# Janet Reno **Janet Reno** (1938–2016) served as [[Attorney General]] from March 1993 to January 2001, the first woman to hold the office and the second-longest-serving Attorney General in American history. She appears in this vault for one structural reason: when Congress allowed the [[Independent Counsel]] statute to sunset on **June 30, 1999**, Reno did not leave the gap open. Nine days later her Department promulgated **28 C.F.R. Part 600** (A.G. Order No. 2232-99, 64 FR 37042, effective July 1, 1999), creating the [[Special Counsel]] as an internal Justice Department substitute for the court-appointed office Congress had let expire. That regulation has never been amended, and it is the entire legal basis for every special counsel appointed since — including [[Robert Mueller]], [[John Durham]], [[David Weiss]] and [[Jack Smith]]. The trade Reno's rule made is the subject of [[Special Counsel Appointment and Removal Flow]]: a statute Congress had to renew became a rule the Department can rewrite, and a report filed with a court became a report confidential to the Attorney General. This is a stub — expand with her tenure, the independent-counsel applications she made and declined, Waco, and the Elián González case. ## See Also - [[Special Counsel]] · [[Independent Counsel]] · [[Ethics in Government Act]] - [[Special Counsel Appointment and Removal Flow]] - [[Attorney General]] · [[Department of Justice]]