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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Speaker 1: Welcome to civil discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now, your host, Nia Rogers, Public Affairs Librarian, and doctor John Aughenbaugh, political science professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie?
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I am very good today. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I'm also good. In part, listeners, one of the reasons why I'm really excited about today's recording is that now, listeners, you're well aware that Nia and I have been doing a series, Stories Behind the Name. What we concluded was that we could do even, like, a subcategory of that theme.
N. Rodgers: Mini series within a series.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, a mini series within a series.
N. Rodgers: Because we like to use the word series as many times as possible.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like a story arc.
N. Rodgers: It's greater.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: In episodic TV, they have things like story arcs. We're going to do a story arc, and our focus, because it dawned on us. In the United States federal government, we've had some really infamous, controversial US attorney generals
N. Rodgers: They seem to be more controversial, maybe, than a lot of other positions. Part of it is because of their job, because lawyers are controversial anyway. Like, they go looking for trouble. They're like, " Is there any trouble under here? No. Is there any trouble under here? Like, they like to go looking for trouble. That's part of it. Trouble comes looking for lawyers. That's the other half of how that works is that sometimes trouble finds them when they are not looking. Today's candidate had that happen to her when she least expected it. But also, they are a mouthpiece of the government in a lot of ways. Sometimes what people hate about a particular administration coalesces around the attorney generals in some weird way, like.
J. Aughenbaugh: They run the Justice Department that on one hand, it's a cabinet position. The Attorney General of the United States is picked by the president. But for decades, since the Justice Department was created in the late 1800s, the Justice Department was supposed to be "independent," because we want the law to be applied fairly and without partisan bias, etc. But if you look at some of the units that the Attorney General runs within the Justice Department, these are controversial departments. You're talking about the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You're talking about.
N. Rodgers: Secret Service. They're under Treasury.
J. Aughenbaugh: They're under Treasury.
N. Rodgers: My bad.
J. Aughenbaugh: Occasionally they end up in the Justice Department, and then we pull them back out, as we've discussed previously. But you have alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. When the federal government does law enforcement, and it goes bad, who gets blamed?
N. Rodgers: Of the attorney general. Every time. You know what presidents do when that happens? They run to the side and let it happen.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: It's that person's fault. I don't be blaming me. I'm not the attorney general. Because presidents don't generally take a whole lot of accountability, and that's not just true of the current administration. That is true of all administrations. Everybody learns to pass the buck.
J. Aughenbaugh: Case in point when it became public that Donald Trump, after he left office, took a whole bunch of classified materials with him to Mar-a-Lago, President Biden didn't go ahead and say, I'm going to lead the investigation where the White House is. No, he went ahead and said, The Attorney General, Mayor Garland, will make that decision now.
N. Rodgers: Mayor Garland was like, I can't hear you from under this bus where you have thrown me.
J. Aughenbaugh: That you just drove over me. Thank you, Mr. President.
N. Rodgers: That's part of the job. Part of the job is knowing you are going to be that guy. You are going to be. In fact, today's candidate for the first attorney general, we're going to talk about is Janet Reno, who is famous for saying, The Buck stops with me.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: This was my fault.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: In a situation which we will get to and tell you about later. But that is how they probably should approach that job, but I'm the final. Some of them do. Some of them are very good at that, and some of them do the Pam Bondi. During the headlights, now I'm resigning. I've frozen for a moment, hoping you won't notice me. Oh, you notice me. I'm quitting. Get to her later. But not in this episode. We'll get to her in a different episode. But also, what's interesting to me, and I want to throw this out there for our listeners, is the Attorney General is not the president's lawyer?
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: That is not the job, despite what some presidents believe. Because some presidents believe it is the job. It is, in fact, not the job. No, as we've discussed, you're a law enforcement officer; you are not the president's attorney.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. That's why, for instance, I'm glad you made that point, Nia. First, the president's attorney or set of attorneys is in the White House Legal Counsel office. They are; they work. For the president. Second, to your point, there's a reason why a significant number of states actually have their state attorneys general picked by the people, not by the governor. There is independence between the governor and the attorney general because the attorney general, historically, was a law enforcement position. Sometimes.
N. Rodgers: If you want the governor to be investigated, that would be the Attorney General. If the attorney general is chosen by the governor, now you have a conflict of interest.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: I'm not going to investigate the guy who gave me a job. You bonkers? I'm not trying to be ugly, but when John Olmshider hired me as a librarian at VCU, unless he had done something so egregious that I couldn't overlook it, I'm not going looking for that trouble because he hired me.
J. Aughenbaugh: If somebody else at the university went ahead and said, Nia, I want you to investigate John Olmshider, you would have been looking.
N. Rodgers: No, thanks.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, no, thanks. It's like.
N. Rodgers: I'm good.
J. Aughenbaugh: When I got hired at VCU, the Dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences was Bob Holsworth.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say, was it Holsworth?
J. Aughenbaugh: If somebody came to me.
N. Rodgers: Interesting, mandarly knowledgeable.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's a well-known political scientist, and if somebody came to me and said, hey, we want you to investigate. Doctor Holsworth, I would have been like, thanks, but no. I'm just going to go teach my classes now. Thank you.
