Janet Reno is dead of Parkinson's disease at the age of 78. Reno was (the first?) President Clinton's Attorney General for eight years, longer than any other in 150 years.
I had to laugh when I read her obituary in The New York Times this morning. Despite serving in the Cabinet for eight years Reno "was never in the Clinton's inner circle." I know that's right, hoo-doggie. "I hear you're not a team player," the president said to her in her interview. "I am as long as you don't do anything wrong, Mr. President." She referred investigations out to independent counsel so frequently Congress abolished the damn statute! Janet Reno was never in anyone's inner circle. She was independent a bit to a fault.
"Miss Reno," as we all called her, was my first boss as a lawyer and endured that affliction for fourteen years until she became General Reno.
A bit longer than 14 years for she would frequently come home and occasionally visit her old office when she was in town.
On one such visit (of which I was not given prior notice) she came around with an advance person and two Secret Service, or whatever, agents and peaked into offices and renewed old acquaintances.
She could not peak into my office because the door was closed on that particular occasion. And locked. An elegant hand-lettered "DO NOT DISTURB" sign decorated the door.
I was in deep trial preparation.
Under the door from the inside I had elegantly stuffed my suit jacket. Why? Smoking in public buildings had, proximate (less than several years) to the case under review, been made ILLEGAL; this was a district attorney's office, I was an assistant prosecutor, and I was smoking like a chimney.
Came then a knock upon my uninviting door. "WHO IS IT?!", the growled response from within.
"It's the Attorney General of the United States of America," sweetly from the advance woman.
"Oh shit," murmured to self.
One last Pavlovian drag on the cigarette, a furtive confirmatory glance about the 10'x10' room that there existed no "back door" and I moved smartly through the hazy blue air toward the only portal of ingress and egress and ingressed the door, stepping on my suit jacket as I did, my faculties discomposed.
"Hello, Benjamin," Miss Reno. "Y'all make me so proud."
"Nice to meet you," I replied to the woman who I had known for fifteen years and met zillions of times, smoke curling from my nostrils in the manner of dragons as I spoke.
Behind Miss Reno and out of her sight, resting against the wall, leaning slightly forward at the waist and covering their mouths with their hands were the two security forces silently laughing.
The foregoing is true and accurate down to the last detail.
Miss Reno returned to the office a couple times more but never came to my door again.
