Nonetheless, the idea that Clinton and Reno broke with precedent and fired all U.S. attorneys upon taking office has played a key role in the public debate in recent weeks. In conservative media and on talk radio, Reno's abrupt firing of all the U.S. attorneys had been described as extreme and unprecedented.
Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania's attorney general, knows the story firsthand.
"I am the one who took the message," he said in an interview Wednesday.
In 1993, he was the U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh and the liaison between the outgoing George H.W. Bush administration and the incoming Clinton administration. "We had been asking them for months: 'When do you want our resignations?' " he said.
The answer came in a meeting with Webster Hubbell, the associate attorney general, in mid-March. "He said, 'I have good news and bad news. The good news is the attorney general wants you to stay until your successor is confirmed. The bad news is she wants your resignations by the end of the week,' " Corbett said.
He said the demand for resignations by the week's end was surprising.
"We knew this was coming, but it broke with tradition to do it this way," he said. "It didn't make for a smooth transition. By the end of that week, they had backed off a bit. Over the course of the next few months, they made the changes. It was how the message was delivered more than what actually occurred."
Despite Reno's request for all of their resignations, some U.S. attorneys stayed on the job for several more months.
In Los Angeles, for example, Terree A. Bowers, a Republican, became the interim U.S. attorney in 1992, and he served through 1993, Clinton's first year in office.
Nora Manella, Clinton's choice for the post, took over in 1994.
In Pittsburgh, Corbett says he stayed in office until August, when a new Clinton appointee won confirmation.
In New Jersey, Michael Chertoff, a 1990 appointee of President George H.W. Bush, continued into the Clinton administration before leaving in 1994. He is now the Homeland Security secretary.
In western Michigan, John Smietanka, a Reagan appointee, served until the beginning of 1994. "I knew I would be resigning, but I wasn't sure of the timing. I ended up serving for one year of the Clinton administration," he said.
His predecessor, James S. Brady, served as U.S. attorney in Grand Rapids, Mich., during the Carter administration.