N. Rodgers: You don't pay me to do that. The Attorney General does get paid to do that. Like, that's part of the Attorney General's job is to say, hey, this thing that's happening is not a good idea. Which is why when they go up in the Senate for confirmation, it is so contentious.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: How in bed with the president are you? Because the president's giving you the name. The president gives the Senate the name. I want you to hire John Aughenbaugh as the attorney general. The first question they're going to say is, how close are you to the president? If the president were to commit acts of whatever, would you be willing to investigate the president? You need to have those answers. You need to be able to say, I would.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Or no, I wouldn't, me, or whatever. But that's part of the confirmation process is this idea of teasing out the separation, because what Todd Blanche just went through was very contentious. He got it by one vote. Like, it was tight. That's because they believe that Todd Blanche will defend Donald Trump. Not the American people?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. That's a question people who voted ask: Who do you owe your loyalty to as attorney general, the American public or the president? Again, this is difficult because, as Nia just pointed out, listeners, the president is the one who picks you.
N. Rodgers: Put your name forward.
J. Aughenbaugh: If your conception of democracy is that those in bureaucratic positions should be responsive to the elected person who picked them, well, then you should say my loyalties to the president. On the other hand, it is a democracy, and we hope that the Justice Department, which is the law enforcement unit of the federal government, will fairly, in a nonpartisan manner, apply the law to everybody: Republicans and Democrats, independents, nonvoters, etc.
N. Rodgers: Which is why when you get Richard Nixon's attorney general saying, well, if the president does it, it's not illegal. You're like, oh. That's not how the law works. I'm pretty sure. I don't know what law school you went to, but I think it was like the law school of cockamamie crap, is what that was, you anyway. But so that's what we're doing for the next few episodes is we're going to look at the interesting we're not going to look at all of them, because there have been approximately 8 billion attorneys general because people get into that job and they stay in for a couple of years and then they go, "wow, this sucks," and they leave mostly to go into private practice so they can make.
J. Aughenbaugh: Book bucks?
N. Rodgers: Money hand over fist, but also because it's exhausting. It's exhausting to be the law enforcement face.
J. Aughenbaugh: Of the country the.
N. Rodgers: Of the federal government.
J. Aughenbaugh: What's fascinating is the first one we're going to look at actually belies what Nia just said. Janet Reno is the second longest-serving attorney general in the history of the United States. The only one who served longer was William W., and we'll get to later. She was the first woman. The position existed for like since the first presidential administration.
N. Rodgers: Washington had an attorney general?
J. Aughenbaugh: We just didn't have a Justice Department until the late 1880s.
N. Rodgers: Hey,.
J. Aughenbaugh: The late 1800s.
N. Rodgers: In charge of a department that doesn't exist. I got you personally. I got you, sir.
J. Aughenbaugh: But she was the first woman, which would have been noteworthy in and of itself. Let's delve into Janet Reno. Janet Reno, born in the Great Depression, 1938, she lived until 2016. Correct my math. What is that? About 78 years?
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: She was the 78th Attorney General. She served for eight years during the Clinton administration. Reno was born and raised in Miami, Florida. She attended Cornell University. That's an Ivy League school. Then she went to Harvard Law School.
N. Rodgers: She had chops.
J. Aughenbaugh: She had chops.
N. Rodgers: Because Harvard Law School for a woman during that time period. She was one of a very small group of people.
J. Aughenbaugh: She was.
N. Rodgers: She and RBG would have had that in common, very small group of people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. I'm just giving you the thumbnail sketch before we delve into her early life, education, and then how she ended up as Clinton's attorney general. But after she graduated Harvard Law School, she went back to Miami, worked in a number of private law firms. She got involved with government as a staff member of the Judiciary Committee of the Florida House of Representatives. Then she worked for the Dade County State Attorney's Office. Then she was elected to the office of state attorney five times, was the first woman in the history of Florida to serve as a state attorney.
J. Aughenbaugh: President Clinton picked her as attorney general in 1993. As I mentioned, she was born and raised in Florida. Her father was an immigrant from Denmark and was a reporter for the Miami Herald for 43 years. Her mom also worked in the newspaper business. She wrote a home improvement column for the Miami News.
N. Rodgers: Improvement from a woman? You wouldn't take a woman's advice for home improvement.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It doesn't matter that she knew what she was doing. She do it under a male pseudonym. I think she eventually became an investigative reporter.
J. Aughenbaugh: Reporter. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Good. Janet early on learned that women had to extra hustle.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Janet Reno was the oldest of four children. She had three younger siblings, two brothers, Mark and Robert, and then her sister was Maggie. Particularly by today, because when we think about Miami, we think it's a huge urban area. The Renos lived in a series of houses that took them further into rural Florida. First, rural South Miami, which is not all that rural nowadays. They had enough land where they had a wide menagerie of farm animals. They had cows, chickens, ducks, goats, turkeys. Then they built a house near the Everglades. It's funny because Janet Reno learned a lot of these skills? Because the family that moved to a house that her mother effectively built. In almost every account I researched, the mother did the bulk of the home building.
N. Rodgers: Since the home improvement column.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Didn't the kids all learn to do all that stuff, masonry, electrical working, etc?
J. Aughenbaugh: Et cetera. All the kinds of stuff Nia, you and I are just like, call the guy or call the person.
N. Rodgers: Who you called was Janet Reno. Janet's mother. That's who you called.
J. Aughenbaugh: Initially, when they got the house near the Everglades, they had about 21 acres. But what they did over time to pay for their kids education was to sell parts of the property to pay for the kids' education. I like that. I really like that. She went to public school. For a period of time, after she completed middle school, she was sent by her parents to live with her uncle, who was a US military judge in Germany.
