vidians, including twenty-one children. This event
evoked questions about religious freedom. Critics
of the Clinton administration hurled barbed vitu-
perations at both Clinton and Reno.
Meanwhile, many other crucial matters occupied
Reno. She brought action against Microsoft for vio-
lations of the Sherman Antitrust Act, led the prose-
cution of twenty-one radicals in Montana for staging
an eighty-one-day standoff, and oversaw the arrest
and conviction of the Unabomber (Theodore
Kaczynski) and of Timothy McVeigh and Terry
Nichols for engineering the 1995 Oklahoma City
bombing.
In the Elián González proceeding in 1999, the
father of a young Cuban boy being cared for by rela-
tives in Miami sought custody of his son. Public senti-
ment deplored the boy’s return to Cuba, but the law
favored the father. Reno ordered armed guards to
seize Elián and return him to Cuba.
Impact Janet Reno was the first (and to date only)
female attorney general of the United States. That
Reno weathered the numerous storms that occurred
during her tenure and was the longest-serving U.S.
attorney general in the twentieth century speaks vol-
umes for her strength of character.Further Reading
Anderson, Paul.Janet Reno: Doing the Right Thing.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994.
Hamilton, John.The Attorney General Through Janet
Reno. Edina, Minn.: Abdo and Daughters, 1993.
Meachum, Virginia.Janet Reno: United States Attorney
General. Springfield, N.J.: Enslow, 1995.
R. Baird ShumanSee also Clinton, Bill; Clinton, Hillary Rodham;
Clinton’s impeachment; Hate crimes; Illegal immi-
gration; Lewinsky scandal; McVeigh, Timothy;
Montana Freemen standoff; Oklahoma City bomb-
ing;Shaw v. Reno; Waco siege; Whitewater investiga-
tion. Rent
Identification Broadway musical
Author Music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson
(1960-1996)
Date Premiered on Broadway on April 29, 1996
This prize-winning rock opera took Broadway by storm. Fo-
cusing on the lives of young New Yorkers struggling with
HIV/AIDS, poverty, homelessness, and sexual identity, the
show’s creator attempted to bring a new layer of relevancy to
musical theater.Jonathan Larson got his start studying theater and
music at Adelphi University; during that time, he
met Stephen Sondheim, who became his mentor. Af-
ter moving to New York City, the aspiring musical
writer attempted to break into Broadway. Two of his
pieces,SuperbiaandTick, Tick...Boom!were staged
in small workshop-type settings; in 1988, he won a
Richard Rodgers Studio Production Award for the
former. The idea forRentcame in collaboration with
Billy Aronson, a young playwright, and was to be a
modern retelling of Giacomo Puccini’s operaLa
Bohème(pr. 1896). Puccini’s is the story of struggling
artists and philosophers living in the 1830’s Parisian714 Rent The Nineties in America
Janet Reno.(AP/Wide World Photos)