Reno's idea of a threat. (Scan).(Brief Article)

Janet Reno is the Democratic Party's nominee for governor of Florida. In this race, her order that heavily armed paramilitary agents snatch Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint from his Miami relatives may turn out to be an albatross. But there are other ugly events hanging around her neck as well. Consider her priorities back in the spring of 1993.

On February 26, a rented Ford Econo-line van loaded with 1,500 pounds of homemade explosives pulled into the parking garage under the World Trade Center. Eyad Ismoil, a 21-year-old Palestinian, was the driver. The bomb went off at 12:18 p.m., blasting a five-floor deep crater into the garage. The explosion crippled the Twin Towers: no lights, no heat, no elevators, no fire alarms, no sprinklers, no public address system, no power to the police and fire command stations. Within three minutes, smoke had reached the 33rd floor. The massive blast displaced 6,8(10 tons of material and flooded the World Trade complex with 2 million gallons of water and sewage. The body count: six dead and more than 1,000 injured. Ismoil and company had aimed to kill 35,000 by bringing the tower down.

That same day in Washington, Janet Reno was focused on the failure of an obscure religious community in Texas to obtain gun permits.

Two days later, while New Yorkers were still digging for bodies, Reno and her agents dispatched National Guard helicopters to raid the Branch Davidians in Waco. Their crime? Illegal possession of firearms.

After seven weeks of slipshod negotiating and bizarre strategies like depriving the Davidians of sleep by blasting recordings of the screams of rabbits being slaughtered, Attorney General Reno finalized her plan for a raid using Army Special Forces advisers, heavy weapons, and CS gas. Bill Clinton signed off on it. At ...