CONGRESS MUST KEEP PACE ON WACO INQUIRIES

A nation with two of its most hallowed institutions under darkening clouds has turned to a distinguished Missourian to try to sort it all out. The two institutions are the Justice Department and the FBI. The widely respected Missourian is former U.S. Sen. John Danforth, who this past week accepted a call from his country to try to make sense of the incredible mess the Clinton administration has made of the April 1993 disaster at Waco.

As to Danforth's appointment, we join in the widespread, bipartisan praise. Jack Danforth is the right sort of person to handle a job of this magnitude and sensitivity, and we were most pleased to hear the statements he made during his Thursday press conference. Asked why he hadn't acceded to a joint role with a Democrat, Danforth said he had refused on the grounds that "one bad general is better than two good ones."

That remark hints at the fact that apparently Danforth drove a hard bargain in dealing with Attorney General Janet Reno and the rest of the famously corrupt Clinton crowd. He received wide-ranging legal authority, including full subpoena power and even the same access to a grand jury as that possessed by any U.S. attorney. This is the only way Danforth should have agreed to take on this daunting task. He will need every tool in the book to try to reassure Americans after this six-and-one-half-year-long debacle.

At the outset it is vital to defend FBI director Louis Freeh. It is clear this universally respected former judge is being set up as the fall guy in the now-familiar Clinton retribution machine we have seen deployed against Billy Dale, the hapless employees who worked under him in the White House travel office and so many others. Danforth will follow the trail wherever it leads, but he must be vigilant to the attempts to set up director Freeh that are already under way.

We should admit to some reservations about the Danforth inquiry, however. Ferreting out scandals and coverups in the executive branch is historically among the most important business of Congress. It definitely won't do for congressional leaders simply to duck all responsibility for inquiry, simply on the basis of the fact that a man of Danforth's demonstrated integrity is on the job.

Public congressional hearings should proceed apace and are, in fact, vital to the whole fact-finding process. If minority Democrats do their usual job of turning those hearings into a circus and then complaining that they are just that, GOP leaders will have to tough it out. Jack Danforth now has his job, and the Congress has its as well.