A New
York Times article of July 17, 2016, interviewed Ida van Lindt, a
Brooklyn-born secretary of a prominent New York attorney. The accompanying photograph shows Ms. Van Lindt
to be a remarkably youthful woman of 77 with a winning smile and long blond
hair, wearing an attractive black dress revealing shapely arms. She has worked for her present employer for
41 years, occupying a small office outside his much larger one, currently with
a law firm on West 52nd Street in Manhattan. “I’m his office wife,” she says with a laugh,
for she organizes his private and public lives, keeping track of doctors’
appointments, lunch dates, and everything else.
She knows what to order him for lunch, signs his checks and, since he
doesn’t mess with computers, prints his e-mails out for him. Clearly, her employer is of
another era, wanting everything on hard copy, so she keeps an electric
typewriter handy for checks and other tasks.
Miss Van Lindt married twice, both times
to lawyers, and her current spouse is now in private practice and glad to have
her working as well. She’ll stick to her
job as long as she can, for she doubts if her boss could get used to another
secretary. And who is that boss? Robert M. Morgenthau, the perennially
reelected and almost legendary district attorney of New York County from 1975
until his retirement in 2009, and who now, at age 97, still works for a private
law firm, sitting on boards and working on special cases.
Robert M. Morgenthau was born in New York
City in 1919 to a prominent Jewish family that had emigrated here from Germany
in 1866. His father was none other than President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., a
name that I grew up hearing almost as often as the President’s. The family home was near FDR’s Hyde Park estate,
and Robert Morgenthau grew up knowing the President himself. Needless to say, he was destined to great
things. After a wartime stint in the
Navy and graduating from Yale Law School, he came to New York and practiced
corporate law.
His family’s connections paid off
repeatedly. Appointed U.S. Attorney for
the Southern District of New York by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, he
resigned this federal office to run as the Democratic candidate for governor in
1962, only to be defeated by the Republican incumbent, Nelson Rockefeller. He was then reappointed U.S. Attorney and
served throughout the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, until forced out by
Richard Nixon in 1969. After that he
continued in private practice until 1974, when, at age 55, he was elected
District Attorney of New York County, following the death of Frank Hogan, who
had held the job for 30 years, ever since Thomas Dewey’s reign as a prosecutor
of organized crime. Elected to a full
term in 1977, Morgenthau was re-elected seven times, and not opposed in a
general election from 1985 until 2005.
He had found his niche. And with
him from then on, as secretary, was Ms. Van Lindt, who had served Hogan for 17
years and enjoyed a father/daughter relationship with him.
Building a loyal team of subordinates was
essential to Morgenthau’s success, though there was a steady turnover. Every year, when some 60 assistant
prosecutors left for fairer pastures, some 2,000 applicants would hope to
become one of the 554 attorneys employed by his $68-million office. Each prospective hire was interviewed by
Morgenthau himself. He was open to
graduates of schools other than the Ivy League, but was willing to hire the
sons of well-connected families as well, since he himself had a father who was
famous. After a stint with him, his
assistants went on to become at least 25 criminal-court judges, four federal
judges in the Southern District, three U.S. attorneys, and most of the top
criminal defense attorneys of the time.
Though he held what was technically a
local office, he became known nationwide for his determination to prosecute
“crime in the suites,” meaning white-collar crime, as well as crime in the
streets. When, early in his career, he convicted three
accountants who had certified misleading financial reports for Continental
Vending Machines, it shook up the financial world, for until then it was a
common practice to go easy on accountants and lawyers; prosecution was
considered too harsh. But the case
established a precedent that accountants could be held criminally liable for
such actions, even if their reports technically satisfied accounting standards. And the case was no fluke; he would be going
after white-collar offenders throughout his lengthy career. Many sensitive toes would be stepped on, but
he told his prosecutors, “Just follow the case wherever it goes.” Numerous prosecutions followed, though not
always with convictions; critics said he focused too much on white-collar
crime, letting it eat up a disproportionate amount of his budget. But he was determined not to go primarily
after poor minority youths, while bankers and executives wallowed in ill-gotten
wealth.
But
it was crime in the streets that obsessed the public. I remember those dark days of the 1970s, when
apartment dwellers had bars on their windows and a police lock on their
doors. My partner Bob, coming home late
at night from an opera, was nearly mugged in the vestibule of our building;
having his key to the inner door handy, he was through that door as the mugger,
carrying some object in his hand, entered the vestibule, too late by seconds to
catch his intended victim.
