of the Washington Post?
Gekas also seemed to think that Reno should rely on newspaper articles as specific and credible evidence that the White House was engaged in wrongdoing. Reno pointed out that she couldn't function as a sieve for every charge made in the media, but that she had used the Washington Post article on hard money dollars flowing from Al Gore's phone calls as a jumping off place for further looks at DNC records at the Federal Election Commission. It was this article that indirectly caused her to go to federal court and inform them she was continuing the Gore investigation.
"We are pursuing every transaction . . we are doing so in a specific order, not in your order or the Washington Post's order," Reno said.
Newt Gingrich was a fat target for Democrats yesterday. When Rep. Conyers asked what was going on with the Justice Department's investigation of Gingrich, Reno was slightly taken aback and said she wasn't knowledgeable about such a referral. Conyers demanded to know the bottom line on the Gingrich investigation -- and specifically on charges that he laundered money through charitable corporations for the RNC. Conyers also pointed to the recent $50 billion tobacco tax break that Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott engineered as a quid pro quo for huge tobacco contributions to Republicans.
Reno replied that "one has to be careful" when alleging anything like that, and Barney Frank joked, "Maybe she's suggesting we apply a single standard of justice." It wasn't clear what Just ice was doing vis a vis Gingrich or Lott, but it seemed to me that Reno didn't want to discuss those issues. What she is doing relative to Lott and Gingrich remains a mystery.
Rep. Smith (R-TX), focused on the Democrat push to make quick citizens of immigrants -- some with rocky pasts and criminal histories. Reno assured him that nearly 1,000 "instant" citizens naturalized under the Democrat's "Citizenship USA" program were about to be deported out of 6,000 potentially defective applicants. Smith was pressing for an investigation of a Gore staffer who pushed the naturalization of immigrants because immigrants tend to vote for Democrats.
After a lunch break, hulking Jerry Nadler (D-NY) made the charge that RNC leadership called in business leaders in 1996 and told them in no uncertain terms that they would be cut off from committee chairs and key Republican leaders if they continued to support Democrats and the President as they had been. If this is true - "where's the beef" Nadler implied, and Reno promised to check. This is definitely a smoking gun issue for Republicans.
An interesting feint from Reno came after questions by Rep. Gallegly (R-Ca) about "The Chinese Connection" -- an alleged plot by communist China to influence congressional elections. Reno refused to discuss it citing national security issues as her reason. She also would not comment on the Chinese-owned shipping company COSCO's sweetheart deal at the port of Long Beach that came after a some interaction with the White House.
"I cannot comment," said Reno which seemed a dead giveaway that the Justice Department was investigating this claim.
Democrats spent a lot of time praising Reno and her integrity and so did most Republicans before they tore into her, and Maxine Waters (D-CA) brought up what she said were deals between Gingrich and Direct Access Pharmaceuticals/Johnson & Johnson, Georgia Power and Occidental Petroleum as areas of quid pro quo deserving Justice Department attention.
Fred Thompson - Should he attend the Hyde School of witch hunt hearings?
But the possible smoking gun that got my attention yesterday was brought to the fore by Republican committee member Bob Goodlatte of Virginia. Goodlatte pointed out that Bill Clinton had endorsed the recommendations of the Jordan Committee on Immigration (named for Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas) which opposed the granting of special preferences for siblings of naturalized American citizens. Goodlatte implied that after the President attended a $12,500 per head dinner sponsored by Chinese-Americans, the President reversed himself. The President had also received a pro sibling-preference letter from John Huang just prior to doing a 180 on the issue. Goodlatte then read the "Bribery Statute" from the US Code and asked Reno how she could "investigate herself" -- since she had oversight in immigration matters.
Reno, for the first time that day appeared flustered and said she was pursuing these allegations but she did not have a conflict. Watch this investigation. If could be the one that will open a big can of worms aimed at White House and DNC staff.
The theme that public concern was enough to force Reno to appoint and independent prosecutor was played all day by Republican committee members. Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IND) told of his constituent concerns and claimed that they were peeved over her call to former NSC top dog Tony Lake about potential Chinese election influence which she didn't follow up on. Sure. I can just see Buyer sitting down over the pot-belly stove at the hardware store talking this over with local yokels. Reno told Buyer that her staff had fully briefed Lake although she had not been able to give him a "heads-up" because she was traveling and couldn't leave a call-back number. She also refused to answer further questions from Buyer because of national security.
Reno's stalwartness seemed to ebb toward the end of the day. Under chastisement from Congressman Chabot (R- OH) who said Reno "instead of shining a light, was operating in the dark," the Attorney General folded. As Chabot pointed to possible obstruction of justice by White House staff, Reno surprisingly paid some lipservice to the possibility she was examining just that potential. Whatever her intent, White House staff must have jumped at that moment.
Dan Burton - He'll never measure up
Congressman Bob Barr (R-GA) decided to show videotapes of President Clinton at a dinner where the President is seen seated next to Charlie Trie, mega-giver Pauline Kanchanalak, and John Huang. Some Democrats on the committee protested airing the tapes vehemently, but when they forced a vote, the majority of Democrats voted aye and let the tapes roll. Barr was obviously posturing for the nightly news as this was just before deadline time at around 4:30 PM. A second tape he aired showed the President at a small dinner inside the Jefferson Hotel. Barr made the observation that the group was made up primarily of non-US citizens.
Reno, again appeared to show interest, and perhaps a sign that Justice was interested in the potential of these tapes and what they might lead to.
One went away from this hearing with mixed feelings. But it was clear that Reno was not covering for the President, the Vice President or White House staff. Her demeanor - though solid and forthright - belied a certain uneasyness - almost as if she wanted to say - "Hey, you're going to get an independent counsel, and maybe a dozen. -- And they won't be aimed only at Democrats.
One thing's for sure. After listening to Reno intently, the Speaker of the House, Trent Lott and some former and current White House staffers are quaking in their boots.
Copyright© - UDR Inc