Show low Sunday December 6 1987 The Salt Lake Tribune Elizabeth Holtzman: From congresswoman to DA School before going on to Radcliffe College and Harvard Law School In the -summer of 1963 she went to Georgia to work on civil rights cases which her " brother calls “an intensely moving experience” After she had spent 2 Vk years with a New York law firm Mayor Lindsay made her an assistant in I ' charge of parks and recreation In 1970 Holtzman took on the Democratic machine and won election as ' district leader from Flatbush Two years later she pulled off the political chairman of ! upset of the year beating Rep Emanuel Celler the the House Judiciary Committee by 635 votes in the Democratic primary Holtzman was given Celler’s spot on the Judiciary Committee and played an active role in the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon She aggressively questioned President Ford about whether he had made a deal to pardon Nixon And she didn’t neglect the home front helping to ferret out fraud in the New York City school-lunc- h program Asked what she misses about Washington Holtzman says “I miss some of the issues I was involved in I miss being able to be there to get the legislation through" What about friends? She says she misses some of her House colleagues but declines to name them As Holtzman finishes her cheeseburger and the talk turns to her personal life she grows noticeably nervous She looks down keeps twisting her straw the pauses grow more awkward She would much rather talk about By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Writer NEW YORK — When Elizabeth Holtzman became Brooklyn district attorney in 1981 she had a disconcerting conversation with Meade Esposito g then the boss of the Brooklyn Democratic machine that Holtzman had opposed throughout her political life “He said he only controlled three jobs in the DA’s office” Holtzman savs She laughed “Only three It went down to zero right after I took -- -- cigar-chompin- -- office” liberal congress-woma- n Holtzman has made an unusual transition from hard-lin- e to hard-boile- d local prosecutor But while she continues to exert influence well beyond the Brooklyn courthouse she has encountered some surprises on her new turf Holtzman discovered for example that not one woman in the DA's office was in charge of anything and that blacks had been excluded from the homicide bureau While changing those policies she had to learn to live e with a bodyguard at her side And she has also been confronted with cases that caused her to rethink some of her liberal beliefs “It’s the way you deal with issues of life and death" she said “You’re not one of 535 people If it goes right you’re responsible if it goes wrong You have to make very tough decisions about you’re responsible whether someone is going to be prosecuted or not what sentence to recommend whether to keep someone on an investigation even though it could be full-tim- "the issues” dangerous” “I don’t know that whether I’m a good tennis player or not makes me a good DA” she says “I think it’s more important for people to know what it is you’re doing about your job There’s enough real substance coming out of Holtzman can wax eloquent on virtually any subject — from juvenile a crime to how Congress bungled the hearings — until the conversation turns to herself In a city in which Mayor Ed Koch talks about everything from his diet to his funeral plans Holtzman’s personal file remains tightly under seal Her name never appears in the gossip columns Trim attractive and unmarried at 48 sh£ guards the details of her social life like a state secret Friends have urged Holtzman to share more of herself with the public saying it would help thaw her icy image But after more than 15 years in politics she is still a paradox an intensely private person in a public Iran-Contr- Liz Holtzman Jewish girl from Flatbush star of the Nixon impeachment a hearings scourge of Nazi war criminals came within an eyelash of being US senator She won the 1980 Democratic nomination over such better-know- n rivals as John Lindsay and Bess Myerson and was in a position to o beat an obscure Republican supervisor from Long Island Alfonse M D’A-mat- But Sen Jacob K Javits the liberal Republican who lost to D’ Amato in the primary insisted on a third-partcandidacy that siphoned off liberal yotes from Holtzman She lost by 81000 votes in the Reagan landslide and never officially conceded defeat Months later Holtzman initially scoffed at friends’ suggestions that she try to become New York City’s first female DA Even after she changed her mind and won the Brooklyn post political professionals viewed it as a mere way station until a better opening came along There is still widespread speculation that Holtzman may run for mayor governor or state attorney general and she doesn’t rule it out But in her second term she seems to have settled comfortably into the job of prosecuting criminals in Kings County Over lunch at a fancy seafood restaurant in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge Holtzman orders a cheeseburger and talks about suggestions that she has taken a step down from Capitol Hill to a world filled with homicides burglaries and drug busts “People have tried to say it’s going to be a steppingstone” she says “I find it a constant challenge I’m not bored I don’t feel I’m treading water and I don’t feel it’s trivial There are astronomers who look at the universe and then there are microbiologists who look at cells” ' But Holtzman’s microscope has an unusually broad lens for a local prosecutor She has her own lobbying unit that pushes legislation in Albany She churns out op-e- d pieces on national issues She has sailed into uncharted waters by prosecuting companies for dumping toxic chemicals and medical waste And she has helped broaden the criteria under which estranged husbands can be charged with marital rape g efforts from Brooklyn Holtzman has also continued her joining a 1984 delegation to Paraguay to search for Josef Mengele the “Angel of Death” and urging that Austrian President Kurt Waldheim be barred from this country because of his past Nazi ties As a lawmaker she helped create a Justice Department unit to deport Nazi war criminals living in the United States Not that Holtzman is shy about publicizing these efforts “I was the one flliat uncovered the presence of Nazi war criminals in this country” she says “I held a press conference way back in the spring of 74 and spent six years trying to make sure we had a systematic effort to undo that failure" level Holtzman has speeded the processing of cases At the in her office in part through