The country’s first female attorney general, Bill Clinton-appointee Janet Reno, died Monday morning after a decades-long fight against Parkinson’s disease, her sister Maggy Hurchalla told CNN.
Reno, who passed away at 78, served in the Clinton Administration from 1993 to 2001. The Department of Justice pursued a series of noteworthy convictions while she was in office, including for “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski; Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; and Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman for bombing the World Trade Center in 1993.
Her tenure was marked some significant controversies, including a decision during her first days in office to raid a Waco, Texas compound that resulted in the death of about 80 members of the Branch Davidian religious group. She later expressed regret for the decision she made that ended the 51-day standoff, and said it was “obviously wrong.”
Reno also ordered the raid that sent then-six-year-old Elian Gonzalez, whose mother drowned as they tried to reach the U.S. from Cuba, back to his home country after an international custody battle between his family in the U.S. and his father in Cuba.
Months before Clinton’s impeachment, the Republican House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted to hold Reno in contempt of Congress for failing to submit documents related to the Whitewater scandal. She provided the memos and the motion never proceeded to a vote by the full House of Representatives.
At a 2009 ceremony honoring her public service, then-Attorney General Eric Holder praised Reno for her perseverance and devotion to her work.
“I don’t know how many times she said to me, ‘What’s the right thing to do?'” he said. “It was never what’s the easy thing, what’s the political thing, or the expedient thing to do.”
After leaving office, she ran for Florida governor in 2002 but narrowly lost the Democratic primary and traveled the country as a criminal justice reform advocate. She was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1995.