N. Rodgers: To change her education, give her language.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: She would have picked up some German. I'm assuming she traveled around Europe and looked at the landmarks and did all them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, she did. Very independent. Returned to Florida, went to public high school, Coral Gables Senior High School. She was a debating champion and she graduated salutatorian. For those of you who don't know that term, that's graduating second. Valedictorian is the student who graduates with the highest grade point average. She enrolled at Cornell. She majored in chemistry and was the president of the women's Self Government Association. At the time, this was in the mid 1950s, Cornell had separate government leadership tracks.
N. Rodgers: Men versus women.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then again, she graduated from Cornell.
N. Rodgers: That's how she paid through school. That's how she paid her way through school?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: She worked. She was prepared to work hard because what she saw with her mom was, if you work hard and you dream big, you can get the thing you want. You have to be willing to put in the blood sweat and tears to do it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let's be very clear. Did she grow up poor? No, she grew up middle class, but she was not upper class. Things weren't handed to her. In many ways when I was doing research, Nia, about Janet Reno, it reminded me of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Yes, her family had a ranch, but it was a working ranch. They were never wealthy.
N. Rodgers: The days had to all work, didn't they? She and her brothers liked it?
J. Aughenbaugh: If you owned a ranch in West Texas, it was highly variable as to whether or not you would have a successful year.
N. Rodgers: Just like Texas is notoriously weird.
J. Aughenbaugh: When she enrolled at Harvard Law School, she was one of 16 women in a class of 500 students. To your point, she was a trailblazer in regards to legal education at the highest level in the United States.
N. Rodgers: I know this emotional, but I want to say this. I think this is a thing that young women now probably don't understand this experience because there's a lot of women in college. In fact, in some colleges, it's more women than men now. But when you think about if you're one of 16 in a class of 500, most of your classes, there's not another woman. You're it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Cool.
N. Rodgers: That would be lonely. It takes a certain human to be able to push through in that level of loneliness that I think would be very complex. I think that similarly African Americans going to Harvard at that time would have experienced a similar Wow, I'm one of 30 or 40 young men who are allowed. It certainly wasn't Black women. Allowed to be in at Harvard, you would feel so lonely, I would think.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. It's very comparable to what research tells us. To a certain extent, something that I experienced as a first generation college. When I went to a college, most of the students in my classes were second and third generation college.
N. Rodgers: They knew what they were doing.
J. Aughenbaugh: But for me, I was just like how do you guys just know that this is what you're supposed to be doing. Or being poor.
N. Rodgers: Every experience is new.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, or being poor. This idea that after class, I could just go back to the dorm room and take a nap or play video games. No, I had to go and work. The loneliness. Because my experience was different. It had to be just exponentially more difficult for somebody like Janet Reno, who one is coming from Miami to Harvard, up in Boston.
N. Rodgers: Boston. You like Boston actually. Boston tea party. Talk about a cultural difference.
J. Aughenbaugh: Difference. Yes.
N. Rodgers: She's not an uncultured woman. At this point, she's hung out in Europe.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: She's graduated from Cornell, which is, by the way, no mean feet of its, no small feet of its own.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, my goodness. Yes.
N. Rodgers: She's already in this elite world, but I imagine that there was a lot of cold shouldering. Why is a woman here? You don't belong here. Was a man's job. You can hear all the things that she probably heard in the hallways when people were going by her.
J. Aughenbaugh: What a lot of the logic at that time, the men, her male classmates would say, why are you taking a seat that should be given to a man.
N. Rodgers: Who's going to be earning for a family?
J. Aughenbaugh: For a family. Why are you getting a degree when more than likely after you finish, you're going to get married and become a housewife?
N. Rodgers: Right, and make babies. That's because that was the assumption. She graduates in 1963.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Which for listeners, in case you were wondering is before Aughie and I were born?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I'm just saying we were not alive when this happened.
J. Aughenbaugh: She returns to Miami for eight years, she works in private practice, and then she does the unusual. She then goes to work for the Judiciary Committee in the Florida House of Representatives. She runs for office in 1972 and is unsuccessful. '73, she's working for the Judiciary Committee for the Florida House, works on a project to revise the state systems of rules and regulation for criminal procedure. It's that experience that leads her to take a job in the Dade County State Attorney's office, and she met a very important mentor, Richard Gerstein who made Janet Reno his chief of staff. The first time a woman was the chief of staff for a state attorney. She didn't try any cases, and she once again after a few years, returned to private practice. But when Gerstein decided to retire, this created a vacancy. In Florida at that time, state attorneys were picked by the governor. The Florida governor, Reubin Askew, was given two candidates. Gerstein recommended Reno and another one of his former staffers and Askew you went with Janet Reno. Dade County is now known as Miami-Dade County. It is I think the largest jurisdiction in the state of Florida.
N. Rodgers: Certainly the most populous. If not physically, certainly the most populous. By the way, during elections for returns from Florida, we're waiting for Miami.
J. Aughenbaugh: For Miami-Dade County, yes.
N. Rodgers: Because it takes forever. We're not waiting for Tallahassee. That gets counted early. We're not waiting for Orlando. That gets counted early. We're not waiting for any of that. We're waiting for Miami Dade.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Every time.
