All language subtitles for (2019) Wheres My Roy Cohn

Auletta:
Testing, one, two, three.

Roy cohn, September 28.

I was writing a profile of Roy cohn.

My recorder is going, and...

I'm taking notes as well, and I said...

What makes Roy cohn tick?

Cohn:
A love of a good fight. Uh...

A certain pleasure / derive
in fighting against power

and the establishment.

I will take on a cause against
practically anybody.

I hate hypocrisy.

Newswoman: Roy cohn was called
the most brilliant and influential lawyer

in america.

His specialty was power.

And from the very beginning,
he was flamboyant,

he was ruthless and always controversial.

Zirin:
And he was like a caged animal.

If you opened the door to the cage,

he would come out and get you.

Man 1: Roy cohn's contempt for people,
his contempt for the law,

was so evident on his face

that if you were in his presence,

you knew you were in the presence of evil.

Zirin: And he saw himself
as a political puppeteer.

He could pull strings
and bring people together.

He could pull strings
and make people do things.

Man 2: Roy cohn is the common thread
from senator Joe McCarthy...

All the way to his protége', Donald Trump.

Zirin: When you look at cohn's life,
you're shining a light...

On demagoguery...

Hypocrisy...

And the darkest parts
of the American psyche.

Crowd: Usa! Usa! Usa!

The Roy cohn show, which is unbelievable.

Now here's Roy cohn, who appeared recently
on the cover of esquire magazine.

And the title of that article, as I
recall, sir, was "the legal executioner."

- Yeah.
- It went on to say that you are really a tough man

- and that at times you can...
- Tough, mean, vicious, so on.

What does that kind of publicity do
for your business in New York?

Oh, it's fantastic.

The worse the adjectives,
the better it is for business.

What are they looking for?
What are they buying?

Scare value.

Going back, over a period of years,
when I call somebody

or write a letter or something like that,

this is supposed to make them
tremble and think,

unless they act promptly and reasonably,

that all sorts of terrible consequences
are gonna flow.

[M1

Roy's reputation in the courtroom
was for such viciousness

that merely retaining him

usually caused the other side in any
dispute to want to settle immediately.

I hired Roy cohn
because he is a tough son of a bitch.

If I can compare this with a western,
it's like bringing in a hired gun.

Man: That's right.

My name is Roy cohn.

The way Roy cohn practiced
as an attorney was:

"I don't care what the law is.
I wanna know who the judge is."

That's the way he worked, because
that's how he manipulated the system.

I would do anything to get my client
to win. Yes, I would. That's my job.

There isn't anything I would not do,

because I believe there's only one answer
in an adversary profession like law,

and that is winning.

And he did it in ways that were,
you know, beyond machiavellian.

He was an amazing manipulator,
and often got his way as a result.

Reporter 1:
What are they confiscating?

Cohn: Packets of white powder.
Reporter 2: But what was it?

Was it cocaine?

It was not in his briefcase.

They do not allege it was in his briefcase.

I've read the complaint, and I
was in court, and you weren't.

Cohen:
Roy was somebody that had no boundaries.

And if you were on the right side of him,

it was great, and if you were on
the wrong side of him, it was terrible.

Dave: He loved power.

He loved pulling the levers of power. And he
got a taste for that very early in his career.

Mangan: Here's a man that everybody
is going to enjoy meeting.

He's Roy m. Cohn, who is confidential assistant
to the United States Attorney General,

and, of course, they've been very busy

prosecuting the communists
and communist party.

- Hi, Roy.
- How are you, Jack?

What can you tell us, Roy,

that we might not know
from general newspaper coverage

of the workings of the
party in this country?

What can we watch for
as individual citizens?

Well, the communists, the one thing
we have to understand at the outset

is that the communist party...

Cohn & hoover:
Is not a political party.

Hoover: It is a way of life.

An evil and malignant way of life.

It reveals a condition akin to disease,

that spreads like an epidemic,

and like an epidemic, a quarantine is necessary
to keep it from infecting this nation.

Cohn:
It's a criminal conspiracy.

Its object is the overthrow of the government
of the United States by force and violence...

And institute the worst type dictatorship
this world has ever known.

Roberts:
This was the height of the cold war.

People were genuinely terrified
of a nuclear attack

and of the so-called communist menace.

