Word: reno
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...reviewed the ruling and her options for taking Elian from the Miami house, Reno said she had to prepare for the worst: that there might be guns in the house, or in the crowds outside; that old women would throw themselves in front of federal vehicles; that dump trucks filled with gravel would block intersections. The INS team wanted to go in before dawn, but Reno worried about the image of a nighttime raid. So grim was the picture the Attorney General was painting, it appeared to the aides that she would prefer to wait some more...
...Then it turned," said a participant, who listened as Reno began to lay out for the President the reasons for an immediate rescue: Juan Miguel had promised to stay in the country through the appeals; the court order made that promise stick, so the relatives had no reason to worry about Elian suddenly disappearing; and, most of all, Elian needed to be with his father, and away from Little Havana's media circus. Normally dry as talc, Reno at one point waxed nostalgic about the Miami of her childhood. She said she wanted to make a move soon. "Her feeling...
Clinton had come to the same conclusion the night before, aides said, but was pleased that Reno got there on her own. "Janet," he said, "I think you're right." And a few hours later in the Rose Garden, he began to prepare the nation. "I think [Elian] should be reunited," Clinton said, "and in as prompt and as orderly a way as possible...
...Reno was not completely tone deaf. It was a week of harrowing anniversaries: Columbine, Waco, Oklahoma City, the Bay of Pigs. She was not about to go in on Good Friday or on Easter Sunday. But she told INS officials that Saturday or Monday were both possibilities if negotiations stalled, and they in turn said whatever happened had to occur before 6 a.m., when the traffic lights in the neighborhood switch from blinking yellow to red, yellow and green, and the streets start filling with cars, and the sidewalks with anxious, angry people...
Thanks to widespread leaking, just about everybody in Washington and Miami woke up Friday morning confident that Reno was ready to move. But instead, in a last-minute twist, the Attorney General was in her cavernous fifth-floor office at Main Justice, on the telephone with a group of fellow Miamians who thought they could still persuade the relatives to turn the boy over to his father...