Pubdate: Wed, 09 Feb 2005
Source: Newsday (NY)
Copyright: 2005 Newsday Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/308
Author: Ellis Henican
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?140 (Rockefeller Drug Laws)

JUST TRY TO INDICT HIM ON HIS AGE

Robert Morgenthau is sitting up in his vast and cluttered office at One 
Hogan Place, braced for my searing questions about the death penalty, the 
Rockefeller drug laws, the falling murder rate, the rising sleaze on Wall 
Street and all the other things that veteran New York prosecutors get asked 
about, especially when they're running for re-election.

But I don't care about any of that. Not today.

I am here to ask the only question that matters as the 85-year-old 
Manhattan district attorney prepares to announce that, yes, he would like 
another four-year term.

I ask it the only way I know how to, which is straight out.

"Are you too old to be DA?"

"I don't deny my age," the dean of American prosecutors says with - what is 
that? a smile? a wink? I guess I'd call it a shrugging sense of 
well-I-am-85-so-I-probably-have-to-deal-with-this-eventually-and-I-might 
- -as-wel l-get-started-now.

Morgenthau looks thin, but then he's always looked thin. He slouches, but 
then people a fraction of his age do that, too. When he rises from his 
chair to grab some papers, his gait is not exactly sprightly. But he isn't 
wobbling either. After 30 years in this office, he wears a hearing aid. But 
his answers are quick and crisp.

"So?" I ask again. "Are you too old?"

"Absolutely not."

"You'll be 90 when the term is up."

"I can still add."

He sets the papers down and continues.

"My health is good," he says. "I have a terrific staff. I insulate them 
from political pressure. We have a lot of important things we're doing 
now." He mentions official-corruption investigations, banking fraud cases, 
terror-money links, domestic violence initiatives - all gaining focus as 
Manhattan street crime has fallen so precipitously. "I would hate to see 
that staff disbanded or have someone take over who didn't understand our 
priorities."

That someone waiting eagerly in the wings this year is Leslie Crocker 
Snyder, a former sex-crimes prosecutor and state judge best known for 
giving maximum sentences in narcotics cases. Her autobiography is called 
"25 to Life." She is 62.

Snyder, like Morgenthau, hasn't announced yet. But like him, she's running, 
for sure. With crime way down and no big office scandal to point to, her 
unspoken campaign slogan will almost certainly be, "He's too old."

Morgenthau says he's fit for that fight.

"I've been blessed with good health, knock on wood," he says. "I'm in good 
shape. If I weren't, I wouldn't be running. You be the judge. Do you think 
I'm failing?"

He reaches for a tan parka on a nearby chair. It has a ski-lift ticket 
clipped to the zipper. One of the courthouse beat reporters, he says, 
noticed the tag recently.

"You ski?" she asked.

"You're darn right," the DA remembers saying. "My son has a place at 
Hunter. I go up there. I play tennis." It's the first thing he's said 
that's a little hard to visualize. "There is nothing I can't do. I can't 
run a mile anymore in 10 minutes. But I walk everywhere. I have seven 
children. You have to stay young for them. The only thing the doctor said 
don't do is fall."

His drive to carry on, he says, goes back to World War II. The scion of a 
prominent Manhattan family (Dad was FDR's treasury secretary, Grandpa was 
ambassador to Turkey), young Bob was executive officer of a U.S. destroyer 
that was struck off Algiers by a German torpedo. He drifted in the 
Mediterranean in a life preserver.

"I made a number of commitments when I didn't have much of a bargaining 
position," he says. "I was gonna do something unusual with my life if I got 
out alive."

These days, he says, he's up every morning at 6:45. "I have a 14-year-old 
daughter to get off to school. I'm on the treadmill six days a week. I have 
breakfast - cereal, fruit, coffee." Then it's straight to Hogan Place.

"Lunch out most days, in the neighborhood so I can walk. Salad, pasta, 
fish. I eat three squares. I was the middle child. I needed to attract 
attention. I was the best eater in the family."

Most nights include an hour or two of reading at home. "And I have my other 
two jobs," chairing the Police Athletic League and the Museum of Jewish 
Heritage.

So what's he learned in 85 years?

"You get smarter," says the nine-time candidate for DA. "Some things you 
don't worry about so much. What people say about you. Some temporary 
setback in a case. You say, 'I've made tough decisions before, and they 
worked out OK.'"

The life and times of Robert M. Morgenthau

A look at key events in the life of the longtime Manhattan district 
attorney, whose career spans much of the 20th century, and some 
corresponding milestones in history:

1919

Born July 31 in New York

City

Prohibition begins

Grand Canyon National Park opens

1941

Graduates Amherst College

Pearl Harbor is bombed

"Citizen Kane" is released

1948

Graduates Yale Law School

Israel is declared an independent state

Fresh Kills landfill opens

1961

Appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York by President 
John F. Kennedy

Bay of Pigs invasion

Ernest Hemingway dies

1974

Elected New York District Attorney

Patty Hearst is kidnapped

Richard Nixon is impeached
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