Feuding over Waco

No one quite believed what Janet Reno was saying. The Attorney General walked into the press conference on Friday, dressed in a straw yellow silk suit and pearls, and denied that she was furious at the FBI and its director, Louis Freeh. "You all are going to try your level best to make us enemies, but you're not going to succeed," Reno said, her face fixed in a thin smile.

But what was one to think? Two days earlier, Reno had ordered U.S. marshals into FBI headquarters in the Hoover building to "take custody of"--not "seize," she and the FBI insisted--evidence that the bureau's crack Hostage Rescue Team had fired at least two "hot" military tear-gas grenades during the 1993 Waco siege. The week before, the revelation had humiliated Reno and rekindled conspiracy theories--in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary--that the government had set the fires that destroyed the Branch Davidian compound and killed some 80 men, women and children. And why hadn't she been told that airplane surveillance tapes, which captured the moment when the pyrotechnic rounds were deployed, had been found in a box in the HRT office in Quantico, Va.? Dispatching the marshals would be a sign of her anger and a vote of no confidence in Freeh and the FBI, right? Wrong, she said. "I don't think this is a matter of anger," Reno said stonily. "This is a matter of getting to the truth. And whatever I am, I am as dedicated as I possibly can be to getting to the truth." She added, "Sometimes anger obscures the truth, and so I try to do so as calmly and as clearly as I can."

The resurrection of Waco has been a nightmare for the Justice Department and the FBI, and particularly for the Attorney General. Her G.O.P. critics in Congress are gearing up for new attacks, guaranteeing that the controversy will last for months. Meanwhile, a documentary filmmaker was accusing the FBI of a second set of pyrotechnic attacks yet unconfessed by the bureau. Then there was the question of whether Reno and Freeh were locked in a behind-closed-doors feud.

She was in Panama for a presidential inauguration when the U.S. marshals marched into FBI headquarters, and instantaneous leaks of the foray were regarded as her camp's first big p.r. move against Freeh since the debacle erupted two weeks ago. He had started his own damage control early, making public the memos that confirmed the use of hot grenades, naming 40 agents to gather the facts and proposing that a reputable outsider head the new investigation. The extremely deliberate Reno would accede to all that later but seemed to be plodding two steps behind the nimbler FBI director. It wasn't the first time Freeh rushed to stake claim on the moral high ground. Reno's supporters say she deserved better.

However, she has other things to worry about. Representative Dan Burton's Committee on Government Reform (which has always favored Freeh over Reno) was sending out subpoenas and watching the new tapes for signs of illegal involvement by "observers" from the Army's supersecret Delta Force. Led by chief investigative counsel Jim Wilson, the committee seems to be on the verge of starting up a fresh probe.