J. Aughenbaugh: She was the first woman to serve as a state attorney in Florida. She was elected in 1978. She was returned to the office four more times in elections.
N. Rodgers: Pretty popular.
J. Aughenbaugh: She ran as a liberal pro choice democrat, even though Miami Dade, at that time, was a very conservative county.
N. Rodgers: Side note on that political. Miami is not a conservative place.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Trust me when I tell you, some of the best gay bars in the world are in Miami. It is not a conservative place.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But Dade, which surrounds Miami, is conservative. What people did was they fled out county in order to have this what you have is a doughnut. In the center, you have a highly blue, and then surrounded by a pretty strong red, which is why the returns are always so tight. It's never that somebody says, Oh, I can predict Miami Dade. Like you just can't. It totally depends on voter turnout. But then she could woo both sides?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It says a lot about her.
J. Aughenbaugh: Particularly because, she did run as a liberal pro choice democrat. On the other hand, she was known for ethical behavior. Nia, just the size of her office that she ran. Her office had 95 attorneys. The case load. On average, 15,000 felonies, 40,000 misdemeanors.
J. Aughenbaugh: A year.
N. Rodgers: 55,000 cases. Cases.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's a case load that would just be crushing in most jurisdictions.
N. Rodgers: I like your anecdote that you have in here, that she developed a reputation for ethical behavior going so far as to purchase a car at sticker price to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Don't give me a deal, I will pay what everybody else would pay. I I have a soft spot in my heart for Janet Reno. I have to admit.
J. Aughenbaugh: Bill Clinton is elected president in 1992. His first two choices to be the attorney general were Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood. Both of whom he had to pull their nominations because it was disclosed that they had employed undocumented immigrants as nannies. Janet Reno was his third choice. In part, the Clinton administration picked her because of her sterling ethical reputation. There was nothing. She was unmarried.
N. Rodgers: There's nothing to find.
J. Aughenbaugh: No kids.
N. Rodgers: No sketchy people in her background?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Her family members did not run.
N. Rodgers: Outstanding. Frankly, Bill Clinton could use a little bit of that cause Bill Clinton himself was a little bit sketchy. You can like Bill Clinton, you can hate Bill Clinton, but you have to be honest about Bill Clinton's slight sketchiness or in some instances, more than slight.
J. Aughenbaugh: Overt.
N. Rodgers: Full on sketchiness. But anyway, choosing her was a way of saying, I'm choosing someone unimpeachable. Her reputation at that point was you can say that you don't like her. You can't say that she's bad at the job or corrupt because she's not either of those things.
J. Aughenbaugh: The funny thing was, Clinton was even public in saying why Reno was not his first choice. I mean, he came out and said in a series of interviews, the reason why I didn't pick her was pick her first is that she had no experience working in the federal Justice Department. Her entire, if you will, professional experience was down in Miami. But ultimately, because of the sheer scope and diversity of the case load in the Miami-Dade State Attorney's office, it was just like, well, who better as a state attorney would be able to transition to the Justice Department. She was confirmed 98-0. Nia, I can't recall.
N. Rodgers: When does everybody love someone or respect someone? They didn't have to like her, but they respected her. They respected her as an honest and fair human. I'm like because I'm not even sure Oreo cookies would get a 98-0 vote. Everybody loves Oreo cookies, well, most everybody.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I'm just thinking about, for instance, when Biden picked Merrick Garland.
N. Rodgers: Oh, my gosh. You would have thought that the Senate had been set on fire.
J. Aughenbaugh: But you're talking about a person who worked in the Justice Department, was a deputy attorney general at one point, had been a well respected federal judge.
N. Rodgers: And is more or less vanilla. Merrick Garland is pretty milk toast, relatively speaking and yet he heard there was a huge contentious. This is after he decided not to go after Donald Trump. It's weird to me how angry people are were at Merrick Garland. But anyway, so she gets the 98-0 vote. What I like about is the scale of her work. She went from 95 attorneys to 95,000 attorneys. That's that's a pretty big scale up pretty fast. From all I understand about Reno, she was she was up to the task. She was able to manage.
J. Aughenbaugh: The first thing that she did even to this day, I know criminal defense attorneys, they still speak with awe and reverence for one of the first things that she did when she became attorney general. She had the Justice Department write a report about DNA exoneration. Now, today, as most Americans know, DNA science is prevalent in almost every criminal case. Particularly, murders, etc.
N. Rodgers: With the CSI effect, everybody expects that there will be DNA evidence.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But back then, the science was new and she wanted to know how many cases existed. The ones that she was beginning to read about as attorney general, and what the Justice Department could learn. The resulting report concluded that there was strong statistical evidence that many wrongful convictions could be cleared with DNA evidence. In response, she changed how to interview eyewitnesses because as criminal justice research tells us, eyewitnesses are statistically unreliable.
N. Rodgers: They're pretty much horrible.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They don't mean to be. I'm not saying people mean to lie, they don't mean to lie. In fact, they think they're telling the truth. The more they relive it in their brain, the more real it becomes until they are sure that an elephant robbed them last week. It mugged me behind the Winn-Dixie. You're like, elephants don't mug people. They're like, no, it was an elephant. I could describe the elephant. Because it becomes very real to you, whereas if you have a good lab, and it's different, if you have a bad lab that's not doing good work. But if you have a good lab, they often can exclude. Well, it can't have been this person.
