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What Would Janet Reno Do?

Lest you think Obama's getting all the big endorsements today, it should be noted for the record that Janet Reno is backing Hillary. This is actually moderately surprising, given Reno's conflicted relationship with the Clintons--especially Hillary. From an old NYT Magazine profile of Reno from when she was running for Florida governor (a bid, notably, that neither Clinton endorsed):

Reno brushes aside claims by the former senator Bob Kerrey that, at a dinner party last year, Clinton listed her among his five least favorite people on his White House team (a story Clinton's office later denied in a phone call to Reno). Responding to an ill-kept secret that, at one point, Clinton had wanted a new attorney general, she says bluntly: ''I think he would have liked me gone after those first four years, but then I didn't box him in. When I announced that I had Parkinson's'' -- in November 1995 -- I just said I'd stay as long as the president wanted, and I told him. And he said he appreciated that.''

About the former first lady, Reno is decidedly less charitable. ''I was so impressed by her,'' she says, describing Hillary Clinton in action. And yet as Clinton was driven deeper into the traditional role of first lady -- after the setback of her health-care initiative, her father's death, then Vince Foster's suicide -- Reno says she feels Hillary Clinton eventually came to blame her for granting Kenneth Starr expanded powers that led from the special prosecutor's investigation of a 20-year-old real-estate deal to the most lurid details of the president's sex life. ''She was brittle,'' Reno says. ''And I've heard I'm not one of her favorite people because of the way I handled the Lewinsky affair.''

--Jason Zengerle