I served as a juror on a number of
criminal cases in those days and can state that, while defense attorneys might
get flamboyant and dramatic, Morgenthau’s young assistant D.A.s did not. Instead, they presented their case with quiet
efficiency, marshaling facts that forced the jury to convict, regardless of
their sympathy for the defendant, or their frustration at not knowing more
about all those involved in or witnessing the crime. Which was indicative of Morgenthau’s whole
operation. The city might be turbulent,
but he himself was not. His massive
operation proceeded with machinelike efficiency and got results. No wonder he got re-elected time after time.
Many of the cases prosecuted by his office
were highly publicized nationwide, as for instance these three, which I vividly
recall:
· Mark David Chapman, 1981. Arrested for the murder of John Lennon, whom
he shot outside the Dakota apartment building in Manhattan, he pleaded guilty
and was sentenced to a term of 20 years to life. He has since been denied parole many times.
· Bernhard Goetz, 1987.
I remember clearly how in December 1984 the city was electrified by the
news that a white man being mugged by four young black men on a subway car had
whipped out a .38 revolver and shot all four, then fled the scene. “They picked on the wrong guy,” was the
common reaction, jubilant, of New Yorkers obsessed with crime. It wasn’t a question of white vs. black, but
victim vs. assailants, and this victim had done what others only dreamed
of. Nine days later Bernhard Goetz, age
37, surrendered to the police and in time was charged with attempted murder,
assault, and other offenses. A jury
found him not guilty of all charges except carrying an unlicensed firearm, for
which he served eight months.
· The Central Park jogger, 1989. A young investment banker, she was assaulted
and raped while jogging in the park; left in a coma, she was unable to identify
her attacker. That night a gang of
teenagers had engaged in what they called “wilding,” assaulting anyone they
encountered in the park. Five young men,
four blacks and one Hispanic, were arrested and confessed to a number of
assaults and being accomplices in the rape, but denied themselves committing
the rape. Charged with assault, rape,
and attempted murder, they were convicted on most of the charges and sentenced
to from 5 to 15 years in prison. The
crime had shocked the public, and the convictions were generally applauded.
These were crimes of violence
and were widely reported. And what do I
remember of the white-collar crimes pursued by Robert M. Morgenthau? Nothing, nothing at all.
But there is more to say about Goetz and
the jogger case. Goetz insisted that the
four young men were trying to mug him, so he shot them in self-defense; they
said they were only panhandling. Who to
believe? Goetz garnered more sympathy
when he told of being attacked by three teenagers in a subway station in 1981, two
of whom escaped. Arrested, the other one
was quickly bailed and blithely departed, while Goetz and the arresting officer
were stuck in the stationhouse, waiting while the wheels of bureaucracy turned
slowly.
When he shot the four young men in 1984,
Goetz noticed that one of the four, seated nearby, seemed free of injuries.
“You don’t look so bad, here’s another,” he said and fired a fifth shot that
severed the young man’s spinal cord and left him paralyzed. The public were all trying Goetz in the court
of their mind, and in my court that fifth bullet was critical; with it, Goetz
ceased to be on the defensive and himself became an assailant. Years later, after Goetz’s release, the paralyzed
young man sued Goetz and won $43 million in damages, at which point Goetz
declared bankruptcy. After that he
dropped from sight for a while, ran for mayor in 2001 and lost badly, and reappeared in the news in November 2013,
arrested for selling an undercover police officer $30 worth of marijuana,
charges that were later dropped.
The aftermath of the Central Park jogger
case was more troubled and controversial.
In 2002 another Hispanic male, a convicted serial rapist and murderer
serving a life sentence, confessed to raping the jogger, and his DNA confirmed
his guilt. It turned out that the DNA of
the five convicted men had not matched the rapist’s DNA, which implied a single
attacker. Learning of the confession,
Morgenthau urged the court to vacate the convictions of the five, which it
did. Once freed, the five convicted men
sued the city for malicious prosecution and other charges, but under Mayor
Bloomberg the city – quite shamelessly, in my opinion – refused to settle. When Bill de Blasio became mayor, he
supported the settlement, and the city settled the case in 2014 for $41
million. But the five men then sought
another $52 million from the city.
Meanwhile none other than Donald Trump called the settlement a disgrace
and opined that the five were probably guilty.
