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 - --- MAP posted-by: Beth