J. Aughenbaugh: Part of the difficulty with eyewitness testimony is that we all bring our lived experience, biases to what we see. Nia, you and I have been friends for years. We have some similar experiences, but we have other experiences. You and I could go ahead and see an automobile accident transpire in front of us in real time, you and I both. You and I more than likely will describe it in different ways. That's just because of who we are, our lived experiences, our biases, etc. I'm so cynical. I see an automobile accident, and I immediately assume that one of the drivers was acting foolishly.
N. Rodgers: Looking at their phone, looking at the side of the road, messing with the radio, whatever it is.
J. Aughenbaugh: A more optimistic person might go ahead and say, there was something in the road or there was a pothole, or it was an act of God. But a cynical person like me, I'm just like well, I saw so and so's back of their head as they were driving by me. They weren't looking at the road, so they had to be the reason why the automobile accident happened. Because that's who I am.
N. Rodgers: Well, and all humans fill in the blanks.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: If we don't know exactly what happened, our brains like, well, logically, to get from here to there, it would have to be something along the lines. That becomes the thing that happened not what you saw. If you're wondering, email us. Aughie and I can give you lots of psychology experiments where they show that eyewitnesses are, and they're not entirely useless. If they see a fight between two people, and then one of those people gets murdered later, they can actually say, well, they were having a fight. I don't know what about, but they were clearly mad at each other. That's a perfectly good eyewitness. You were fighting with the person before they ended up dead. That's interesting. But that doesn't. Can we talk about a couple of her big?
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, what we're going to do in this episode is transition to some rather significant events that happened during Janet Reno's tenure as attorney general. We would be remiss if we didn't start with the 51 day standoff that occurred in Waco, Texas that led to 76 deaths. In Waco, Texas, there was a compound that the Branch Davidian compound.
N. Rodgers: Branch Davidian was a small religious organization based around a gentleman named David Koresh and the group was apocalyptic in nature in the sense that they were concerned about government and the apocalypse and sort of the coming end of times. If you want to read a book about it, email Aughie and I, we can give you some books.
J. Aughenbaugh: There've been a number of books.
N. Rodgers: Of really good ones written about it, but, yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: The standoff between the FBI and the Branch Davidians began on February 28. This was day February 28, 1993. The standoff began 12 days before Reno took her oath to become attorney general. But she was the attorney general that authorized the FBI to assault. It was a full blown SWAT assault of the Branch Davidian compound. According to Reno's testimony in front of Congress, the reason why she authorized the assault was that the FBI had reported to Reno, and we now know more than likely the FBI was wrong, the FBI reported that children were being abused at the compound. Reno said, "When I had this information, I did not think it was appropriate to allow the standoff to continue because I wanted to stop the abuse of the children."
N. Rodgers: There was also a rumor that a couple of militias were coming either, and nobody knew whether they were going to fight on the Branch Davidian side against the government or because of this rumor about the abuse, they were going after the Branch Davidians because it could have gone either way and nobody knew and they wanted to try to end it this what they had done was they had purchased a lot of ammunition and weapons and that sort of thing and holed up on this ranch. When they were served, David Koresh was served with papers, he refused. He was like, "I'm not leaving. I'm not going anywhere." They circled the wagons around him to protect him, this group of people. The FBI was like, well, then we'll come in and get you. He was like, good luck with that. It turned into a thing. What I think is interesting is that is the case where she said, "The buck stops with me. I'm the one who ordered the assault." What happened, as far as what we can tell, the FBI made a move on the compound with smoke, those things that they throw in ahead that make smoke. But it made it hard for people to breathe, and there was all complications. Then we don't know who fired the first shot. That is still a thing that on one side, they say it the FBI fired the first shot. The other side says the Davidians fired the first shot. But then it became a blood bath. It was just a mess. She took responsibility for the loss of life. She was like, no, that was me. I shouldn't have ordered that. Although there's a part of me that's like, I don't know what you do after 51 days. The FBI can't walk away because then they look like they can't control.
J. Aughenbaugh: That they're in effective, that they are doing their job.
N. Rodgers: Insurgency.
N. Rodgers: But the other side of that is a lot of innocent people got hurt and died. It's tough. I would not have wanted to be Janet Reno making those decisions.
J. Aughenbaugh: To her credit, she could have really thrown the FBI under the bus. Particularly with the errors in the report about the abuse of children. Now, is there evidence that children were mentally and sexually abused at the Branch Davidian compound? I've read some stuff that.
N. Rodgers: Suggest they were.
J. Aughenbaugh: But that was the catalyst. It's almost as though the FBI knew this is the one thing that they could report to the new attorney general that would have her authorize them to do what they wanted to do?
N. Rodgers: Which was go after these people? Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, beyond that, there was other really controversial stuff while she was attorney general. The Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, during her tenure, brought a lawsuit against Microsoft for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. Now, for our younger listeners, if you hear older people in your life, go ahead and say, insert profanity, Microsoft. It originates from this period of time, because basically everything on your computer was run by Microsoft. It was a Microsoft app. The Justice Department alleged that Microsoft was bundling its browser with its operating system, which was in every computer seemingly made in the United States at the time.
N. Rodgers: Any PC. You couldn't get a PC that didn't have Microsoft on it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Microsoft on it. Operating system.
