I'm going tell you an incredible story that suggests one of Florida's most revered political icons, Janet Reno, should be hauled in front of a grand jury and asked whether, as Dade County state attorney in the early 1990s and later as U.S. attorney general, she betrayed her offices and used her power corruptly to crush an opponent. Backing up my assertions of a conspiracy is a Congressional report issued April 10. You're not likely to read about this damning appraisal of Reno. Or, if you do, you'll find that the Florida press, almost always worshipful towards Bill Clinton's attorney general, will circle the wagons around Reno.
The story is frightening. Scarier is the collusion of one of the nation's great newspapers, The Miami Herald.
Here we go. Hold on tight.
In 1979 one of Miami's most brilliant and most infuriating politicians, Joe Gersten, called me and, with uncharacteristic humility, asked me to consider a complaint against my employer, the Herald.
At the time, Gersten was a legislator. Abrasive, bellicose — he was nonetheless a reformer and a formidable power in Dade County politics. That the Herald had palpable hatred for Gersten wasn't news to me. What he threw on my desk was.
There were hundreds of news clips, divided into several dozen separate issues. In each one, a story — many from the wire services, others from the Herald's early editions — had started out neutral or positive to Gersten. But by the time it made the Herald's final edition pages, any positive reference to the legislator had been deleted or rephrased to give it a negative spin. The evidence was convincing. Gersten was getting screwed.
"I've always felt the Herald does a great job at masquerading as a newspaper because sometimes it really is a newspaper, and often a good one. But not when it wages a vendetta as it has with me," Gersten said last week in an interview with the Planet.
By 1979, I already had some history with Gersten. Five years earlier, when he first ran for office, I had the job of writing endorsements for the Herald's subsidiary Coral Gables Times. I received a note from one of the downtown bosses telling me he didn't care who I backed — with one exception, Joe Gersten was strictly verboten. I ignored the warning and endorsed Gersten, and no one said much about it.
Curious about the Herald's collective antipathy toward the guy, I asked around and learned Gersten's father had represented unions when they had walked out in a bitter strike against the Herald in the 1950s. The Herald had also intensely disliked other of Gersten's relatives. Newspapers have long, and occasionally malicious, memories.
I remember suggesting to an editor that we might want to acknowledge the bad blood between the family and the newspaper. That was truly urinating upwind.
Despite the never-ending ill will of the Herald, Gersten went on to become a state senator. Then, in 1986, he ran for Florida attorney general. Initially, his only opponent was a Volusia County senator who was weakened by reports that he had had a minor legal violation fixed. The thought of Gersten as the state's top law enforcement officer nauseated his Miami foes, especially the Herald. They were desperate.
The tale that political strategists tell is that the Miami elite first tried to persuade Reno to run against Gersten. When she declined, the power brokers tapped Bob Butterworth, then Broward County sheriff, who entered the race at the 11th hour but nonetheless won.
During this period, Miami was pretty much dominated by the infamous "non-group," about two dozen corporate power hitters pulled together by Herald bosses. The newspaper wasn't a passive observer of events — such as enlisting Butterworth — it was the prime mover. And much of what the newspaper did was strictly sub rosa.
Why did Reno not run? The speculation goes that she didn't want to risk a loss to a man she intensely hated. It's worth remembering that Reno's father was a Herald reporter and her mother was a writer for the now-defunct Miami News. She was and is a media sacred cow in the Magic City.
After his defeat, Gersten idled for a while and then won a Dade commission seat in 1988. He quickly became, much to the dismay of Miami's Herald-dominated power structure, the main man in county politics. In 1992, he announced his intent to challenge county Mayor Steve Clark, one of Dade's most durable politicians and, ethically, one of the scurviest.
The next chapter: Gersten was absolutely and utterly destroyed. Three weeks after taking aim at Clark, on April 29, 1992, Gersten reported that his blue Mercedes-Benz had been stolen. The next morning, police arrested a two-bit drug dealer driving the car. The tale that emerged — orchestrated by the Reno-run State Attorney's office — was that the car was stolen while Gersten was in a drug den, smoking crack and cavorting with hookers. Even in jaded Miami, this was raw meat in the media piranha pool.
From the beginning, the tale against Gersten seemed suspect to those who cared to examine the facts. Gersten tested absolutely negative on rigorous drug tests. The testimony of witnesses was conflicting. There were no Gersten fingerprints at the site of the alleged orgy.
But Reno had Gersten with or without a case. She tried to catch him in a "perjury trap." He was offered immunity and told he had to testify. Had he said he wasn't at the crack house, Reno would have cited the testimony of the drug dealer and hookers, and indicted Gersten for perjury. He would have been suspended immediately from the commission. If he had admitted to the drug-and-sex story, he was immune from prosecution, but his career would have ended.
Gersten held his ground, serving three weeks in jail for contempt rather than testify. He gave up the mayor's race, ran for re-election to his commission seat in March 1993, and was defeated. His fiancee, Miami political diva Rosario Kennedy, dumped him. Banks began calling in loans. His law practice dwindled.
In September 1993, while on vacation in Australia, Gersten learned he had lost a key battle in the contempt fight. He decided Down Under was a darn good place to live, and stayed. Since then, in Miami, he has been portrayed — by the Herald, of course — as the poster child for smarmy politics.
