Janet Reno, the first woman US attorney general who served eight tumultuous years with President Bill Clinton, has died aged 78, according to media reports.
ABC News, citing Reno’s goddaughter, said she died from complications of Parkinson’s disease early on Monday.
Reno served as the top US law enforcement official
under Clinton from 1993 to 2001, becoming the longest-tenured attorney
general of the 20th century.
The blunt-spoken Reno authorised the deadly 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian cult compound at Waco, Texas just weeks into the job in 1993.
She later authorised the 2000 seizure by federal agents of six-year-old Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez from relatives in Miami, as well as the government’s huge anti-trust case against Microsoft in 1998.
The former Miami prosecutor, who was picked by
Clinton only after his first two choices for the job ran into trouble,
exhibited an independent streak and a brusque manner that often upset
the White House.
In 1995 Reno was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a
progressive disorder of the central nervous system that caused
trembling in her arms. “All it does is shake and you get used to it
shaking after a while,” she told a TV interviewer.
Reno was attorney general throughout Clinton’s two terms as president and was in the job longer than anyone except William Wirt, who held it from November 1817 until March 1829.
After leaving Washington, Reno returned to Florida and ran for governor in 2002, but lost in the Democratic primary.
Reno was born on July 21st, 1938, in Miami to parents
who were newspaper reporters. She attended public schools in Miami and
earned a chemistry degree at Cornell University in 1960.
She received her law degree from Harvard three years later and worked as a lawyer in Miami.
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