N. Rodgers: Which Apple wasn't too thrilled by that because their operating system would have run on a PC and does run on a PC. Linux wasn't happy about that. Their stuff runs on PCs, but Microsoft did a smart thing by saying,
J. Aughenbaugh: You want our operating system, then you have to use our browser.
N. Rodgers: Our software, which you have to buy. You have to buy our Microsoft Office.
J. Aughenbaugh: Suite software. Yes. In response to the lawsuit, I still remember reading about this. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Balmer responded by saying, To heck with Janet Reno.
N. Rodgers: I'll quit Janet Reno. Although I think later he said, I really shouldn't have said that.
J. Aughenbaugh: You shouldn't have said that. By the way, postscript to the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft: the federal government settled with Microsoft in 2001 after the 2000 presidential election; the Bush 43 administration was just like, This has gone on long enough. They accepted a huge fine, but rather controversially, the Bush administration did not ask Microsoft to break up.
N. Rodgers: They went on to put their thumb on the market some more because almost every PC that you buy comes with Microsoft. Every Apple product you buy comes with Apple iOS. People are now either in one tribe or another. They tend to be PC people or Apple people. What I think is interesting is when we get the Montana Freeman, because the Montana Freeman was an 81-day armed standoff that ended without a loss of life because she was gunshy. She had seen what happened in Waco. She didn't want the FBI storming the place. But the Montana Freemen were this group of people who and I'm not going to say I completely disagree with them. Who think that there should be no government above the county level. There's a part of me that's like, I don't know. That might not be the worst idea in the world. Then there's another part of me that's like, no, we need state and federal leadership.
J. Aughenbaugh: This occurred in March of 1996. What's fascinating to me. Armed militias bother me on so many levels. But at least this group, they were extremely faithful in their use of historical documents. The way they quoted, for instance, Thomas Jefferson, the antifederalist, etc, I was just like, Wow, you guys are taking me back to my first two years as an undergrad. I'm like, Wow. There was that. But it is fascinating because I mean, Reno even acknowledged after what happened in Waco, she was going to negotiate, until there was no more negotiating because she did not want another loss of life.
N. Rodgers: On the other hand?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I think that she had some successes, like the capture and conviction of Ted Kaczynski, who was the Unabomber. The capture and conviction of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols for the Oklahoma City bombing. The capture and conviction of the people who conducted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which was when they drove a van with a bomb into the parking deck of the World Trade Center. She had some of those, and so she's like, flying high. Things are going well. Then you get Poor Richard Jewell. The Centennial Olympic Park bombing happens. Richard Jewell, God love him, is a security guard who finds the bomb. They immediately turn around and accuse him of being the guy. He's like, I'm just standing here. I didn't do anything. They put his life on blast as much as you could at that time period. Because now it would be way worse with the way the Internet works. But even then, he was hounded. He could not go out of his house cause the journalists were there, and his mom couldn't go anywhere. Like it was bad. Somebody in the FBI said, we're looking at Richard Jewell.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, that was not the only bombing that this individual committed was Eric Rudolph. But he was basically a fugitive throughout her tenure. He was not apprehended until 2003.
N. Rodgers: He slipped into the mountains of North Carolina and got missing on the Appalachian Trail. But it put Richard Jewell's life completely to shreds. His mental health, his physical health. She said, I'm very sorry it happened. I think we owe him an apology. I regret the leak. I'm like, Easy for you to say. You didn't have your life torn apart. But anyway, I think that can we end with the worst of the outside, not the Clinton stuff, because she was all up in the Clinton stuff, which we also have to mention. But Elian Gonzalez, for the look of that on television, was bad.
J. Aughenbaugh: For our listeners who don't know, Elian Gonzalez was a 6-year-old, and his father took him home to Cuba. His dad was a Cuban native.
N. Rodgers: His mom and his stepfather slipped out of Cuba, came to the United States, and died on the trip. His US relatives had him. The FBI went into that apartment and took him out of a closet, screaming and crying on TV. It was on national TV. Because the journalists were following to send him back to Cuba to his father. It is an image burned in my brain because that child was so distraught. That must have been hard on everybody. They say that it was hard on the guy who picked him up because he didn't want to traumatize this kid, but he'd been told You've got to get him and take him to his father. But then she had the joy of turning inward to the Clinton administration because Bill Clinton is a messy man.
J. Aughenbaugh: In 1994, in congressional hearings, it came to light that President Bill Clinton, when he was governor, was involved in a land deal that went bad. The land deal was known as Whitewater. Now, at the time, there was the independent counsel law, which was created in the aftermath of Richard Nixon and Watergate. We'll get to the reasons why that law was created when we look at one of Nixon's attorneys general, Elliott Richardson. Congress passes this law, and it basically gives the Attorney General the authority to appoint a special counsel because you don't want the attorney general who was picked by the president to investigate the president.
N. Rodgers: You want, theoretically, a neutral. As neutral as you're going to get.
J. Aughenbaugh: Somebody who doesn't owe their job to the president to investigate the president. Now, the Democrats were upset with this because they were claiming the Republicans wanted the investigation because they lost the presidency. This was for behavior when he was governor. They were like, He's president now. Why do you want to go ahead and investigate this?
