ipod, you know, marrying a man 30 years my senior with five children, two dogs, one cat, a house in riverdale, and i was used to sleeping on church force and marching, you know, and throwing gas on fire and bob morgenthaler could've put me in jail. [laughter] >> you mentioned yet five children and you write the

families were not at least in the beginning not receptive to your engagement. that would be an understatement. how did you overcome that? or did you ever overcome that? >> we did. i think it was very hard work on bob sport who had to walk a tight rope between two of his children, two of whom were my age which does not make it very easy, you know? there's the edible complex and lots of other things that make it difficult -- at this complex. we've gotten along very well until we announced our marriage to us as we announced our marriage i sort of moved into the realm of quasi-enemy. but we all worked very hard. there was his younger daughter, youngest daughter was 13 and i could never replace her mother

who had died when she was nine, but i try to be there for her, and to be as helpful a friend as i could, and i think this helped bring everybody else in. you know, time creates new things, and we created a new blended family. >> you created a new clinton family but anyone who listens to your story knows the could've gone the other way. we've although families in which instead of getting better it got worse. is there one thing, one critical thing that happened or that you worked on that you think was decisive? >> in bringing us together? >> yes. >> this is one small thing. when the old house that bob grew

up in that belonged to his father, beautiful house on the apple orchards was sold and divided up between bob, his sister and his brother, there had to be division of their contents, and division of the contents and the belongings everybody who thinks everything belonged to them is very complex. now bob was busy that day -- surprise. >> yeah. and he said, will you go in my place? at first i was honored and than i thought, oh, no. so here i am a little bit of an outlaw still, and i'm going to go around and claim the popcorn bedspreads and, you know, his father's desk. so when i went there, i was

assertive but not terribly, except there was one thing, a lap rug, and old-fashioned for lap road that you wore in the rumble seat, and it had belonged to bob's father that happen to know that bobby, his second son, second oldest son, really loved that rug. so i bartered everything for that rug. and when i brought it back and give it to bobby, he was extremely touched, and he said, not to me, but to somebody else, now i really know she's on our side. >> i can imagine how helpful that was to get hundred question about something you thought was decisive. one thing that this certainly

helped. to robert morgenthau ever bring home the office with him? defeat discuss cases? did he bounces the link, his frustrations with you, or tepco off his public life? >> both. this is very hard to explain, but sometimes win cases were pretty clear-cut but sort of cloudy at the same time, like the bernard goetz case when bernard thought he was attacked a group of young african-american kids and shot at them and paralyzed one, the city was divided over bernard goetz, and let him off. bob was really stumped at this because it was a very, you know,

very complicated case with bernard goetz looking at eight real threat or where these kids just hacking around and panhandling? so bob and i played out the roles of the victims and mr. goetz. then we switched and he was the victim and i was bernard goetz and we switched back and forth. and this exercise, which really goes back to the training of long ago, it helped him decide what the right thing to do was. and decided to indict bernhard goetz for shooting at these unarmed kids. >> what do you think is the biggest misconception or the misconception that bothered you

the most that people may have about first union with bob? >> what? >> about the union, the two of you being a together. >> well, i think in the beginning i didn't realize this because i was, you know, i was radical. i was, you know, antiwar protester. my whole life was dedicated to that, and the least thing i wanted to do in the world was to have riches enter live a luxurious life -- and to live a luxurious life. so when bob and i fell in love, which was counter to did, we were like an oxymoron because we're two different kinds of people.

i think it was some people who thought, well, this is a fortune hunter, this is somebody that wants to get fame from marrying fame. and when i found out about this a bit later, i got furious because it was exactly the opposite. i married bob in spite of his same, and inspite that he was a well-off person. >> one of the highlights of the book, and there's so many highlights, was the conversation where the mayor, mayor koch calls and interrupts what shall we say, gentle way to say this? an intimate moment. [laughter] tell me about, he had a conversation, when the phone went down from a conversation

about you saying, are any of my old friends involved in this? recount that night for those who haven't already read the book. >> we were playing around in b bed, just playing, and the phone rang and it was his private line, and he immediately reached for comment and said hey, ed, how are you? no, no, no. it's not too early. and i'm saying -- then what mayor koch was saying i could hear was that there was this so-called revolutionary who had shot a guard and that koch was recommending that the prosecutor go for the max. in other words, recommending that bob go for the max.