Newsman:
President Truman's dramatic announcement

that Russia has created an atomic explosion

sends reporters racing
for the United Nations.

Got any statement about president Truman's
statement on the atomic bomb?

- Please, please, excuse me.
- Does Russia have the atomic bomb, sir?

- Won't you reply to me?
- What can we do?

Zirin:
It was a period of hysteria.

You really start to see the paranoid style
of politics unfold.

And Roy cohn was right there.

Newsman: One of the greatest peacetime spy
dramas in the nation's history reaches its climax

as Julius Rosenberg
and Mrs. Ethel Rosenberg,

convicted of revealing atomic secrets
to the Russians,

enter the federal building in New York
to hear their doom.

He became one of the prosecutors
in the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

The appointment of Jewish prosecutors
and a Jewish judge

was to create the impression

that it was not an
anti-semitic prosecution.

He was only 23 years old,
but Roy cohn was ruthless.

Roy cohn knew how to bully,

and he was willing to do whatever he could
to manipulate the result.

Cohn felt he could ride the wave
of anti-communism

to further his own career.

And, in fact, his role in that case is
subject to very serious ethical questions.

According to cohn,
judge Kaufman would call him

from a phone booth
outside park Avenue synagogue,

where he urged Kaufman
to impose the death penalty.

It was a pathway to power
for Kaufman, the judge,

and for Roy cohn.

They seized the moment. They pushed it
as far as they could, and it went there.

Newsman: Judge Irving Kaufman sentenced both
rosenbergs to death in the electric chair.

It is the first time in peacetime that such
a death penalty has been handed down.

Zirin:
The country was polarized over the verdict.

People took to the streets to protest,

seeking clemency, which was not granted.

Roberts:
The government never had enough evidence

to convict Ethel, and yet they
convicted her, sentenced her to death

and killed her in the electric chair.

And it was a deal
that Roy cohn helped engineer.

- She just kept her hands open like this.
- Right.

I think, if these people are made to
understand that like any other criminals,

when they violate our laws, they will be punished,
that that will have a strong deterrent effect.

And I think that the death sentence imposed by
judge Irving r. Kaufman in the atom spy trial

had a very strong deterrent effect.

I think it's been a very good year on
the anti-communist front in this country.

Roberts: My father took me to the corner of
our block to see the funeral procession go by.

I'm not sure where he really stood
on the Rosenberg case.

But he wanted me to see this.

This was a part of history.

And it had an indelible effect on me...

And on all of america.

Doherty: Cohn makes his career
on the backs of the rosenbergs,

showing that he's not
just a smart, young punk,

but that he's a go-for-the-jugular
district attorney who can quite literally

strap people into the electric chair.

Announcer: Our guest on meet the press,
ladies and gentlemen, is Roy m. Cohn.

I'd like to put you on the receiving end of
some questions you usually ask witnesses.

Cohn: All right.

When and where were you born?

I was born in New York City in 1927.

Gary:
Roy came from an unconventional family.

His mother, dora, was a privileged member
of Jewish society.

When Roy was born, the family consisted of

the bank of United States,
which was a big name at the time,

Van heusen corporation,

Lionel trains,

and my own grandfather,
who had started q-tips.

The truth is,
dora was not a very attractive woman.

Dora, according to my mother,

was the ugliest girl in the Bronx.

Gary: Not only was she not attractive
physically, but she had a difficult personality.

Nobody would marry dora.

So they cut a deal with a young lawyer
named al cohn.

If he married dora, they
would make him a judge.

They had one child, and that child was Roy.

Dave: Aland dora cohn
had a very frosty relationship.

They both focused on Roy a lot,
dora even more than ai.

She was the ultimate doting mother.

Roiphe:
He was treated like a young prince.

Zirin: Like any mother, she wanted a son
who was perfect,

and she had a son
that was short and unattractive.

And she tried to correct his nose.

And she wanted a different son
from the son that god gave her.

That imbued him a sense of shame
about who he was,

and his father gave him the language

whereby he would express his shame
in various ways,

through law and politics.

And dora and ai together
were a perfect storm.

Auletta: His father was a
very active democrat in the Bronx

and would have a lot of powerful democrats
come to dinner.

