Standing Tall

When U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno was a young woman, so the story goes, she arrived one day at the family home near Florida's Everglades to find blood on the steps and a note on the door. "Don't go in," the note warned. "Dangerous alligator inside." No big deal, Reno's brother Bob told her: their mother, an alligator wrestler from way back, had been bitten while trying to cram a four-footer into a crate for shipment to the London Zoo. Mom was at the hospital having her hand sewn up. Janet and Bob found the offending alligator in the fireplace and, with the help of some local Indians, managed to send the beast at last on its way to England.

Washington, a city that pulses with conformity, loves exotic visitors with colorful pasts, which helps explain the reception Reno has received in her two months on the job. But it is her performance under pressure that has sealed her stature in the capital. During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Waco disaster last week, Reno found herself under fire from Congressman John Conyers Jr. The outcome at Waco, Conyers declaimed, was "a profound disgrace to law enforcement in the United States of America." As for Reno, he continued, "You did the right thing by offering to resign. And now I'd like you to know that there is at least one member of Congress that isn't going to rationalize the death of two dozen children."

Listening to Conyers' attack, the 54-year-old, 6-ft. 2-in. Reno thrust out her jaw and glared. Then, her voice quavering, she replied, "I haven't tried to rationalize the death of children, Congressman. I feel more strongly about it than you will ever know. But I have neither tried to rationalize the death of four ((Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms)) agents, and I will not walk away from a compound where ATF agents had been killed by people who knew they were agents and leave them unsurrounded." Then she added, "Most of all, Congressman, I will not engage in recrimination."

In that instant, Reno, who had already pretty much captivated Washington with one gutsy performance after another, achieved full-fledged folk-hero status. She was cheered by people throughout official Washington who had endured similar assaults by Conyers and other posturing lawmakers. She was cheered in the Clinton White House, where a welter of bad news had soured what was supposed to have been a celebration of the President's first 100 days in office. She was cheered on both sides of the aisle in Congress and in her own Justice Department, where a succession of 25-watt, responsibility-ducking Attorneys General had left morale lower than -- well, lower than an alligator's belly.

After the hearing, when Reno arrived back at the Justice Department on Pennsylvania Avenue, she received a standing ovation from the employees in her office. The next day Clinton paid a call on her at the department to announce his nomination of seven people to her senior staff and to bathe in a little of her reflected political glory.