N. Rodgers: Also, Vince Foster, who deputy White House Counsel, committed suicide. Fisk was supposed to figure out if somehow Vince Foster was tied up in Whitewater, if he knew about it, if he had done something criminal and was trying to avoid prosecution by suicide. I don't believe he found a link between those two things, although they live in Republican minds rent-free in some quarters.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia just mentioned Fisk Reno appointed Robert Fisk as special counsel to investigate this Whitewater land deal. Then when Vince Foster committed suicide, she allowed Fisk to go ahead and look into whether or not Foster committed suicide because of some guilt or complicity in his role with this land deal. What Fisk concluded there was there was no there there.
N. Rodgers: There's no link between these two things.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Congress reauthorized the investigation in August of 1994, but specifically said, Janet Reno cannot appoint the special counsel. Because we don't think that the special counsel actually did a quality investigation.
N. Rodgers: I think he had a conflict of interest because he was chosen by Janet Reno, who worked in Clinton's administration.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, the Republicans, I mean, we're still thinking the only reason why Clinton wins the presidency in 1992 is not because he was the most qualified or that the public even liked him. It's because Ross Perot took away enough electoral college votes. Yeah, from Bush 41. Congress reauthorizes an investigation into Whitewater, but instead does not give Reno the authority to pick a special counsel. They give federal judges in DC the authority. A These judges pick Kenneth Starr, who was an attorney general in the Bush 41 administration. His investigation last multiple years. In fact, it doesn't conclude until December of 1997.
J. Aughenbaugh: In his investigation, Starr finds out, that maybe there's not wrongdoing in regards to Whitewater, but there were multiple reports of the Governor Clinton and now President Clinton engaging then in inappropriate relationships with female staffers.
N. Rodgers: To whom he was not married?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because he was married to Hillary Rodham Clinton at this point.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Note, Ken Starr finds there's no connection with the Blackwater stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Black stuff. That's right.
N. Rodgers: Turns out Fisk did do a reasonable job.
J. Aughenbaugh: Reasonable job. Yes.
N. Rodgers: But then Ken Starr was like, but there's got to be something else here. Something else is going on.
J. Aughenbaugh: The judges on the DC Circuit were the ones who gave Kenneth Starr the authority to broaden his investigation into whether or not the president had engaged in a pattern of abusing his positions of authority and preying upon female staffers for sexual liaisons. Starr issues his report. The House Government Reform and Oversight Committee votes to recommend that the House cite Janet Reno for contempt of Congress because she refused to turn over two internal Justice Department memos related to campaign financing controversies during the impeachment of Bill Clinton because the House tried to impeach Clinton, the Senate issued a verdict of no impeachment. Yes
N. Rodgers: Which by the way, nobody ever said Bill Clinton was innocent. They just said, it does not rise to the level of impeachment. Two very different things. I'm not sure anybody who ever knew anything about Bill Clinton would think that Bill Clinton was a totally upstanding family-oriented, not shady at all guy. If you had told me that George H. W Bush was having an affair, I would have not believed you.
J. Aughenbaugh: I would have been shocked.
N. Rodgers: I think that maybe there are things that have come out since that that maybe he did have some relationships. I don't know. But he didn't read that way at all, whereas, Bill, God love him, read like when you saw him, you were like how I know he's lying because his lips are moving. What's funny is he had brilliant ideas reshaping the government and foreign policy issues and all things. He really had some great ideas, but he got in his own way a lot of the time.
J. Aughenbaugh: He just help himself.
N. Rodgers: With the petty weird stuff, like picking up women and doing really you can't, but anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, listeners, for those of you who are wondering, it was the Kenneth Starr investigation where President Clinton was forced. The Supreme Court actually had to rule on this. The Supreme Court said he had to give a deposition, particularly about behavior that occurred before he was president. It was during that deposition, Nia, that Bill Clinton wordsmith questions about whether or not he had engaged in sexual relations.
N. Rodgers: With that woman.
J. Aughenbaugh: That woman being Monica Lewinsky.
N. Rodgers: He lawyered the snot out of that deposition. You're like, see, if you had just said, mess this up, and it's between me, Monica and Hillary and God. There's four people involved in this and none of them are in the Congress. If he had just done that, it might have been one thing, but he insisted on, tell me what is in this particular instance. Now I know you're lying. Sorry. I don't mean to disparage previous presidents. Actually, I do. But I will say.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's unfortunate that Janet Reno got caught up into this.
N. Rodgers: Because she really wasn't this person.
J. Aughenbaugh: She wasn't this person, and this is going to be a theme listeners in our discussion of these stories behind the names of these attorneys general. Many of them get placed into situations where you have to know. Most of them are like, are you freaking kidding me?
N. Rodgers: After the number of times I have helped you/cover for you/fixed it, slash whatever, and you just keep on and on putting me in. I know that that's how the attorneys general for Donald Trump feel. Seriously, sir? Could you just give me one day where you don't say something that I have to try to explain?
J. Aughenbaugh: Or walk back or try to tell me of course.
N. Rodgers: Or try to find a way to please you and stay within the law.
J. Aughenbaugh: Not completely destroy the morale of the career attorneys who've been working in the Justice Department for decades.
N. Rodgers: Thanks for making it 100 times harder, so she goes on to run for governor of Florida and she loses by and 0.44%/. It's that close.
J. Aughenbaugh: Janet Reno. She no longer has a job in 2001.
N. Rodgers: Close so she pieces out, goes back to Florida.
J. Aughenbaugh: Florida. She runs for the Democratic primary for the governor's race. Loses by less than half a percentage point. What's again, Janet Reno can be criticized for what happened at Waco or this the other. But to her credit, even though this was Florida in 2002, and Florida, back in the early part of this millennium, had a really difficult time counting votes, even though there were allegations that there were problems counting votes.