such innovative techniques as interviewing video hookup with a police precinct The office’s witnesses over a two-wa- y felony conviction rate was 878 percent last year compared with 803 percent before Holtzman took office in 1981 Kt All this has won high praise from law enforcement professionals Kevin 3Jrawley Koch’s criminal justice coordinator and a former Brooklyn prose-cuto- r says Holtzman is “very aggressive very talented and works very y Nazi-huntin- the office" ’ When pressed she will admit to a preference for the opera horseback riding and sailing — she declines to say where — with a small circle of friends Occasional press reports once described Holtzman as dating a cer ! tain man but those sightings have faded in recent years She laughs puts her face in her hands as if she’s tired of being asked -about this Doesn’t it bother her that New York magazine for example described her in 1980 as “arrogant aloof and "I don’t think the public has that image” Holtzman says “First of all it’s I C Elizabeth Holtzman is seen in her days She’s now a hard-boile- d hard-line-liber- congress-woma- n al New York prosecutor The harshest assessment of Holtzman comes from the city’s police union Thousands of police officers marched outside Holtzman’s downtown Brooklyn office in 1985 calling her a “persecutor of cops” and “soft on crime” because she had set up a special unit to investigate charges of police brutality Holtzman’s response is curt: “My job isn’t to be sympathetic to any side Sometimes people don’t understand that” Holtzman came to office with few illusions about crime As a young lawyer she was mugged in the elevator of a Manhattan office building In 1982 her parents were robbed at knifepoint in their Brooklyn home As a member of Congress Holtzman adamantly opposed such techniques as wiretapping citing the abuses of the Nixon White House As district attorney however she has come to view it as an indispensable tool and signed the wiretapping orders that led to the conviction of a state senator Still her liberal idealism shines through when she talks about her pet programs such as one in which young people convicted of minor vandalism are sentenced to scrub graffiti off subway cars “Most of the people who committed minor crimes were never punished” Holtzman says “They’d be arrested they’d be hauled into court whether it was for minor vandalism or drawing graffiti on the subway and the judge would give them a lecture and they’d walk out of court and they’d laugh They’d say this is what the criminal justice system is all about They learned it’s a paper tiger “Many of these people were getting in trouble because they had nothing to do They’re 17- - or 18- - or people who have never worked a day in their lives” Holtzman says launching into a pitch for a national jobs program As the daughter of g Russian immigrants Elizabeth Holtzman was weaned on success Her father is a trial lawyer her mother became the head of Hunter College’s Russian department and her twin brother Robert is a neurosurgeon Holtzman was elected student vice president at Abraham Lincoln High hard-workin- not true “I never was part of the political establishment in the city or the social establishment I was from Brooklyn I was a woman Those are things that make me a little bit of an outsider Maybe because I didn’t fit into everyone’s mold or image of other political figures Maybe they weren’t sure how to approach me too I don’t know" Holtzman declines to say where she lives in Brooklyn citing security considerations But even back in 1974 she refused to let reporters visit her Washington apartment Friends hasten to volunteer some of Holtzman’s other activities — gardening travel fishing — as if determined to round out the portrait that she declines to paint Marilyn Shapiro who was Holtzman’s first administrative assistant in Washington and is now assistant manager of the Metropolitan Opera says Holtzman “is basically a very shy person She’s very careful in how she relates to people in public When people live in the public eye so much they want some time of their own" “The perception that has to do with her being aloof or cool strikes me as enormously overamplified as compared to other personalities in politics particularly men” says Linda Davidoff Holtzman’s 1980 campaign manager “There’s been an enormous amount of negative media coverage of Liz Holtzman’s personality Maybe reporters feel more comfortable with somebody who schmoozes it up” There is less dispute about Holtzman’s reputation as a demanding boss Morale has suffered among some middle-leve- l prosecutors who view her as remote argumentative and quick to claim credit for their work Some believe that Holtzman accustomed to the tight reins that lawmakers hold on n staff Capitol Hill has had trouble delegating decisions to her “She doesn’t have a lot of patience for inadequate work” says Barbara Underwood who gave up a tenured job at Yale Law School to become chief of the appeals bureau one of nearly half the bureaus in the Brooklyn office now run by women “In that sense she’s demanding of the people around 800-perso- her “She’s very smart and she wants answers fast" Underwood says “If she’s little bit She can ask more of people than can be done in the time given” Still Underwood says she continues to be fascinated by Holtzman’s “determination to do this job better than it has ever been done before She won’t listen to the practical reasons why something that’s right can’t be done like there isn’t enough money or nobody’s ever done it before” 10 steps ahead of people it can unnerve them a nuts-and-bol- ard" Richard Emery a former counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union says morale among career prosecutors in Brooklyn is “not as good as it Should be” because Holtzman is "a constant candidate” who takes too long ‘to weigh the political implications of each decision “She’s a politically ambitious person who’s done a remarkably good job Tgiven the credentials she brought to the job” Emery says “This was a 'perfect position for her because it kept her visible And it kept her JT ST PARKLANE "It's the perfect location n VY"V ‘gabu Introducing KAMMER-STE- P Balkan Goose Down Comforters YOU CAN PAY MORE BUT YOU CAFT BUY BETTER THIS IS THE FINEST QUALITY COMFORTER EVER MANUFACTURED QUALTY Olevia Freund VIKING HUSKYL0CK WITH PURCHASE OF NEW VIKING 980 COMPUTER Enjoy professional results at home with the complete sewing capabilities of two machines for the price of one The Husk'ock 435 finishes scams trims and overcasts in one operation — and all at twice the 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