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“I am very sad to share that my former boss and mentor, former United States Attorney General Janet Reno, has passed away,” California Insurance Commissioner, Dave Jones, wrote this morning.

Janet Reno, who became Attorney General in 1993 as President Bill Clinton’s third choice, died after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. Clinton had first chosen Zoe Baird, but it turned out that she had employed an illegal immigrant as her nanny.  Then he selected Kimba Wood, who turned out to have also employed an illegal immigrant nanny. The President finally then got to Janet Reno who was childless and obviously had no “nanny problem”. At that time Clinton was under pressure to name a woman to the attorney general position.   

“She always did the right thing regardless of the politics. Her tremendous leadership inspired those of us who worked closely with her as well as countless others across the country,” Commissioner Dave Jones continued.  "’Apply the facts to the law’ she would always say with regard to how she made her decisions and urge others to do the same. She was a champion for early childhood education before it became commonly understood that providing kids in their early years with education was critical to their later success and resulted in reductions in crime, joblessness, need for public support. She fought for families and children and authored a host of innovative community building programs.”

Janet Reno studied chemistry at Cornell University and had the idea of becoming a doctor. But she wound up being accepted at Harvard Law School where she graduated in 1963. After nine years in private practice in Miami, starting in real estate law, Reno moved to Tallahassee, the Florida state capital, and became general counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. She is credited with writing the state's no-fault divorce law and overseeing a comprehensive reorganization of the state's court system. 

California Insurance Commissioner, Dave Jones, is shown here on May 14th 2015 at the "Big Fraud Fighting Conference" at the Pala Casino, sponsored by the Employers' Fraud Task Force and Executive Director, Laura Clifford. Dave Jones worked for Janet Reno daily from 1995 to 1998.  photo by Lonce LaMon, all rights reserved

She eventually returned to private practice and moved on to the top prosecutor's job in Miami in 1978, serving for 15 years. She repeatedly won reelection to keep that job despite presiding over a sharply escalating murder rate and drug trade and criticism from the local papers that she was more of an administrator than a courtroom lawyer.

“I had the privilege of serving first as her Special Assistant and then as her Counsel, from 1995 to 1998,” Dave Jones further expressed this morning. “I worked with her daily and saw first-hand her tremendous leadership of the United States Department of Justice and the work she did fighting injustice across America.

"Throughout my public service, I often think as I make decisions, what would Janet Reno do? She taught me so much about leadership and public service. She will be missed, but she left a tremendous legacy.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, Janet Reno was nearly six feet two inches tall, single, and brought with her a somewhat mythic reputation as a woman who had wrestled alligators while growing up in rural south Florida and as a tough prosecutor in Miami who wrestled with mobsters and drug dealers.

Within a few weeks as Attorney General she made what she acknowledged was a deadly blunder, approving an FBI assault on the cult compound in Waco, Texas of the Branch Davidians.  That assault led to the deaths of about 80 children, women, and men.

Then, she forthrightly took the blame (“I'm accountable. The buck stops with me.”) which established her in the public mind as the rare political figure who accepted responsibility for her actions.

It may have been concern for children that got her in trouble in Waco, because the FBI told Reno, who had refused to authorize an attack on the Branch Davidian compound there, that they needed to use force in part because children were being abused. That turned out to be false, and the attack resulted in the deaths of 25 of the children she had wanted to protect.

Dave Jones has announced that an endowment in her name has been established at Georgetown University. The Janet Reno Endowment will fund legal scholarships and policy work to help disadvantaged children, youth and families, which were a focus of Attorney General Reno's work throughout her life.

For more information about the Janet Reno Endowment and how you can honor her and continue her work, please go to http://cjjr.georgetown.edu/janet-reno-endowment/. 

lonce@adjustercom.com; Lonce LaMon, journalist, written in partnership with the News Release from Dave Jones dated November 7^th 2016, and the Los Angeles Times article of the same date.