And when Roy was 9, 10, 11 years old,

his father would insist
that Roy sit at the table with adults.

And Roy would partake in conversation.

Zirin: When cohn was 10, his father
brought him to meet president Roosevelt.

Roy dared to opine to the president,

who I'm sure loved hearing it
even from a 10-year-old,

"I support what you're doing,
packing the supreme court."

He made his first bribe
when he was about 15 years old.

He got a teacher out of a traffic ticket
when he was in high school.

Roy cohn knew how the system worked,

and be manipulated that system
for the rest of his life.

Auletta: You describe yourself,
and it rings true, as a non-conformist.

Cohn: Right. I am myself
an oddball in a lot of ways.

I don't like conventional things
or conventional standards

or conventional people
or conventional boredom

or anything along those lines.

In fact, I, very early in
life, broke with tradition,

and left my Jewish
upper-class-orientated life in New York,

and became a contradiction of everything
I was supposed to stand for.

Dave: Roy was the
definition of a self-hating Jew.

He wanted to show to the world
that he wasn't Jewish.

Many things he did over the years
were aimed at proving that to people.

- Brooks: When were you admitted to the bar?
- I was admitted to the bar in 1948.

- When...
- Five years ago.

- Five years ago. 21 years old.
- Yes, sir.

Dave: He graduated from
Columbia law school at 20.

He was so young

that he wasn't able to be admitted to
the bar for another year, until he was 21.

He was incredibly, incredibly smart,
and he was an expert at taking advantage

of every connection he had.

I was in the department of justice
for a period of five years,

and I worked, during that period of time,
very intensively

with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Zirin: He attracted great attention
with j. Edgar hoover at the FBI.

Hoover understood the value of planting
certain information with the press.

Cohn served his master,
passed on the information,

and hoover returned the compliment
in recommending cohn as chief counsel

to Joseph McCarthy's notorious committee.

Even if there were only one communist
in the state department,

that would still be one communist too many.

N ews man: McCarthy almost
single-handedly made the era

one in which debate became charge
and countercharge.

Zirin: Cohn soared to national prominence
as McCarthy's handmaiden,

whispering in his ear in
a conspiratorial fashion,

advising him how to question witnesses
before the congressional subcommittee.

Stone:
Roy's tactics and his approach via McCarthy

make him one of the most
controversial people in the country.

I don't think you understood the question.
The question was, "do you know this man?"

Can you look at the picture and tell us?
I assume the answer's yes or no.

Man: Well, the assumption is a
little bit mistaken in this instance.

Tell us whether you know the man
before you proceed.

- Do you know this man, or don't you?
- Your statements about him

have made it difficult
for me and unsafe for me.

And, of course, McCarthy, we think of
him in terms of investigating communists.

But he and cohn also
investigated homosexuals.

In the '4os and the '503,
being gay was such a terrible secret.

And that was true for Roy.

It's just hard for people today to imagine
the damage keeping that secret did

to people and their lives.

And Roy certainly would have
done everything to hide it in any way.

In a kind of "he doth
protest too much" manner,

we have cohn investigating these
homosexuals very aggressively.

So he's all over the press.
Roy cohn starts getting

a political and a social profile.

Cohn befriended many
socially connected young men.

Among them...

G. David schine, a wealthy hotel heir.

Cohn was able to get schine
on McCarthy's committee.

It's clear to me that Roy had an interest
in this beautiful David schine

that might have been

not entirely about his mental capacity.

Roy and David schine went on a
buddy trip together across Europe,

inspecting various
facilities, their libraries,

attempting to ferret out any signs
of communist infiltration.

We are here to gather information,

to double-check leads we have

and to see a vast number of individuals

as long as they can contribute
pertinent information or facts.

I... we believe that the free world is
gonna win the cold war and win this fight

by one thing: The truth.

Communists are dedicated to the overthrow
of the United States,

who are dedicated to wiping the
United States off the face of the earth

and substituting the freedom we have in america
for the spiritual and mental enslavement

you have in the Soviet union.

Roy cohn has spent most
of his life studying law.

And finally, in his mid-208,

he has the kind of romantic
crush or compulsion

that most people have for the first time
in high school.

But Roy cohn happens to have it when he's
chief counsel for the McCarthy committee.

