Saturday, August 8, 1998

Compromise needed in House-Reno stalemate

There really ought to be a compromise, and fairly soon, between Attorney General Janet Reno and the House subcommittee that has charged her with contempt of Congress.

The fundamental issue here is the Republican-controlled panel's desire for Reno to seek an independent counsel to investigate possible violations of campaign finance laws by the White House. To date, Reno has refused, even though the director of the FBI and the head of a special Justice Department task force both wrote memos recommending an independent counsel. The subcommittee has subpoenaed those memos, but Reno said she would not turn them over, triggering the contempt charge.

Reno has made essentially two arguments on her behalf, neither of which is weighty enough to override Congress's right and responsibility to keep an eye on administration activity.

The first is that the memos contain sensitive information about an ongoing criminal investigation that could be damaged if too much became widely known. But while leaks from politicians are common in the nation's capital, the committee chairman has pledged secrecy and the committee has agreed that some material in the memos could be blacked out.

The second argument is that the committee is trying to pressure Reno into a decision she should be making strictly on the merits. Well, welcome to Washington.

A never-ending game in this town is political pressure. The answer to that is political courage, and, at any rate, handing over the memos is hardly tantamount to betraying one's conscience. It would rather be a case of allowing the other side to see what arguments and evidence the attorney general rejected in deciding earlier not to ask a judicial panel to appoint an independent counsel.

A well-educated guess is that Reno, to protect her boss, is also playing politics and is not abiding by what the evidence dictates.

All that being said, the committee probably does not truly intend for a U.S. attorney to actually prosecute the contempt charge, something that has never occurred. The committee already has made some concessions and should be willing to make more, just as Reno should.

Her announced reconsideration of seeking an independent counsel and her willingness to brief committee members on the content of the memos suggest she could find a way of sharing excerpts. The independent counsel law is a law in need of revision, but it is in fact the law, it should be followed, and Congress is absolutely entitled to check on whether the attorney general is doing her duty.