DATE: Thursday, April 17, 1997              TAG: 9704170004
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial
                                            LENGTH:   64 lines

JANET RENO IS RIGHT THE ATTORNEY GENERAL MUST OBSERVE THE LAW

In refusing, for now, to request an independent counsel to investigate the financing of President Clinton's re-election, Attorney General Janet Reno is dancing on the head of a legal pin and managing - barely - to keep her balance.

Predictably, Ms. Reno's refusal to gear up the special-prosecutor mechanism, as she has done four times in the past, has led to Republican accusations that, as a Clinton appointee, she is trying to cover her boss's tracks.

Yet, as recently as January, the betting was heavy in Washington that Clinton was about to invite Ms. Reno to remove herself from his Cabinet, largely because she wasn't regarded as a team player.

Now, just four months later, would Ms. Reno willingly risk a coveted reputation for independence to cover up for a president to whom she is not close? No. This attorney general is unlikely to emulate John Mitchell, who risked prison by flouting the law to protect a president.

Her decision, as detailed in a letter to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was a classic Reno ruling: cold and fastidious. It left the door open for reconsideration should the facts change.

The legal pinpoint upon which Reno carefully - and correctly - waltzes is sharpened by two requirements of the Independent Counsel Act:

The act covers a very limited number of people, including the president, the vice president and about a dozen other high-ranking officials - not Charlie Trie or John Huang or any of the other characters in this drama.

The Justice Department must have ``specific, credible evidence that any covered White House official may have committed a federal crime. . . .''

Reno contends that the high-ticket coffee-klatches and Lincoln Bedroom capers have not, to date, yielded evidence of criminal behavior by the president, the vice president or a member of the Cabinet. (Mere vulgarity does not qualify.) The closest call was Vice President Gore's use of office phones to solicit funds. And the illegality of that activity was rendered fuzzy by his use of a campaign-committee telephone credit card.

The most disturbing allegation - that the Chinese government illegally pumped money into the Democrats' campaign - is one that must be fully investigated. But to do so under the special-prosecutor law requires evidence that Clinton, Gore or a ranking administration official knowingly participated in that act. Such evidence has yet to surface.

Reno assured Senator Hatch that Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents - careerists whose work has spanned Democrat and Republican administrations - continue to dig into the fund-raising activities and that if evidence surfaces of criminal acts by key White House figures, she will indeed invoke the Independent Counsel Act.

The Justice Department prosecutors deserve the opportunity to prove their professionalism. Especially since the record of independent counsels - including Lawrence Walsh of Iran-Contra and Whitewater's Kenneth Starr - fails to inspire. Too often their investigations have dragged on interminably only to end inconclusively.

And with multiple committees of Congress planning investigations - and a scandal-ravenous press turning over every campaign-finance rock - it is unlikely much will remain hidden.

Finally, Ms. Reno's detractors in Congress should keep in mind that Congress, not the attorney general, wrote the Independent Counsel Act. It is hypocritical of members to complain of the Clintonites playing fast and loose with the campaign-finance laws but then expect Ms. Reno to play just as fast and loose with the law in conducting her investigation.

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