For a woman usually given to lawyerly dispassion, the words were raw. "I was mad," Attorney General Janet Reno told reporters, blaming the White House for failing to tell her about 44 videotapes of presidential "coffees" for potential donors—until after she had issued a letter essentially clearing the White House of wrongdoing. But Reno's greatest embarrassment, NEWSWEEK has learned, unfolded not in a televised press conference last week, but behind closed doors in a Senate hearing room a month ago. At an "executive session" of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on Sept. 11, Reno had to admit to incredulous senators that the most damning evidence of a foreign plot to influence an American election had been lost in the files of the Justice Department for nearly two years. The brutal dressing-down she received from lawmakers ("We broke some furniture," Sen. Arlen Specter told NEWSWEEK) forced her to admit to her own lieutenants that the Justice Department's investigation of the scandal was in chaos and needed to be completely reorganized.
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