Joseph McCarthy himself said that he never
saw Roy cohn irrational about anything

except g. David schine.

Roy liked to do favors for friends,
even when it was inappropriate.

So when his friend David schine
was drafted into the army,

Roy tried to get him special treatment.

And he pulled all the strings he
could pull. He was a string-puller.

This is the way things worked in the Bronx,
in Manhattan politics.

It's not the way things worked in the army,
and the army was not gonna have any part of it.

And that prompted the
army-mccarth y hearings.

Newsman: Early in 1954, senator
McCarthy said there were communists

in the United States army

and that they were being protected.

The army replied that his charges were
a form of pressure to get special favors,

including a direct commission
for g. David schine,

a very special army private
and former McCarthy assistant.

The army-McCarthy hearings
pit the United States army

against Joe McCarthy and Roy cohn.

Cohn's willing to do anything in order to
get more quality time with g. David schine.

That's what the army-McCarthy hearings
were about.

Newsman: It was televised,
and 20 million stunned Americans

looked on for 36 days at the greatest
political spectacle of our history.

A new variable had entered
our political life: Television.

Thank you very much, Mr. Welch,
and thank you, Mr. Jenkins.

- You're welcome.
- Mr. Cohn...

I think you are conducting
a little one-sided interview here,

and that's perfectly all right with me, sir.
I'll tell you what I have to say on the...

On the witness stand, under oath.

All right, thank you. That was Roy cohn
and his opinion of the interview.

You can read the army-McCarthy hearings
as the original reality TV moment,

because you have what
is an open-ended drama

with a cast of repeating characters,

but you really don't know
what's going to happen.

Committee will please come to order.

I understand the secretary
of the army is here

as first witness.

Stevens:
Roy thinks that Dave ought to be a general

and operate from a penthouse
on the Waldorf astoria,

or words to that effect.

Adams: I asked him what would happen
if schine got overseas duty.

-You were breaking the news gently,
Mr. Adams? Adams: Yes, sir. That is right.

I think I observe on colonel Bradley's face
a faint little look of pleasure.

- Do you, sir?
- I would say that colonel... I...

You and David schine

have been what we might call
warm personal friends, have you not?

-He is one of my many good friends, sir,
yes. Jenkins: One of your many good friends.

And in all fairness, Mr. Cohn, isn't it a
fact that he is one of your best friends?

We all have our best friends. There's
no criticism of you on that account.

- No, of course not, sir.
- We have friends whom we love. I do.

There were a lot of snide,
homophobic comments

that were leveled at both cohn and schine
and at McCarthy.

Welch:
Did you think this came from a pixie?

Will counsel, for my benefit, define...
I think he might be an expert on that,

-what a pixie is?
Welch: Yeah. Yes. I should say...

I should say, Mr. Senator, that a
pixie is a close relative of a fairy.

With the word "fairy," the subtext
of the army-McCarthy hearings

is spoken out loud.

But it isn't true that you'd lose your
head now when Dave schine's name

- is mentioned and...
- That is...

That is completely untrue, sir.

Zirin: McCarthy launched a counterattack
by bringing out the fact

that one of Welch's associates had been a
member of an alleged communist organization.

Welch:
Senator, may we not drop this?

Let us not assassinate
this lad further, senator.

McCarthy: Let's...
Welch: You've done enough.

Doherty: Cohn knows that this is the moment
that Joseph Welch is seizing

to finally give the blast at McCarthy
that everybody has been waiting for.

And he starts squirming in his chair.

He sort of tries to gesture
to McCarthy to stop it.

- McCarthy: Let's...
- You've done enough.

Have you no sense of decency, sir?

At long last, have you
left no sense of decency?

That caught the conscience of the country
and ended with McCarthy being discredited.

Indeed, they were both discredited
as a result of Joseph Welch's

"have you no sense of decency?"

The chair declares these hearings adjourned
sine die.

Tru man: Mccarthyism.

I'm not referring to the
senator from Wisconsin.

He's only important in that his name has
taken on a dictionary meaning in the world.

That meaning is the corruption of truth,

the abandonment of our historical devotion
to fair play.

It is the abandonment
of due process of law.

It is the use of a big lie

and the unfounded accusation
against any citizen

in the name of americanism and security.

It is the rise to power of the demagogue
who lives on untruth.