and he said, we will do what's right, mr. mayor, thank you very much. goodbye. and i was afraid that this was one of my friends. so i said to bob, who was this person? way see somebody i knew, a friend? and bob said, well, i don't really know who your friends are. this was new in our relationship. and i said, well, you know, maybe there's some mitigating circumstances, like he's an idealist who just happened to commit violence to get to the capitalist hegemony. [laughter] and then bob said, well, and i said there's nobody who can say

what to do. i know you would have what's right. and he said, nobody but you. [laughter] i really was coming right off of the antiwar movement, and i thought cooking was very bourgeois. offered to cook an egg. he knew i couldn't cook an egg, so he said i will pick up a bagel. and then i said, i'll make some hash browns, and he laughed -- hash brownies. and i just happened to have left over from a draft dodger boyfriend a little jar full of green stuff, and he had never asked what it was but i don't know whether he thought it was dried rosemary, but i thought at that point, i better throw that out, because i didn't use it. he didn't use it, and it wasn't

a good thing to have any district attorneys house. [laughter] >> to put it lightly. that raises a question. when you got married, or maybe when you're contemplating marriage, did he have what i would consider to be understandable requests of things that you should not do, or things, say listen, i would appreciate if you don't associate with these people, are wide would appreciate if you would stop smoking some things? did you have those conversations? >> in in the sense. we agreed not to step over the line into each other's professions. i was not going to write about anything he was involved with. he was not going to mess with my story. and we also sort of had the agreement of, that we would support each other in as best

the way as we could support each other. but bob is a very laissez-faire person, and he wanted me to continue my career and continue my successes. in fact, he kind of liked seeing my name on the front page of "the new york times." so he was very supportive, and i was supportive in being able to brainstorm with him. so it really very naturally worked out. and i didn't get any coming in, i wasn't supposed were genes to cocktail parties where the governor was, although i didn't. i learned how to dress. but, you know, he was very accepting. >> when it comes time to write the book, bluntly put, did you ask his permission to write this book, "timeless"? >> we were sitting in a very romantic restaurant.

bob loves food, and he was eating something he really loves it i think it was pork chop, and i said, -- [laughter] only because he remembers that they were pork chops. i have to feel a subject in order to write about it, just like i felt my father. and we had been married then for 32 years. i had gotten the irony, a sense of irony at a sense of distance in order to write about him objectively. and i really felt like i wanted to write about him. so i did not expect his reaction, but i said, sweethea sweetheart, do you think i might be able to write a book about you and i, more about you?

he looked up, he said to you think anybody would read it? [laughter] and i said, i think so, sweetheart. he said, well, you could give it a try. so he probably would have let me write this book without ever writing -- without ever looking at it, but one of my moral stands was that he had to read every single draft, and more than once, and he ended up doing this. and he corrected punctuation and he really got into it. a lot of people have asked, how did you remember what happened? how can you know what you said 20 years ago in greece looking at the statue of apollo? and the answer is that i've kept

journals ever since i was in college, and i have an auditory memory. i can remember, if i focus, remember what people say so i can dart in and write things down, or just write things down in front of people. and so he read and corrected some of my mistakes. some of my mistakes, i showed him the journal and said, it happened this way. and he said, okay, all right, fair enough. but we, you know, had a happy experience doing it. >> were there times or not they which you said some version of wow, this is true but i'm not sure you should put it in a book? >> there were a few times. [laughter] spent and how did you resolve

that? >> i didn't put them in the book, except for a few. [laughter] and they were in dissent. we are not talking about cases or secrets. we are talking about, you know, things everybody does spent things everybody does but not everybody writes about it. did you worry? did you worry that people reading the book might say, too much information, too much information not just about the private life but individualized? were you concerned about that, and if so, how did you balance this out? >> i never worried about it, because writing the book is kind of like eating in an old car and it won't start and it costs and it costs, and you don't get it right, and then suddenly you

