Word: reno
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...Reno's team immediately telephoned the donors themselves: Had they heard from Clinton or Gore? Was there a pitch for hard money or soft? The hurried checking continued right until Tuesday morning--just hours before Reno announced her decision. As it turned out, Solomont never sent the document to the White House. But the last-minute scramble over a belatedly discovered document was just another reason Reno's own FBI has clamored openly for an independent counsel to investigate the entire mess...
...Reno refused to take that step last week, saying she did not yet see evidence that the President or the Vice President had broken any laws. Republicans immediately condemned Reno as a White House stooge, but the real damage to the Attorney General was internal. Her decision exposed a private fight with FBI Director Louis Freeh, who believes Reno has an inherent conflict of interest when it comes to probing her boss. And it may have emboldened some Justice officials into broadening the investigation to explore a simple but far-reaching premise: that the Democrats engaged in a widespread conspiracy...
...more than a year Reno has viewed the scandal as a series of narrow, unrelated legal questions, not a massive plot. That's partly because Reno's a careful prosecutor and partly because the stories of Asian money, fake donors and trading favors for cash have often dribbled out in incomprehensible pieces. But Reno's reluctance to view these parts as belonging to a larger whole may also be the product of the curious way she has managed the department's internal probe. Three months ago, Reno brought in Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles LaBella from San Diego to shake things...
This division of labor has bred a lot of resentment. Reno has created two competing teams of prosecutors. Add to that FBI agents who, like Freeh, believe that an independent counsel is the wisest course, and the result is a squabbling muddle. Lines of responsibility are blurred. LaBella has tried to maintain a "detente" with Radek, but as a Justice Department official puts it, "it's not warm and fuzzy between them." The disputes are left for Reno to settle, which she does, but only after free-for-all senior staff meetings...
...chaos spilled into the open as Reno prepared her decision on the White House phone calls. Arguing on one side was Radek, who advised against an outside counsel. On the other was LaBella, who said Radek's legal reasoning amounted to "pablum." Last Tuesday, before her announcement, Reno tried some shuttle diplomacy. She took a hard-to-miss walk across Pennsylvania Avenue to FBI headquarters, both to consult Freeh and to be seen consulting him. And Reno was careful to say a few hours later that the investigation proceeds. Just where it will lead has a lot to do with...