Word: reno
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...days and long nights before the finale, the questions belonged to Janet Reno. A month into her job, Reno confronted a disaster she had done nothing to create. The drama in the Texas prairie began as she was still standing in the wings, mourning her mother and awaiting the Senate's confirmation. Reno grew up in the swamps where alligators still wander -- her mother used to wrestle them -- and for 15 years she was in charge of enforcing laws in a city where lawbreaking is a spectator sport. But nothing could have quite prepared her for the choices she faced...
...came to her on Monday with their plan, laid out in a wine-colored briefing book. That started a week of meetings, briefings, phone calls and more meetings in which Reno probed the motives and methods the bureau had laid...
...cult leader had broken one deal after another, officials reminded Reno. "There were never any real negotiations," says Jeffrey Jamar, the beefy FBI agent in charge on the ground. "We stayed in touch to avoid provocation, but everything was done on his time -- he was in strict control." Negotiators had learned that Koresh had a particular dread of jail, a fear of being raped. "He had all the wives, food and liquor he wanted," Coulson says. "Inside, he's God. Outside, he's an inmate on trial for his life. What was he going...
That was the plan FBI Director William Sessions and his top deputies put together for Reno on Monday morning. She wanted to see everything, asked hundreds of questions: Why go now? What is he likely to do? Is this the best way to go? On Wednesday night she called in members of the Army's elite Delta Force to ask their opinions. Her questions always came back to the children. FBI officials explained that the longer the siege lasted, the more the children would suffer. "Children are like hostages," Koresh had told one negotiator, "because they're too young...
...Reno continued to press about the dangers of exposing people to gas. Anesthetic gases might knock people out, but there was no guarantee that they would wake up, ever, especially the small children. Strong men would be knocked out last, or not at all. The FBI brought in a leading specialist on the toxicology of tear gas, whom Reno debriefed for hours. She approved the use of tear gas only after being assured that the form the FBI was using was not permanently harmful, carcinogenic or a possible cause of birth defects...