whiz along and you just write. it's afterwards in the editorial that you take things out, and i took quite a bit out. but i felt some things were so amusing and so interesting, and were only talked about in one line which was totally innocent, not graphic at all. and i thought, well, that's part of our marriage, and you can't have a book about marriage without mentioning some of the intimate details. >> what did you hold back? [laughter] >> what i held back was, as i said, bob is an extremely accepting person, very laissez-faire. he would read a chapter and i

would have to watch him at the end of the chapter and look for a little muscle that might, you know, flick or a little, you know, batting at his eyes, and then they need. i said, what don't you like? and he said, it's your memory, not mine but and i said, no, it's our memory. i want to know what you didn't like. and he would take quite a bit of teasing for him to tell me that he didn't like a certain thing. >> did you grant him veto power over his things where you could say, look, i don't want to talk about. i'm just asking you, sweeter, to take this out? >> yes, i did. i definitely did. because, you know, there's no sense in writing the book which he didn't approve of. sometimes i talked him into

certain, leaving certain things in. but anything that he really didn't want him. and/or even something seek some things he got a little emotional about, and out they came. >> did those tend to be personal things or things about his work? >> personal things. >> let's just switch from and talk about history or i mentioned this book is many things but among the things it is history of new york city, history of the country. how has new york city changed over the breath and span of your marriage, 32 years? >> well, when we got married, or a bit before when bob litt single, he tells a story that had to walk down a dark street to get home, and he didn't walk. he ran down the middle of the street.

crime was that rampant. you know, there were hundreds of murders per year when he took office, and because of the work of the police, because of bob's work, very complicated computer work, the number of murders in manhattan per year is something like four. so it's a much, much safer city, i think. >> and for our country? you have seen a change. i'm calling now on your skills as a reporter, and i think it needs to be noted, he won a pulitzer prize in your early '20s. let's talk about our country, our beloved united states of america. how has it changed over the span of your marriage?

to talk about in the book. >> i think one of the reasons bob and i came together politically when we were on opposite sides of the fence is that the culture to change, the counterculture, you know, extreme antiwar movement, it died. but what was left, what rose was changes in the roles. feminism changed the role of women, maybe not as much as we would like but it did change. and bob ended up coming into office with two women. he left the office with something like 350 women. you know, for minority's, opportunities have proliferated. there is, i think there is a gentle and kind are the those --

kinder ethos. after 9/11 everybody was hugging and crying to everyone knows what happened. you can get a smile from somebody on the street. >> i agree with you in the immediate space of 9/11 that the country came together in a way that i have not seen since world war ii. that's a personal opinion i have been disappointed it faded as quickly as it did. i don't think anyone who was in new york at the time of 9/11 didn't go through any september without thinking about that, and he we are in september. have you in bob been talking

about a? have you discussed it, or are you too far back in memory? >> well, we talked about it. we've talked about it in terms of the post-traumatic syndrome that have affected people that were survivors of 9/11. and we have talked about ptsd, which he has worked a lot on, you know, and soldiers from afghanistan, vietnam, iraq. but we also began talking about the kind of ptsd that you do not think of when you think of ptsd, post-traumatic stress syndrome. and that is that i think it's only 30% of the sufferer's of post-traumatic stress syndrome our soldiers coming back from the wars.

the rest are people like you and me who have had serial dramas in their life, and this close them off emotionally. sometimes, many times, the higher functioning people, close them off. a closed bob off any number of ways. >> i was going to ask you, i don't mean to interrupt the flow, and by let me know and i say this just because i've been corrected before, that he preferred when it is post-traumatic stress disorder, you called it syndrome. >> politically correct. >> we all know what you're talking about. when this happens the district attorney's office was right on point, the firefighters, please any other first responders. was this something that touched

bob, touched you and bob both personally? >> it was amazing. when bob came home that night, late, it was like 5:30 and everybody else is coming home early in the day, he was, you know, covered with soot because a big cloud that had come from the explosion, which are not far from his office, kind of hovered around the street that he, you know, center street and hogan plays, and time stopped when he came in that door. and we just hugged each other. i had a different reaction, a different way of coping with 9/11 than he did.

