Reggie Robinson isn’t sure how Janet Reno will be remembered by history. He’s just sure she’ll be remembered.

“I think history will see her as a unique attorney general, historically,” said Robinson, president of the Kansas Board of Regents. He was an aide to Reno when she served under President Bill Clinton.

“If you look at folks who’ve been attorney general … she’s different from all of them,” Robinson said.

Reno is a woman, for starters, the first to serve as the nation’s top cop. And she took a different route to the office than most — coming from the Dade County, Fla., Prosecutor’s Office instead of a top-tier law firm or a national office.

Once in office, she became a political lightning rod, deeply enmeshed in some of the biggest issues of the Clinton era: Waco, Oklahoma City, Elian Gonzalez, Whitewater and, of course, the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Today she will be at Kansas University in Lawrence, speaking to students at the law school throughout the day. At 7:30 p.m., she’ll give a public address at the Lied Center.

“I think history will remember her as somebody who was full of integrity and very straightforward, very dedicated to the rule of law,” said KU Vice Chancellor Janet Murguia, who worked in the Clinton White House.

“I think for women who want to pursue legal careers, she’ll offer a lot of insight about what’s easy and not-so-easy from her legal career.”

Darkest day

¢ More about Janet Reno

Reno became attorney general in 1993, appointed by President Bill Clinton after his first two choices — Zoe Baird and Lani Guinier — were undone by scandal. She served until Clinton left office.

Reno took the post during the middle of a standoff in Waco, Texas, between federal officials and members of the Branch Davidians, that started when agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were fired upon as they tried to arrest the group’s leader, David Koresh, on Feb. 28, 1993.

It was Reno who gave the go-ahead to the FBI to punch through the walls of the Davidian compound and fire tear gas inside. A blaze started soon after, killing 77 sect members. Officials said Davidians set the fire.

At the end of her term, Reno told PBS newsman Jim Lehrer that Waco was her darkest day in office.

“Clearly, if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t do it, but I don’t know whether I could have avoided it down the line,” she told Lehrer. “There are those that have reviewed this case in-depth and said he could have done the same thing two weeks later with people not bothering him at all.”

Reno wasn’t available for comment Monday.

But “I know she continues to feel that today,” Robinson said of Waco. “I’ve heard her say several times it was the most painful set of circumstances she endured as attorney general.”

Exactly two years later, Timothy McVeigh set off a truck bomb outside the federal building in Oklahoma City. Robinson, at least, rejected the notion the bombing was in response to the federal government’s actions at Waco.

“I think you’re giving them an out when you’re saying they wanted to respond to Waco,” Robinson said. “They were people who wanted to kill people and took awful terrorist actions to do it.”

Second term

During Clinton’s second term, Reno made the decision to let Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr probe the president’s relationship with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.

But because she rejected other proposed investigations into the Clinton White House — including whether Vice President Al Gore had broken campaign finance laws — Republicans criticized her.

“Anybody that thought that I tried to protect the president has forgotten that I asked for the expansion of the Monica Lewinsky matter,” she told Lehrer. “I look at it what I thought I had to do under the law, and I felt that I did the right thing.”

Reno, Murguia said, was independent.

“I don’t think Janet Reno saw the Department of Justice as a forum for politics,” Murguia said. “She saw her role as less politically oriented and more by-the-book type of administrator.”

The Lewinsky investigation lead to Clinton’s impeachment by the House of Representatives, though the U.S. Senate acquitted him of the charges.

The other side

Though perhaps best-remembered for controversies, Robinson said Reno quietly did important work at the Justice Department.

Robinson said Reno forged good relationships with state and local law enforcement agencies, used research to promote crime prevention, pursued funding for treatment-based “drug courts” for nonviolent offenders and was a strong advocate for the crime victims’ rights.

“She really pursued (victims’ rights) in a way that was consistent with, and makes sense, because she came out of local law enforcement,” Robinson said.

Yet she was perhaps the most-criticized attorney general in recent history. That perplexes Robinson.

“This notion of her as a political animal, I think anybody who worked (in the Justice Department) would tell you that wasn’t their experience,” he said. “It certainly wasn’t mine.”

Such criticism comes with the territory, said dean of KU’s law school Steve McAllister.

“She was a very visible decision maker at times,” McAllister said. “She certainly became a target, just like John Ashcroft has become a target for the left.”

He said his students have a lot to learn from Reno.

“I think her’s is one of these amazing life stories, as well as an amazing lawyer story,” he said.

“Looking back, one never would have predicted she would have ended up attorney general, and she did,” he said. “I like my students to meet those kind of people.”