It is the spread of fear and the destruction
of faith in every level of our society.

Auletta: What a demagogue does is throw out
information that they know is salacious,

attention-grabbing and headline-grabbing.

And Roy proved that in the McCarthy period.

Roberts: Roy cohn knew how to take a bad
situation and absolutely make the most of it.

No matter what happens,
no matter how defeated you are,

no matter how deeply you wind
up in the muck, claim victory.

I can't help but feel that Roy cohn
has won a really great victory.

Doherty: His persona as
this slick, maybe a little oily,

but really razor-sharp lawyer
has been carved in stone.

And that's what he's going to be
for the rest of his career.

Newsman: No more shuttling between New York
and Washington for Roy cohn.

The young lawyer, who befriended
private David schine,

has handed in his resignation

as chief counsel to the senate permanent
investigation subcommittee

headed by McCarthy.

The reason?

He insisted that all members of the group
want him to stay on, and this was not so.

As for the future,

cohn says that he will wage a personal fight
against communism wherever he finds it.

New York in the 19503
was a cutthroat place to make money.

Mafia families operated pretty much
as they wanted.

Cops were on the take left and right.

It was unbelievably corrupt at every level,
right up to the very top in business.

For Roy cohn, this was candy land.

I think he was trying to claw his way

to the very top Echelon of American
society, one way or the other.

Part of New York society, at that time...

Was preoccupied with getting the
right table, going to the right place,

being invited to the right function.

The stork club, 21,

Danny's hide-a-way.

Roy always surrounded himself with womanizers
and the gorgeous women who came with them.

But Roy acted as though they weren't there.

They were really decorations.

He became an attorney in private practice.

His partner was Thomas bolan,

who had close ties with the archdiocese
of New York.

Cohn had close ties with cardinal spellman.

Of course, the position of the
church at that time, as it is now,

was staunchly anti-communist.

They needed somebody to bring business
into the firm,

and that was Roy cohn.

He took his cutthroat D.C. tactics and
started applying them in corporate america,

at the expense of everyone in his path.

And he couldn't come
back from Joe McCarthy,

so he just embraced it more.

Announcer:
What you are about to see is top secret.

The first official test of the powerful
new Lionel turbo missile firing car.

Dave: In the 19503, Roy had his eye
on a family business.

His great-uncle was a Lionel,
and he had founded Lionel trains.

It was a thriving company.

Announcer: Remember, boy, you're the boss
of the greatest action cars ever created

when you own Lionel trains.

Dave: Roy, over the course of several months,
acquired about 200,000 shares of stock,

and boom, he took over the company.

It took not more than a few years
until he drove it into the ground.

He was so full of himself,
and he did not care about the family.

But he was known to people as the person
who was in charge of the big company.

For a period of years, the first years I
was with him, we were a powerful law firm.

Roy was very aggressive, very smart.

A very capable lawyer.

Cohen: He prepared at the last minute,
but he had a perfect memory.

Vassallo: We 'd get in the limousine
going down to court, and he'd say,

"now, tell me again, who's the client?"

And he'd get up there like he'd
been immersed in the case for years.

He was just that good at what he did.

Vassallo:
But the big picture was more complicated.

He just didn't play by the rule book,
and you learned that very quickly.

With time, Roy became
more and more powerful,

and more and more ruthless.

He subjected everybody around him
to potential criminal liability.

For example, I was, I think, 25 years old.

I had about $35 in the bank.

And I was made the director
of a bank in Chicago,

as were some of our associates
for other banks.

I remember the first auditor's report,

basically saying, "what happened to
the money? Where's all the money?"

There was always something
of that criminal nature going on.

Auletta: Let me talk to you
about your boat. Cohn: Sure.

Auletta: Okay. The boat sunk off Florida.
Cohn: Okay, it was not my boat.

It was owned by a corporation.

And it was leased part-time by the firm.

Auletta: A crew member's killed on a boat
that many considered yours.

Cohn: So it was not my boat.

When I was a kid, I would
go with my grandmother,

because Roy would have her birthday party
on his yacht,

which was docked in the Hamptons.

It was called defiance.

One year, there was this
mysterious fire on defiance...

Which happened to be insured
for a lot of money.

One of the crew members
was killed in that fire.

