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`ENERGIZER ATTORNEY GENERAL’ OFFERS RARE, HUMOROUS PORTRAIT OF HERSELF

Observing her fifth anniversary in office Thursday, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno softened her often stony demeanor and engaged in an extraordinarily relaxed and often humorous discourse on her upbringing and career.

The fourth-longest-serving attorney general in history, Reno is known to reporters, lawmakers and C-SPAN viewers alike for her stern stares, scolding responses and terse refusals to comment.

But during a coffee-and-doughnuts session celebrating her tenure, and in a conversation with reporters afterward, Reno held forth with long commentaries, smiled broadly and even roared with laughter on occasion.

If she serves until January, Reno–who has Parkinson’s disease but is apparently fit–will move into second place in longevity among the 78 attorneys general in the nation’s history. To surpass record-holder William Wirt, appointed by President James Monroe, Reno would have to serve 11 years.

“When that happens, we will have more doughnuts,” said Justice Department spokesman Bert Brandenburg.

To be sure, Reno did not abandon her cautious demeanor altogether Thursday. But in flashing a more human side, she may have been signaling that she has come to feel comfortable in her role.

The low point of her tenure, she said, was the 1993 conflagration at Waco, Texas, in which 76 people died after Reno ordered federal agents to storm into the compound of the Branch Davidian sect.

“We will never know what the right thing to do in Waco was,” Reno said.

The most revealing moments may have come as Reno repeatedly launched into tales about her parents, whom she clearly revered.

Reno described herself as a girl trailing along with her father, a reporter for the Miami Herald, to police stations and courtrooms, an experience she said stoked her interest in the justice system.

Her mother encouraged Reno and her sister Maggy to enter public service so they would not miss out on the world’s “great arenas,” she said. Maggy served as a county commissioner in Martin County, Fla., for two decades.

In later years, “My mother would look at us and say, `I wanted my daughters to be disco dancers,’ ” Reno said, chortling.

Reno’s father, she recounted, bought roses and gardenias to win over the police dispatchers and receptionists on his beat.

“I look at you all and I think, `Hmm, where are all the sweetheart roses?’ ” joked Reno, whose relations with reporters have sometimes been testy.

Justice Department staffers Thursday distributed a list of Reno’s accomplishments in the last five years. Violent crime, the summary mentioned prominently, has dropped five years in a row.

It is true that with Reno’s help, the Clinton administration has pushed through the Brady Bill, a ban on assault weapons, and a program to put 100,000 police officers on the street.

But White House aides have commandeered the crime issue from Reno and the Justice Department, many say.

“The general consensus was that the Justice Department was very uninvolved in the 1994 crime bill,” said Eric Sterling, president of the liberal Criminal Justice Policy Foundation.

Still, Sterling praised Reno’s handling of the office in other ways.

“She has created for the office of attorney general a standard of probity and forthrightness that the office has lacked for a very long time,” Sterling said.

Reno’s tenure has been unusually turbulent. She faced the Waco disaster and widespread allegations of abuse at the FBI. She twice had to decide whether to seek an independent counsel to investigate her own president. She has presided over a highly controversial campaign finance investigation.

Thursday was one of the few times she actually seemed to be enjoying herself.

“It is a fascinating time,” Reno said. “It is a time where I encourage young people to get involved in the process. Yeah, you can go out and make a lot of money. But you can also contribute to public service.”

Reno has said she has no plans to step down and is taking each day as it comes. But Brandenburg, her spokesman, predicted Reno will stay until the end of Clinton’s term.

“I’ve always felt that unless something happens with her health–and her doctor tells me it’s dandy–she will be here until January 2001,” Brandenburg said. “She is the Energizer attorney general.”