DA OFFICE SCANDAL 'NOTHING'

A scandal involving allegations of drug use and an inter-office affair in
the Queens district attorney's office is embarrassing to the people
involved but probably won't have significant repercussions in courtrooms,
people who work in the Kew Gardens legal community said yesterday.

"Much ado about nothing," said longtime defense attorney Marvyn Kornberg,
echoing the sentiment of many who work in the Queens County Criminal
Courthouse.

Assistant District Attorney Brendan Kearns recently resigned amid
allegations he used an illegal drug, and two mid-level supervisors were
demoted - Joseph LoBosco for allegedly having sex with a subordinate and
Robert Ciesla after he was accused of doing outside legal work in violation
of rules.

Many of the whispered conversations in and around the courthouse focused on
Assistant District Attorney Maria Rodi, 25, a former intern who works in
the intake bureau, a training ground for many prosecutors, and who
allegedly had an affair with LoBosco and is said to have dropped a dime on
Kearns and Ciesla.

For some, the scandal boils down to human nature.

"Sex is sex. It's never going to stop," one lawyer said.

Kearns has ties to Thomas Manton, the Queens Democratic Party chairman and
former congressman who said Kearns, 33, was a summer intern in his office
in 1996. Their families are long acquainted and hail from the same county
in Ireland.

A law enforcement source said of Kearns' connection to Manton: "In Queens,
that's like saying you're Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law."

Neither LoBosco nor Ciesla could be reached for comment yesterday. Rodi was
not talking either.

According to courthouse sources, she has gone to the Pittsburgh area to be
with her relatives.

Sources have said Kearns, who also worked in the intake bureau and had
dated Rodi, resigned after officials in the prosecutors' office confronted
him about her claims that he had used an illegal drug, reportedly marijuana.

Kearns said he did not like the appearance that he left under a cloud.

"There was no indication there were any transfers or movement in the
district attorney's office. There was a pay freeze, there was no wages,
there was no hiring," he said. "I was making no money. ... Those were
considerations I engaged when I handed in my resignation."