N. Rodgers: Irregularities.
J. Aughenbaugh: She only waited a week. She gave it a week, and then she just went ahead and said, I don't think this would serve the Democratic Party for me to go ahead and challenge the results.
N. Rodgers: I think the most important thing that she did in her post attorney general life was to be a founding member of the Board of Directors for the Innocence Project.
J. Aughenbaugh: Innocence Project.
N. Rodgers: She clearly believed that there should be a way for people to try to show that they didn't do something. Some of that comes from being in the South where wrongly accused individuals happened to be in large part, African American.
J. Aughenbaugh: People of color.
N. Rodgers: There's all these other issues, and she was raising those questions, and good for her that she like, You know what? I can use my fame and my influence, such that it is to say, just like she said, there is a link between a poor educational system and the crime rate.
J. Aughenbaugh: She did a lot of good work after she left federal government service.
N. Rodgers: It's sad to me she was diagnosed with Parkinson's.
J. Aughenbaugh: In her personal life, listeners, Janet Reno never married, did not have any kid, any children. I love the fact that when she was state attorney, she took Spanish lessons so she could better serve her constituents.
N. Rodgers: That's great. I mean in Florida. That's especially great.
J. Aughenbaugh: As Nia just pointed out, she was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1995.
N. Rodgers: Then in 1996, she learned to inline skate.
J. Aughenbaugh: Inline skate. Yes.
N. Rodgers: I'm sure it's because somebody said, the more active you are, the longer you will stave off.
J. Aughenbaugh: The symptoms off.
N. Rodgers: That's the worst parts of Parkinson's.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because that's the thing about Parkinson's, and I know so much about this because my dissertation advisor and mentor, John Roar died from complications of Parkinson's. But when he was diagnosed, one of the things I remember his doctor told him was we don't have a cure, but we do know that if you can remain active or begin to do physical things that challenge and pressure, push back against your nervous system, that helps. She did die Parkinson's, complications of Parkinson's in 2016, and I thought it was noteworthy that not only did the then current President Obama praise Reno for her intellect and integrity and commitment to justice? That was a quote. But I also like that President Clinton released a statement, thanking Reno for service counsel and friendship because Nia, as you pointed out, there are some things, some of the controversies of her tenure unrelated to who was present. But a big chunk of what she ended up doing was related to.
N. Rodgers: He put her through.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was related to the fact that the president was Bill Clinton. My goodness.
N. Rodgers: In this series, we will talk about other attorneys general. We would not know now his name has totally slipped my mind.
J. Aughenbaugh: Elliott Richardson.
N. Rodgers: We would not know Elliott Richardson had Nixon not been such a dramatic pain in the petute. I think that's going to hold true for several of our attorneys general. We would not know Ed Meese if Ronald Reagan had not hired a bunch of criminals to be in his.
J. Aughenbaugh: Cabinet.
N. Rodgers: Yes cabinet because he had turnover rate the way you see turnover rate at a fast food. Anyway, there's going to be several more of these. Thank you, Aggie. I'm fascinated by Janet Reno, first in her class in a lot of ways.
J. Aughenbaugh: In government service, which is near and dear to both you and I hold it as something very valuable. She could have done a lot of things with her law degree. But she chose government service.
N. Rodgers: I could have made a lot more money in private practice, and chose not to do that.
J. Aughenbaugh: I have to wonder the fact that she didn't really have much of a personal life. How much of that was affected by her commitment to public service. Because being the state attorney for Miami Dade and then becoming the Attorney General in the Clinton administration probably didn't give one a lot of free time.
N. Rodgers: The other I have heard rumors that Janet Reno may also have been gay or bi, because she didn't come from a time when you talked about that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: She would not have wanted to engage in any of that publicly in the sense of it's very different times now than the time she was living through. If she was one of 16 in a class of 500 and openly gay or bi. Hold the cow. What would have happened to her at Harvard? Like that would not have been a tenable situation. We don't know, and we're never going to know because she didn't leave papers that would tell anybody anything like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, part of me respects that. It's her private life.
N. Rodgers: It's nobody's business.
J. Aughenbaugh: Business, and I know for our younger listeners, some of you all are probably isn't that an odd view, but I think it's generational. Think about, for instance, on the current Supreme Court, Elena Kagan is single.
N. Rodgers: There have been rumors swirled around her forever.
J. Aughenbaugh: She's never publicly commented, and if I had to venture a guess, we may never know. I'm of a generation, the same generation as you Nia, where again, we were taught that's nobody's business.
N. Rodgers: That's strictly non your business.
J. Aughenbaugh: None of your business. If you want to disclose it, fine, but for the rest of us we don't care.
N. Rodgers: We respect your right to decide whether you want to tell somebody or not tell somebody.
J. Aughenbaugh: Somebody. Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's your business. Thank you so much. Looking forward to the next one.
J. Aughenbaugh: I think our next one's going to be another get used to this phrase listeners. Another controversial attorney general Alberto Gonzalez
N. Rodgers: I don't know that there are any none. No. We should do at the very end, a small list of the bland ones that didn't do anything. These are people you never heard of because nothing controversial happened during their 10 years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Anyways, thanks, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aggie.
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