he began to talk about all the acts of heroism that he had seen. and this is so bob because he is the glass half full. is always an optimist. he's always taken the best out of everything, whereas i was a little more circumspect, and i started doing research on who was responsible for 9/11. and coming, you know, to the end, to the cia, which paid so many informants that, you know, they have informants during the bombing and informants dealing in forming on informants. >> as an aside, i just spoke with -- [inaudible] and she reminded me, she said many new yorkers suffered ptsd

in the wake of 9/11. very few people want to talk about it, and it was her opinion. question, are you and bob all past it now? >> i don't think so. bob had a very rough time in world war ii. his first the story was sunk. he was marooned in the water, watching his men go down, not able to save more than one or two. he then went on another destroyer. there were, cause he's just, you know, peppered the destroyer , cozzi. after that, very shortly after

the war, his father, beloved father came down with hardening of the arteries and bob had to care for him. bob wanted to care for him. he was on one of his siblings who did. and then his much loved wife martha, got cancer and had a terrible, long siege which bob was involved in her care. and i think all of these, and then there was also a plane crash which his mentor and idle, judge patterson, was killed in. and bob was supposed to be on that plane and wasn't. all of these shocks maven go inward -- made him go inward. as i said, this is what makes him a very successful man, but also he is somebody who doesn't

show his feelings. sometimes even hiding them from himself. >> i want to point out we will have 15 minute question and answer session which are becoming a fairly soon. you said your reaction to 9/11 was that of a journalist. let me find out what happened, what really happened. let's talk about the people about what you found out about the events of 9/11 and the terrorism campaign of the united states that had preceded that. >> it began much earlier in afghanistan when we funded these are guerrilla fighters that were helping the guerrilla fighters

in afghanistan fight the russians, without really knowing that the people we were bringing in often from saudi arabia and other arab countries were very anti-american. and that the plan, and they were even called al-qaeda. they call themselves al-qaeda way back then, and the plane was as soon as they were finished with the russians, they were going to come to the united states. and they had an open invitation from the united states because, from what i understand, saudi arabia made a deal with the united states that if they gave all their terrorists, which they didn't want anyway, to the united states to fight in afghanistan, the americans afterwards would bring them to the u.s. and make them citizens and support them and, you know,

give them homes, whatever. and what the cia didn't realize and the dia and all of the intelligence agencies didn't realize was that they were helping build al-qaeda, and al-qaeda was, they were little branches of one or two people in missouri, in mississippi, indicator -- in decatur. at some point they fund all came together highly financed from what they made in afghanistan from these intelligence agencies. and then further supported when they came to the united states. >> i want to point out because there's a good deal about this in the book as i made a

reference to in the beginning of a book which is often cast as a love story which is that. i think people may be pleasantly surprised by how much of this kind of substantial information is in the book. we haven't mentioned the fbi, which bob, robert morgenthau, has said repeatedly that the fbi has a lot to answer for. >> yes. yes. i don't think the world trade center bombing in 1993 would have happened, and i think that al-qaeda would've been identified and broken up had the fbi not sequestered 14 boxes that they found in the murderer, the house of the murderer of the extremist rabbi from israel.

and the police and the fbi put out the story that this was a lone gunman. and they put it out very strongly, you know, almost surprisingly. and actual facts, in these 14 boxes showed they had bomb materials. they had blueprints of the world trade center. they had tapes from one of the leaders of al-qaeda urging people to arm and to get bombs to destroy america's great world trade center. >> there's much about this in the book come plus or so many stories. one of my favorite in the book, maybe two-thirds of the way through the book, an occasion which our district attorney,

robert morgenthau, did what one would've hoped that everyone would've done that is exposed the laundering of money out of iran to buy weapons, including making weapons of mass destruction, and they were laundering their money through a bank in great britain. and despite repeated efforts to get the federal government involved when they didn't, then robert morgenthau, our district attorney, exposed that whole case, it is more about that in the book. you have had a lot of fun during your marriage. what's been the most fun? >> the way we joke, his dry sense of humor. my hanging out, you know, all of