In the face of these controversies, it’s
easy to forget that Morgenthau was prosecuting white-collar crime as well, as
for instance:
· BCCI, 1991. The
Bank of Credit and Commerce International, an international bank with head
offices in Karachi, Pakistan, and London, was indicted on charges of fraud,
money laundering, and larceny. The
bank’s liquidators pleaded guilty to all charges and forfeited all the bank’s
U.S. assets.
· Tyco International, 2005. The CEO and chief financial officer of this
security systems company were found guilty of stealing more than $150 million
from the company. The CEO, Dennis
Kozlowski, became a symbol of corporate
greed for using Tyco money to buy a $30 million Fifth Avenue apartment with a
$6,000 shower curtain, a $15,000 umbrella stand, and paintings by Monet and Renoir. Sentenced in 2005, Kozlowski was granted
parole in January 2014 and still insisted he was innocent. The CFO, Mark Swartz, was also granted parole
and released in January 2014.
The man behind all these headline-grabbing
cases lived quietly – an almost boring life, being devoid of scandal. By his first wife, whom he met in college, he
had five children. She died of cancer in
1972, and five years later he married Lucinda Franks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist 27 years his junior. They
were opposites. Raised as a middle-class
Christian, she has described herself as “in hippie mode, and a radical and a
war protester,” convinced that money corrupted the rich. She had interviewed him and at first was a
bit intimidated, but this patrician lawyer with a slight smile also fascinated
her. When they dated, his
broadmindedness was apparent, though once, when they visited some hippie
friends of hers, he insisted on leaving because their hosts’ shower curtain was
an authentic American flag – in poor taste, he thought, and she agreed.
Morgenthau’s children by his previous
marriage resented his second wife’s taking him away from them, though in time
the tensions eased. And with her new
husband the “hippie” wife was soon meeting notables like President and Mrs.
Ronald Reagan, socialite philanthropist Brooke Astor, Senator Ted Kennedy, New
York Mayors Ed Koch and Rudolph Giuliani, and a host of others. But in spite of the socializing, and her
continuing to work as a journalist, she bore her new husband, now in his
sixties, two children. When not in their
residence on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, they retreat to a home in Martha’s
Vineyard, or to Fishkills Farm in Dutchess County, a commercial farm owned by
the Morgenthau clan and now run by his youngest son, Josh.
By the time he was in his eighties, the
prosecutor needed a hearing aid and walked with a shuffle. “Is he past his prime?” some of the staff
would whisper, when his office lost a significant case. But the white-haired prosecutor remained
immersed in major cases and showed no signs of slowing down. And when he won his eighth term in 2001, his
staff that year got convictions in two-thirds of the 577 criminal cases that
went to jury trials. In 2005 the Times reluctantly declined to endorse
him for re-election, feeling he was too stuck in his ways, but he was
re-elected anyway. “I’m too old to
retire,” he quipped. Said his daughter
Jenny, “The man has a steel-trap mind.”
In his later years he was up at 6:45 a.m.
to have breakfast with his youngest daughter.
Then he would walk around the reservoir in Central Park or, in bad
weather, do a treadmill at home. One day
a week a trainer would come to his East Side apartment; the other six, he
lifted weights on his own. Then to the
office, where he worked until 6:30 or 7:00 p.m.
If he didn’t go out in the evening, he would read voraciously, usually
books about the Holocaust and World War II, or watch Law & Order on TV. By
11:00 p.m. he was usually in bed.
And today?
Having finally retired in 2009, thinking he was indeed too old, he goes
daily to his office at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz at 51 West 52nd
Street, a prestigious law firm known for its skill in mergers and acquisitions
and in business litigation. There he is
an “of counsel,” meaning he is connected with the firm without being a partner
or associate. “He’s the type of person
who has to work to live,” his wife Lucinda explained, when, soon after
retirement as prosecutor, he joined the firm.
He was welcomed there for his wealth of experience, contacts, and
judgment, though he promised to bring something else as well: tomatoes and eggs
at wholesale prices, from the Fishkills Farm upstate.
My poems: For five acceptable poems, click here and scroll down. To avoid five terrible poems, don't click here. For my poem "The Other," inspired by the Orlando massacre, click here.
My books: No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here. As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), my historical novel about a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client, is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Coming soon: Probably Wall Street -- again! Greed, addiction, flamboyant overspending -- you name it. Because Wall Street is always with us. After that, maybe the Four Seasons, where I never set foot, feeling no need of a "power lunch."
© 2016 Clifford Browder
