Reno wows crowd
By: Dustin Gardiner
Issue date: 2/13/08 Section: News
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Reno, who served as attorney general under President Bill Clinton, said prosecutors often allow prejudices to skew their use of facts.
"But what I've discovered (from being a prosecutor and attorney general) is that we get tunnel vision," Reno said. "We want the facts to be something and we wish them into being."
Reno made her comments while speaking to an audience of mostly students and professors at the S.J. Quinney College of Law on Tuesday. Her speech focused on the role technology plays in helping prosecute terrorists and the attention prosecutors should give to facts.
Reno did not specifically name members of the Bush administration or the Department of Justice, but criticized their practices in general.
"We have obscured that truth with other overlays that don't lead to the truth, but lead to murky prosecutions and to intelligence efforts that should be headed in another direction," she said.
Reno specifically spoke out against waterboarding, an interrogation technique where water is poured over the face of a detainee to evoke a drowning sensation. Lawmakers and others have criticized the George W. Bush administration for waterboarding several suspected terrorists.
Before denouncing the practice, Reno reiterated that decisions must be made by applying the law to the facts.
"With that understood, I am opposed to torture, I am opposed to waterboarding, and if I were reviewing the facts I would make sure that I understood what people were talking about when they said waterboarding," she said. "Because here is an example of where people can get into trouble by misstating the facts, confusing the facts."
Martin Stolz, a first-year law student, said he thinks the Bush administration has abused the facts.
"I think that our current administration has fallen prey precisely to the danger Janet Reno spoke of," he said.
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