Auletta: There were serious questions about
whether Roy had a hand in burning the boat

in order to get the insurance.

Dave:
Was it arson? Was Roy connected?

Auletta: The name of the crew member
was Charles martensen, he was 21,

and his father, who I've talked to...
Um...

In effect... not in effect, just out
and out thinks you murdered his son.

Cohn: He thinks I murdered his son?
Auletta: To get the insurance on the boat.

Cohn:
Well, of course, let's look at it this way.

A, I didn't own the boat.
B, I didn't get the insurance.

C, the statement is an
outrageous falsehood.

Four, how am I gonna get angry
at a man who lost his son?

Uh... couldn't be sorrier for him
and for what happened.

Like a lot of things with Roy,

those questions haunted
that case and that...

The mystery of what happened
to the young man and that boat.

It just got to a point where they
were crazier and crazier and crazier,

culminating in his first indictment.

Cohn: It was a 10-count indictment,
charging me with perjury,

obstruction of justice and with a conspiracy
to commit perjury and to obstruct justice.

It was about a 48-page-long indictment.

Everything bad that happened to Roy
during my years at his firm

was attributed to Robert morgenthau,
who was then the u. S. Attorney.

Cohn viewed all the three
morgenthau indictments as a vendetta.

And it was a very public dispute.

If there's a defendant around who hasn't
been propositioned by Mr. Morgenthau's office

to furnish some kind of information on me
in return for a deal, I haven't met him.

He's the only person I've ever met
who actually enjoyed being indicted,

because it gave him a platform to attack.

A federal grand jury in New York today
indicted Roy cohn

on charges of fraud and conspiracy.

Cohn could be sentenced to 38 years in jail

and fined $55,000 if
convicted on all counts.

I can't imagine the kind of pressure
he was under while this was going on,

but he never showed it.

There was a confidence about him
that was unshakable.

Roberts:
He managed to get out of legal difficulties

in ways that almost no
other lawyer could have.

He was a legal magician.

Cohn:
If Mr. Morgenthau were being honest,

he could have done this at the same time
he did the last indictment 60 days ago.

But if he did it that way, he wouldn't have been
able to get two smear news stories against me,

which is just what he likes to do.

And after this third indictment,

I don't think there are too
many people left around

who don't realize that this all
is Mr. Morgenthau's vendetta.

Roberts: In his own trial involving
the fifth Avenue coach company,

his lawyer had a heart attack.

Roy got up and delivered his own defense.

Seven hours of his own defense
without looking at a note.

Zl ri n:
Cohn kept appealing to patriotism.

He said, "I love the
United States of America,

and I can't believe that most of the people
in this great country

think that I could ever
commit a criminal act."

He's just lying to save his skin.

It had a tremendous impact on the jury.

The foreman of the jury came back the next
day wearing an American flag in his lapel.

And he was acquitted.
I mean, he was really the teflon fraud.

This is just the most relieved
and happy moment of my life.

And the way I feel is

the way I feel every day in my life,
which is god bless america.

Zirin: Roy cohn understood the political
value of wrapping yourself in the flag.

It's not surprising that he would meet with
reporters and say, "god bless america."

He always made very good copy.

Cohn was, in part, powerful
not just because he was a good lawyer

and a killer lawyer.

He was also powerful
because he had press relationships.

And the press was beholden to him
because he was feeding them information.

This gave him a dimension
beyond just being a lawyer.

Roy knew how to shape events
that he was involved in

through his manipulation of the press.

Johnston: Roy cohn had learned his lessons
from the McCarthy era well.

He learned the press will accurately quote
whatever you say.

The headlines and the top of the story,

and a lot of people don't read
beyond the first few paragraphs,

would be your version of events.

Cohn had a coterie of reporters,

sort of the predecessors and precursors
of fox news,

to whom he would leak information.

He would sit back at the dining-room table,
and he would actually dictate copy

for both the New York
post and the daily news.

"Period, paragraph, new paragraph,
comma, exclamation point."

I've never seen anybody do that.

From the very beginning,
he tried to co-opt me.

He would give me
horrible items about people,

and I wouldn't pay any attention.

But he did tell me a
lot of incredible things.

He was consumed with a driving force

to make himself famous,
to be with famous people,

to make himself powerful.

That was where the motives were.