the humor and how it played, our travel, just our conversations. we have that to this day. we can't shut up at restaurants. you don't see us, to solid people eating. you see us chattering away. >> well, we're going to move to a question and answer session fairly quickly but this gives me an open to check some the. i have my reporters have gone. i've heard this story and i'm checking with you and you would know whether it's true. everybody knows that he has when necessary, bob has a stern exterior. but we also know he has a sense of humor, which he outlined in the book as a great sense of humor. now, i'm told and that checking with you is it true or not, not one of his favorite stories is about one of his friends who was roughly his age, 95 or 96 i

think, and the story was told to me, the story that robert morgenthau likes is that his friend had a birthday, 95th birthday, and some of his friends said, you know, it's his 95th birthday, we should give him something special. not bob, but they took up a collection and they hired a one time miss playboy -- [laughter] -- to dress in a very nice costume and go to the door of bob's friend, and when the friend open the door, she said, i'm here to give you super saks. and fred answered, i'll have the soup, please. [laughter] is it true speak with well, if you say so, it must be true. speed and i'm not sure he wants to claim it.

i think now would be a good time going to move to the question and answer session. thank you very much, lucinda. >> thank you. [applause] now the way it is going to work, there are microphones available in both files. and if you will raise your hand, keep in mind that we have lights in our eyes are we may not be able to see as clearly as we would like. this is an important poet. it's important to hold the microphone close. this is being recorded for play on television. so if you can make sure if you have a microphone close enough or we can do you quite clearly. so if i may, the gentleman over here. yes, sir. >> yes. it's quite remarkable, i did not know about the cover-up of the fbi on all these documents about al-qaeda. my question is, what was their

motivation for doing such an amazingly stupid thing asked and furthermore, even though there was no major attack, this one was predicted. do you think based on your research it is significantly safer now than before 9/11? is homeland effective? are they communicating effectively and transparently with each other? >> , the first part of the question is, if i understand it, is how do the fbi, and how wasn't so stupid or so corrupt as to not identify the conspiracy? well, they told bob, bob's office, that they didn't have an arabic translator. therefore, they couldn't translate the boxes. however, they wouldn't give them

to bob's office who was prosecuting the case. so a little investigation on bob's part, and on my part, showed that both the fbi and the cia had a number of come as i said, informers, people who were keeping them apprised of what al-qaeda was doing, except that it turned out to be the whole of al-qaeda that was informing. so that was the reason from what we understand that the fbi and the cia wanted to keep this a terrorist conspiracy under wraps. also, the cia tried to stop bob from investigating the case of

the bank of credit and commerce, also called the banks of crooks and criminals international it because the cia was paying these terrorist informants from the money laundered, money in the bank that he was investigating. so that's part of your answer. >> yes, ma'am. i will come to in just a moment. let's take this and i will come right back to you. >> how can you tell the difference, how can you help us learn to tell the difference between truth and exaggerated media, social media with your friends and television news? i feel a lot of times there's

much more to the story, and i'm not a very politically savvy person. and if i think there's more, people who are more savvy than me have to know there is more. >> i think you're right on the money. now let me say first of all that television used to be very reliable, investigative, really a major information gathering organ in our country. this is when dan was there. and people like him. television news, in my opinion, now is become just recycle, either terrible crime stories or, you know, the same shooting in iraq, the same this, the same that. they don't go into steps. there are very few investigative

reporters left even on "the new york times." so i think you have to judge by the people that are writing the stories, and you have to learn to recognize who those people are that you can trust them like thomas frieden in "the new york times." he was always completely trustworthy when he wrote about the middle east. and i just think you have to go to the source and be your own doctor, be your own judge of what is real and what is not real speed if i may tack onto that very quickly because i want to get the next question will be the lady here on the third row back, that at least it is recognized by his consumers that what one major newsgathering organizations, television, have

now morphed into far more news packages. there's a tremendous difference between having a worldwide newsgathering organization and an organization that to the contrary doesn't have many, to use the phrase, boots on the ground, but packages of mentors of others, and that's an important distinction to know between what is today and what was yesterday. get a microphone down to this lady. >> can i just tack something on? if you turn to a as tv on the hd network passion am i right? >> access spin you will find some investigative reporting by dan which is amazing, and slight the fact that the muslim team unity, a large part of it, was against the united states long before we invaded iraq.

