SUDDENLY, Janet Reno is hot property in Washington, a star turn in a city saturated with big names. President Clinton basks in her reflected glory. Annie Leibovitz wants to photograph her for Vogue. American chat show hosts line up to interview her. The New York Times calls her a "prized asset", Time magazine a "folk-hero", USA Today the "administration's superstar".
The Washington Post reported that at a recent White House correspondents' dinner, attended by all the great and good, she was accorded "superstar status". At the same event, the CBS Washington bureau chief informed her that "you've totally knocked out the Washington press corps. You've got them in the palm of your hand."
This particular woman is an unusual American superstar. An ungainly, 6ft 2ins, 54-year-old, bespectacled spinster, her celebrity stems from her decision to order last month's FBI assault on the Branch Davidians' Waco compound, which left 70 cultists dead.
America's first female attorney-general positively raced onto television to take the blame on the night of the Waco debacle. She not only appeared before congressional investigations, but offered to visit individual congressmen's offices to answer further questions. "I made the decision," she gutsily declared. "I'm accountable. The buck stops with me." Americans were so astounded to see a politician accepting responsibility for a blunder that they almost completely forgot to question her judgment. "She's a hurricane of fresh air," gushed one Democratic congressman.
To be fair, probably only Ms Reno could have got away with it. She is one of the few genuine Washington outsiders in the cabinet; one of the few who is not an old friend of President Clinton and the First Lady; certainly the only one who was the president's third choice for her job. She can hardly be accused of naked ambition.
She also arrived in the capital two months ago with a reputation not just for canoeing around Florida's alligator-infested swamps and chain-sawing trees by way of relaxation, but for ramrod integrity. This was the woman who, as Miami's chief prosecutor, insisted on paying absolutely top whack when she bought a new car to avoid even the faintest whiff of impropriety.
Ms Reno has reinvigorated the justice department, where morale had crumpled under a succession of stiff Republican males who used it to further conservative social policies. She eats in the staff cafeteria. She objects to being saluted as "general", preferring plain "Janet". She roams the corridors and treats top lawyers and lowly secretaries with equal respect. She walks to work, has declined a speechwriter and has even made public her office telephone number.
She calls herself an "awkward old maid" and appears nonplussed by all the attention she is getting: "I can't imagine why anybody finds Janet Reno all that interesting." She told a congressional committee that on the night of the Waco disaster she returned late to her flat feeling as lonely as she ever had. The telephone rang. It was her sister saying, "atta-girl". It rang again. It was the president saying "atta-girl". Every network used the soundbite.
The other side of Ms Reno is that, despite her apolitical appearance, she won re-election as Miami's state attorney four times with huge majorities. Despite personal opposition to the death penalty, she has sought it 80 times. Despite all her apparent independence, she has peopled the justice department with the president's friends. One of her first acts was to ask for the resignations of every US attorney, most of them Republican appointees. One was completing a criminal investigation into a key congressional ally of the president's.
And then there was the Waco episode. Over and over again Ms Reno accepted full responsibility. But she did not resign.