Gary: In 1927, Roy's uncle,

Bernie Marcus, owned
the bank of United States.

The depression comes, and, of course,
many banks had trouble.

Gary:
When the stock market failed,

the bank of United States
was the first big bank to fail.

There was a run on the bank.

The only banks big enough to cover this run

were the Morgan banks
or the rockefeller banks.

But they said something to the effect, "we
don't care about the Jewish bank. Let them go."

Roiphe: There's crowds in the streets,
the bank is closed, the doors are locked.

The immigrants lost all their money.

It was tragic in the Jewish community.
It was tragic for the country.

Dave: My grandfather, Bernie Marcus,
was hauled away to sing sing.

And that was the ultimate disgrace.

The social shame of that to the family
was enormously deep.

Thrown out of every country club,
thrown out of the harmonie club.

There was a lot wrong with the trial
that ended up putting Bernie in prison.

And Roy had said that if he were
Bernie's attorney at the time,

he would have gotten him off,
and probably could have.

Dave: That failure of his uncle Bernie
was a huge part of what motivated Roy.

He had to let people know that although
his uncle had lost it, he had made it.

Cohen:
Roy had a huge standard of living.

Boats, planes, the best table

at the 21 club or the stork club.

And the firm paid,
because they were all business-related.

You know, Roy was never a partner in
the firm. That didn't mean anything to him.

He was Roy cohn. I mean, he's the chief.

Dave: This was the '603 and 703,

when fame was becoming
everything in New York.

And this was part of his need
to have these very wealthy friends.

His need to have a Rolls-Royce
and let everybody know it.

Cohen:
Actually, he had two rolls-royces.

One that was a convertible.
He always wanted the sun.

And to look like he just
came out of Miami beach.

I think it was Aristotle onassis who said,
"you can never be too rich or too tan."

Roy cohn took this to heart.

Cohen: He had a speedboat,
and often during the summer,

he would take a bunch
of us up to 79th street.

Now, the Hudson river was
so polluted in the late '603.

I mean, nobody would go
10 feet near the Hudson river.

And he went waterskiing.

And we went under
the George Washington bridge.

It was perfect Roy cohn.
It was the way he lived, bigger than life.

Vassallo:
Roy took a house in Mexico every year.

And every time I would go there
to meet with Roy,

there'd be a knock on
my door at the office,

and his mother dora would bring me
some jockey shorts and cans of tuna fish.

80 Roy would have
what he liked all the time.

Auletta: His mother took care of him. With
her, it was, "did you eat your breakfast?"

"Don't listen to him. He's
wrong. You're right, Roy."

Bucking him up, always supporting him.

Dave:
He became a little boy around his mother.

I gather he lived in fear of dora
knowing that he was gay.

Now, that's an odd thing,
because he was in his 303 and 403,

but dora chose not to see it.

After his mother died,
things changed very rapidly.

A fellow who drove his car disappeared.

There was a new driver, much more handsome.

And there was a new captain of the yacht,

also much more handsome.

Adams:
Roy was hung up on a specific type.

I was his epitome of looks,
like, you know, the very...

He liked blond-haired, you know,
nordic look, like David schine.

Even the lawyers he would hire...
They were straight,

but they were that type of look.

Roy and the law firm
of saxe, bacon and bolan

moved into an Upper East Side townhouse.

Rosenthal: On east 68th street,

which was an awfully fancy block.

I believe it was between Madison and park.

The idea that it was an office and
a residence was a little unusual.

Cohen:
You'd meet in the living room.

Or you'd meet in his bedroom, which was,

I think, on the fourth
floor of the building.

He'd be in a bathrobe, and he...

That's the way business was conducted.

Auletta:
What I saw were two cohns.

In a suit and tie,
he was Roy cohn, killer lawyer.

At his apartment...

I remember thinking,
this is a different Roy cohn.

He's letting himself be.

My recorder is going, and I said,
"Roy, let me ask you a question."

Many people who I've talked to
have said to me,

"do you know that Roy is a homosexual?"

Long pause.

He didn't answer for seconds.
I mean, maybe five, six seconds.

Cohn:
I... I... I would answer you this way.

Anybody who knows me,
or knows anything about me,

or who knows the way my mind works,

would have an awfully
hard time reconciling, uh...