Key to the proof of "guilt" has been his absence. No one — especially the Herald or Reno's protege and successor at the State Attorney's office, Katherine Rundle — has ever suggested that Gersten might have been wronged. For example, former Chief Assistant State Attorney Michael Band has said Dade is a "lot cleaner and prettier place" without Gersten. (Worth noting, Congressional investigators had a few words about Band, reporting that he "exhibited a decades-long pattern of sexual harassment" and was being investigated by Naples authorities for battery.)
In Australia, Gersten has been fighting for political asylum. He was allowed to practice law, until the Florida Bar Association, pushed by the Dade State Attorney's office, gave him the boot in 1998. That prompted Australia to reconsider whether Gersten can keep his law license.
"I've had easier times," Gersten quipped last week. He added that even if vindicated, he would never return to the United States.
Fortune, however, is flowing the other direction now.
After the drug-sex allegations grabbed Miami's attention, Reno became U.S. attorney general — the ultimate FBI boss. Gersten has long claimed it was G-men who were interfering with his attempts to build a life in Australia. He couldn't prove it.
Then, an Australian bureaucrat accidentally turned over secret files to Gersten's lawyers. Aussie newspapers call the documents the "X files" and describe them as a "bombshell." The files detail how Reno's Justice Department had lobbied Australian officials to get Gersten. The U.S. authorities vastly mischaracterized Gersten and his problems in order to prejudice their Australian counterparts.
Next, much like the cavalry, a U.S. Congressional committee came riding to Gersten's rescue. An Australian physician and human rights activist, Andrew McNaughtan, visited Washington and revealed the "X files" on Gersten to congressional aides. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana), a longtime Reno critic, chairs the House Committee on Government Reform. After months of investigation, the panel issued a stunning 26-page report that concluded:
"A review of the evidence suggests that, at a minimum, individuals participated in a conspiracy to make allegations that they knew to be false. It also appears that government officials failed to develop and disclose evidence that was obviously exculpatory."
Trying to bring light to the murky sewer of Dade politics, the Congressional investigators observed that there had been charges Gersten was involved in illegal bond deals. FBI agents tapped telephones, and informants wearing wires tried to entrap Gersten. Yet, in what the report calls "particularly significant," not only was Gersten never charged with anything but "some of those who had made allegations against Gersten had themselves been subsequently indicted."
There were almost-humorous parts to the report. The police who stopped Gersten's stolen car said they did so because the license tag checked out as belonging to the commissioner. Yet, the thieves had changed tags, replacing Gersten's with a purloined one. So, how could the cops have known the car was Gersten's? In Miami, you don't want to know the answer to such questions.
The most sensational revelation — unknown to Gersten and his lawyers until August 2000 — was that one of prostitutes in the case had also tried to frame the commissioner for the murder of a transvestite. In fact, the hooker had offered an individual money she said was from the FBI to make the allegation.
Reno pleaded "no memory" when queried by the Congressional sleuths about the murder frame-up. Really, now.
According to the report, "the failure to acknowledge the fact that one of the most "reliable' witnesses in the sex and drugs investigation was involved in a contemporaneous attempt to frame Gersten for murder is a powerful indication that government officials were not acting in good faith."
To say the least.
The depth of the report and the evidence from a large number of witnesses produce a tale of frightening abuse of government power. Who would ever believe that Janet Reno could be so venal, so vindictive, so utterly unworthy?
Well, certainly the Herald doesn't harbor any doubts about Reno. Without ever detailing most of the evidence in the report, the Herald does its damnedest to dismiss the findings. Most of an April 11 news article on the report is devoted to Gersten's tormentors, claiming they had done the right thing.
Two days later, an "analysis" throws newspaper style out the window, and in a quite friendly tone refers to Reno as "Janet." Gersten remains just Gersten, except where the writer derides him as "poor Joe." The "analysis" totally ignores the "perjury trap" set for Gersten and puts the blame on him for his refusal to testify. It makes a sinister reference to the allegations of illegal bond deals — never noting Gersten wasn't charged but his accusers were.
Finally, a Herald editorial on April 12 snickers: "How silly of us to think that Gersten's problems might have had something to do with the crack cocaine, the prostitute, the phony stolen-car reports, the absconding to Australia."
But wait. Even Reno's former aides now defend their actions by saying they never charged Gersten with anything. Why? They don't want to admit it but the Congressional report makes clear that there was never any proof whatsoever that Gersten had anything to do with "the crack cocaine, the prostitute, the phony stolen-car reports."
And, of Australia, Gersten told the Planet, "I looked at the forces against me and they were just too powerful."
That government power could be turned against any citizen. As the report states: "The principal concern … is the appearance that government officials were engaged in a headlong rush to destroy Gersten, and that they did so knowing that they were using the sex and drugs allegations as a means to achieve that end."
When aided by a newspaper with a near-monopoly on a city, we should all be terrified. I don't know who deserves more pity: the maligned politician or the maligning newspaper. The politician was, in all likelihood, wronged. The newspaper deludes itself by transforming its hatred for a family into what it believes is a just cause.
Read the report on Joe Gersten's case by the House Committee on Government Reform at www.house.gov/reform/reports/staff_ report_04.10.01.pdf
Editor John F. Sugg can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or at johnsugg@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in May 3-9, 2001.