When the FBI compounded Renos embarrassment by announcing Wednesday that a tape which had languished in bureau files for six years confirmed the decision to use the canisters, she responded with a raid on FBI headquarters. Despite treading cautiously around the issue during her Friday media briefing, she made clear that her anger at the FBI isnt restricted to the fact that she put her credibility on the line behind an account that some people in the bureau had to know was false - the very fact of using hot rounds specifically violated an assurance she says shed been given by the FBI that only cold tear gas rounds would be used during the siege. With the nations two top law enforcement officials increasingly at odds, the independent investigation could prove to be interesting in ways that arent very comfortable for either of them.
Get Ready for the Showdown at FBI Corral
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Hell hath no fury like an attorney general misled. Janet Reno on Friday announced that shes looking for an independent investigator to probe the Waco debacle, capping a week in which shes done little to hide her displeasure at being left in a no-mans-land by the FBI. On Wednesday Reno sent U.S. marshals across the road to seize evidence from FBI headquarters, in a high-profile slap-down of the bureau over its handling of Waco evidence. The New York Times reported Friday that tensions between the attorney general and FBI director Louis Freeh - which have been mounting since he publicly second-guessed her on the issue of opening independent counsel investigations into campaign finance and nuclear espionage - had reached a breaking point over Waco. Renos anger is understandable: After staking her credibility on a version of events at Waco which denied that federal agents had fired potentially incendiary tear gas rounds, Ms. Reno found herself in limbo last week after a former agent revealed that the FBI had indeed fired military-issue CS gas canisters.