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The CATO Institute has a report, written by Andrew Napolitano, who spent eight years as a New Jersey Judge. (It's a CATO Policy Report,Volume XXVI, No. 6, Nov/Dec 2004.) The report lists several abuses of power by state governments and the federal government, and is well worth reading in its entirety. But I’ll just describe the part that relates to Janet Reno.
In August 1984, Frank Fuster and his wife Ileana were arrested for sexually abusing more than twenty children who attended their home daycare center. Reno, then Dade County (Florida) State’s Attorney, began the case by using Joe and Laurie Braga to interview the children. The Bragas were billed as child abuse experts but in fact had no psychology training. They used misleading interview techniques to obtain false accusations from the children (something that is easy to do, and is – unfortunately – frequently done by authorities in child abuse cases). The only physical evidence of abuse Reno presented was a lab test which supposedly showed a child infected with gonorrhea of the throat. But the lab tested, not for gonorrhea, but the bacterial family in which gonorrhea resides. Other members of this bacterial family are often found in children. The state then, three days later, ordered the lab to destroy the evidence, thereby preventing a defense challenge. (Reno’s playing fast and loose with the evidence reminds me of the controversy surrounding the blood evidence in the O.J. Simpson case. Had the Fusters been represented by Barry Scheck, they might have been acquitted.) Without much in the way of physical evidence, Reno then put Ileana Fuster through an ordeal. From the report: Late one night, the naked Ileana, according to her lawyer, received a visit in her darkened solitary cell from an intimidating 6-foot-2 woman. The woman told Ileana that she knew that Ileana and her husband were guilty. “But how can that be? We are innocent,” Ileana proclaimed. “Who are you?” “I’m Janet Reno,” the woman said. Ileana repeatedly told Reno that she was innocent, and Reno kept repeating, “I’m sorry, but you are not. You’re going to have to help us.” Reno made several more solitary, nightly visits to the naked Ileana, each time threatening Ileana that she would remain in prison for the rest of her life if she didn’t tell Reno what she wanted to hear. Finally, Reno hired two psychiatrists from a company called Behavior Changers Inc., who met Ileana 34 times in a one-month period. These psychiatrists claimed to be able to help individuals “recover memories,” but their technique was simply to hypnotize Ileana so that she could be brainwashed into believing that Frank Fuster was a child molester. The coercion eventually worked: with the psychiatrists present and with Janet Reno squeezing her hand, Ileana implicated her husband. There are many who criticize the U.S. treatment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo. There are many who would condemn the treatment of Ileana Fuster – if it were meted out to Al Qaeda members – as torture. Such treatment – stripping prisoners naked, giving them cold showers and leaving them on a cold cell floor, allowing the females to soil themselves during their menstrual periods – certainly violates the Geneva Convention. Yet this treatment was not imposed on a terrorist suspect in Guantanamo, but on a U.S. citizen in the state of Florida. And it was imposed by someone who later became Attorney General of the United States. John Ashcroft was widely criticized (during his tenure as President George W. Bush’s first Attorney General) – for his support of the Patriot Act, for his support for the incarceration of terrorist prisoners in Guantanamo, for numerous other things. I have a hard time believing that Ashcroft would ever have been confirmed had he done what Reno did. I have a hard time believing that he would have been able to keep his office, had he mistreated prisoners and the mistreatment not have been discovered until after his confirmation. But then, had Ashcroft done what Reno did, the media would have broadcast his misconduct from the rooftops. I don’t see the media broadcasting Reno’s misdonduct – then or now. As I noted above, even the CATO Institute didn’t discover this – and publicize it – until late 2004. In early 1999, when then-President Bill Clinton was impeached – mainly for his sexual (mis) conduct – I wrote several Representatives and Senators arguing for his impeachment on other grounds. Some of those grounds related to the conduct of his Attorney General, Janet Reno. The story above just confirms what I already believed – Reno should never have been confirmed as Attorney General. And it's just another reason that Clinton should have been impeached. |
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