The World : Beyond Reno’s Charisma: Mismanagement at Justice

Forget about Whitewater. The current lack of leadership at the Department of Justice is far more scandalous. Plagued by persistent problems of staffing and coordinating policy, the department has been drifting for more than a year. Were it not for the actions of career attorneys and civil servants, the department might as well have closed shop.

With so many key positions going unfilled for so long and the high turnover in top personnel, it’s almost a wonder that work continues at Justice. The department employs about 95,000 people and has an annual budget of almost $10 billion.

Often billed as the nation’s largest law firm, the department includes divisions on antitrust, crime, civil rights and the environment. The federal government’s principal litigators, U.S. attorneys, are spread out in 94 judicial districts around the country, as are U.S. marshals. The attorney general’s responsibility also extends to oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Prisons and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, among many others.

Fortunately, most of the day-to-day work is done by career attorneys and civil servants. In spite of the absence of leadership at the top, the department has pressed ahead in combatting hazardous-waste disposals and discrimination in housing and lending. But that is due to the work of career attorneys. Quite simply, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno needs to do more.

What remains remarkable is how slow President Bill Clinton has been to fill crucial positions in the department. Those of deputy attorney general, solicitor general and assistant attorney general for the criminal division went vacant for far too long. And the Administration continues to drag its feet in filling a mounting number of federal judgeships.

The Administration has also demonstrated an almost unbelievable penchant for misjudgment in selecting nominees for key positions. More than a year passed before Clinton filled, for example, the key position of assistant attorney general for civil rights. Notably, Reno stood by while Clinton ran away from his first nominee for that slot, University of Pennsylvania Law Professor C. Lani Guinier. Clinton’s second nominee, Washington attorney John Payton, withdrew under criticism from the Congressional Black Caucus. Finally, in late March, the President’s third nominee, Boston lawyer Deval L. Patrick, won Senate confirmation.

The Justice Department’s problems have been further compounded by turnovers in crucial personnel and difficulties in coordinating policy with the White House. In mid-March, Webster L. Hubbell, the associate attorney general and a close friend of the President, resigned under fire from his former law-firm partners in Little Rock, Ark., over his alleged overbilling of clients. Earlier, the President’s own counsel, Bernard W. Nussbaum, was forced to resign to try to stem the tide of questions over whether he had improperly contacted officials investigating Whitewater.

After 12 years of GOP rule, Clinton’s supporters expected more. Instead, due to vacancies in high-level positions, there have been lost opportunities to forge new legal policy, to set priorities and to chart a different course.

Reno, to be sure, has won high marks for her public outspokenness. Few of her predecessors have used the attorney generalship as a bully pulpit or done so quite as effectively. Reno has questioned mandatory-minimum sentences for criminals and spoken out about the need for crime prevention and other tough new measures. She has stressed the need for community outreach programs and taken a hard line against violence on television. In this regard, Reno rivals Edwin M. Meese III, who championed a return to a “jurisprudence of original intention” in the second Reagan Administration through the appointment of federal judges. Indeed, one has to go back to Robert F. Kennedy’s crusade for civil rights to find as publicly visible and popular an attorney general.

Reno’s homespun style and seemingly ramrod independence have endeared the first female attorney general to the public. Yet, after more than a year at the helm, Reno appears more showboat captain than a hands-on commander. Within and without the department, doubts are growing about Reno’s managerial competence. Will she take time off from the speech-making circuit to get the department in order? Even if she does spare the time, it remains unclear that she possesses the managerial skills to delegate, coordinate and manage.

Part of the problem is that attorney general and the President appear out of sync. That was the case with Guinier’s nomination, the controversy over the crime bill and other matters of legal policy. Moreover, Reno, no less than Clinton, appears slow to react at times. The dismissal of the former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, William S. Sessions, for example, came months after the initial charges of his improprieties and a steadily declining morale in the bureau.

Although Reno may occasionally take strong public stands, her indecisiveness over administrative matters is evident. Whether due to her inclination to micro-manage, her compulsion for details, her inability to delegate or her willingness to respond to virtually every inquiry raised in news conferences or on her speaking engagements, her lack of administrative leadership remains a flaw.

That Reno appears an overwhelmed and disorganized administrator was most evident when her deputy attorney general, Philip B. Heymann, resigned after just seven months in office. Heymann, a Harvard Law School professor who served under four previous attorneys general, cited differences in “style and chemistry” between them as the reason for his departure. Reno agreed. Yet, Heymann was neither the first nor the last to leave her service. A week before he left, Reno’s aide in charge of scheduling and correspondence departed. Other aides have also moved on.

The problem of staffing the Justice Department remains one Reno repeatedly laments. But it is partly one of her own making. Reno keeps a skeletal staff and refuses to appoint a chief of staff on the ground that, as she says, “I don’t think attorneys general should have gate keepers.” This, however, may have only contributed to her problems of getting control of and setting priorities for the Justice Department.

Problems with the department’s operation may run deeper than recruiting and retaining key personnel. Before becoming head of the Justice Department, Reno served as top prosecutor of Dade County, Fla. There, she oversaw 900 attorneys and other personnel. By contrast, Reno now runs a bureaucracy more than 100 times as large.

To be fair, Reno came into office under hardly the best of circumstances. Clinton’s first two nominees, Zoe Baird and Kimba M. Wood, were forced to withdraw after a public uproar over their having hired undocumented household workers and failing to properly pay taxes for their employees. Reno’s appointment was thus welcomed inside and outside the department. And her public persona won almost immediate adoration.

Nonetheless, the nagging question remains whether Reno jumped too far out of her league. Is she capable of developing the administrative competence to set priorities, to recruit and retain team players and to provide the kind of leadership needed at the Justice Department?*