and that this was there and we weren't recognizing it or dealing with it. >> thank you. i appreciate that. you have been very patient with us. thank you. spent one thing i want to tie you -- [inaudible] but i have a question. where did you hide all of those notebooks? and particularly the ones about the bedroom clacks. [laughter] do you have a notebook every time you went to bed with a pen that writes? and when you answer that one, i have another -- [inaudible] a phone that can record everything. so i want to know, how did you do that, that you recorded all

of the details of? >> that's a very creative idea, to have a number of notebooks hidden around your house. i just usually keep one, you know, if i have in my pocket. if i don't, i'm going out in my purse, you know, i will flip one out. sometimes i will pop into the ladies room and write down what i've heard. we had a dinner party in which ariel sharon was there and arthur gelb and barbara gelb were there. they were buried, arthur, you know, has passed away, was very left wing. barber is very left wing, and arik sharon had just invaded lebanon and was not very popular in anywhere, particularly the united states. and that such an argument that it was, i was just itching to

listen and write at the same time. so i kind of did it surreptitiously because they were so involved with themselv themselves. and i'm not sure i got everything, but you know, when situations are like that, you have to be very creative to record them. >> let's take the gentlemen here near the middle. >> my name is john doyle, and i was an assistant u.s. attorney at the office of bob morgenthau when you u.s. district attorney. in fact, i was assigned to prosecute cases against the weather underground so i was one of the enemies that you probably

personally have. [laughter] you and your friends, you talked about, this is before you met bob. you talk to you and your friends being on one side and he being on the other. and my question is, in your community, among the friends and you personally, were you aware of the work that bob was doing with regard to white-collar crime, securities fraud, organized crime, labor racketeering, official corruption, tax evasion, swiss banks. [laughter] all of the things that he did that were pioneering as u.s. attorney, but this is before you met him. my question is, was there a balance in your view of them

during that period of time? >> absolutely not. i mean, the antiwar movement and the cultural revolution really had no use for anybody over 30. and all of them were just deluded architects of the vietnam war. when i married a bomb, when i was really dating bob, i was astounded by how he shamed the system by working under the radar, and sometimes over the radar when he stretched his, you know, inelastic arms into international, you know, countries to try to stop money laundering, and stop the drugs, terrorists. and when i found this out, and i also found out that he had at a certain point refused the orders

of ramsey clark and was the u.s. attorney then, to prosecute draftdodgers. answer we didn't even do what we were accusing people like him of doing. so it was a very deluded generation, although a very idealistic generation that did change things. i think when i found out that bob could work this way, it's what really made me change my views about the cultural revolution. >> i think we have time for perhaps one more question. i want to make sure that i see you there, so yours will be the last question. >> thank you very much. thank you both very much, and thank you for a marvelous book. to what degree is bob's

involvement with this museum mum particularly, a long, long time? what effect did it have on you? were you involved in it all? still involved, and in what ways? >> yes. i identify very much with bob's passion to build this museum, because his father tried to save as many jews as he possibly could during world war ii. and in a way he was finishing what his father had started, in my mind. he wanted people to remember always what happened, and from that, eventually, to save jewish lives that otherwise, you know,

perish in another holocaust. and this, this beloved feeling he has for his father really was the engine that drove him to the personal parts of it and then, of course, you know, his whole character was based on, we have to build this museum. we have to have a place where new yorkers can go, children can go and see what has happened, and can never happen again. >> we are near the end. you have been wonderful and very generous. what question have we not ask you that we should have asked you? [laughter] >> i don't know. you have been pretty thorough. you have been and invested -- an investigative reporter. >> the book is "timeless." the author is lucinda franks.