Janet Reno dies at 78 after battle with illness

JANET Reno, the first female US attorney-general and a lightning rod for Republican attacks during Bill Clinton’s presidency, has died in Florida, US media reported. She was 78.

Reno died yesterday at her Miami home due to complications from Parkinson’s disease, her sister Maggy Hurchalla said.

The top US law enforcement officer throughout Clinton’s 19932001 presidency, Reno came under fire barely one month after becoming attorney-general for her handling of a botched April 1993 FBI raid on an armed religious cult in Waco, Texas.

Some 80 people died when the Branch Davidian cult’s compound went up in flames.

Her other actions included ordering the Miami relatives of 6-year-old Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez in 2000 to surrender the boy to authorities.

US immigration officials determined Gonzalez’s father had the right to take his son from his estranged exile Cuban Miami relatives, who had cared for the boy since his rescue months earlier at sea trying to immigrate to the US. Agents burst into the home and retrieved the boy, then returned Gonzalez to his father in communist Cuba.

One of the longest-serving US attorney-generals, her Department of Justice handled prosecutions in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and two cases of domestic terrorism, the 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing and the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski.

Other cases included an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, and suing the tobacco industry along with several states to recover healthcare money spent on people who suffered the effects of smoking.

Reno was born in Miami on July 21, 1938, the daughter of Henry and Jane Reno, two newspaper reporters.

Reno enrolled at Cornell University in New York in 1956 and became president of the university’s Women’s Self Government Association. She was one of only 16 women in the 500-strong 1960 class at Harvard Law School, where she received her degree three years later.

Reno went on to chair the Florida Governor’s Council for the Prosecution of Organized Crime in 1979-80.

As state attorney in Florida, she was responsible for nearly 1,000 employees, an annual budget of $30 million and a yearly docket of 120,000 cases.

Reno helped reform the state’s juvenile justice system and pursued defaulting fathers for child support payments. She also helped establish the Miami Drug Court, which provides a lternative punishment for non-violent offenders suffering from addiction.