That with any kind of,
uh, uh, homosexuality.

In other words, every
facet of my personality,

my aggressiveness and my toughness,
and everything along those lines,

is just totally, I suppose,
incompatible with anything like that.

Auletta: But he didn't say he was,
he didn't say he wasn't.

But he squirmed,

which gave me great amount of pleasure.

Because in a way, I was doing to him,

in this personal interview,

what he had done to people
in the McCarthy hearings,

putting them on the spot. "Are you now,
or have you ever been a communist?"

I wanna ask you about this.
To me, the nicest thing...

Let's be affirmative.

The nicest thing that I have
ever heard about Joe McCarthy

was told me by senator flanders of Vermont,

that he was a full-time
homosexual. Is this true?

No. I'm sure you think
that merited a badge of honor,

but it is not true.

Well, I'm getting to you in a minute,
but what about senator McCarthy?

Sure, you... I mean, that's your favorite
topic of conversation, I know that.

- I know... aroused by the obvious.
- By the way... I know.

Zirin:
He was a very hypocritical guy.

He was engaged for a
while to Barbara Walters.

We're getting married when we're both 60.

She and Roy had grown up together,

and she never deserted him.

But she was annoyed by Roy going around

saying he was gonna marry her.

She knew that was absurd.

This is a guy who ostensibly was a multimillionaire,
one of the most powerful people in New York.

There was a little Disney sign
that said "Roy" on it on his bedroom door.

The door opened... I only saw it once,

but the door opened,
and there was a mirror.

I was young. I didn't know that people had
mirrors on the ceilings of their bedrooms.

So there was a mirror there, a huge bed, and
there were just people in and out all daylong.

Safer: Which is also a kind of
recreation room and office and gallery

for his collection of frogs.

Roy had a lot of miniature animals
and stuffed animals

and things that...

In his apartment that
you wouldn't expect...

A killer lawyer to have.

Safer:
He admits to a certain vanity,

religious about doing
his 200 sit-ups every day.

All this while dictating to his
male secretary, Vincent Millard.

Cohn: Did you remember I had a lunch date
with Barbara Walters?

When is that? Cohn: Today.

Every time I had a meal with him,
he didn't order very much,

and sometimes he didn't order.

With his fingers,
he would take food off my plate.

If you're Roy and you're always doing
exercise and you're always staying thin,

and yet you eat off of somebody's plate,
it doesn't count.

It's like everything in his life.

There was this image, and then there
was reality, which totally contradicted it.

Stone:
He had a really bad facelift,

with these enormous gashes,
and stitches on the side of his face.

You'd say, "Roy, did you have surgery?"
And he said, "no, not me.

Why? I feel fine."

So, I mean, he would even deny
that he'd had this surgery

when he should have been home in bed
with ice on it.

He was very vein in that sense.

Dave: There was a strange
contradiction about Roy.

He was totally ugly
and totally charismatic at the same time.

Auletta: A lot of people say they see you
with a lot of good-looking young men.

Cohn: Ilike young people.
There's no question about that.

I like being around young people.
They're more fun.

The people that he had sex with
were not very well-educated,

did not come from good families.

That was a separate part of his life.

Gary: He had to have sex every day.
Every day.

And preferably with someone who was new.

He took a lot of valium.

He 'd get so frustrated
with those childproof bottles.

He'd always... "Can you open this thing?"

And it wasn't, like, one pill. It was,
like, just dump them in there and take them.

In the end of the evening,
I went to take my coat,

and it was, like, stuffed
full of hundred-dollar bills.

Every time I reached into a pocket,
there was several hundred-dollar bills.

Gary: When everyone left,

I would go in and lay down
on the bed with him,

and, like, I'd look up at the mirror,

and he would look up at the mirror,
and we would talk.

I asked him, "so are
you the girl or the boy?"

And he said, "I'm the girl."

Adams: There were rumors that he was picking
up male prostitutes all around the city.

He was really a personality in disarray.

A personality in anarchy.

Which had no rules, it had no scruples,
it had no boundaries.

He was someone who lived on the edge.

And he enjoyed living on the edge,
because it was dangerous.

Roberts: The power politics of New York,
the favor bank,

was very closely linked
to organized crime.

And this was a milieu
in which Roy cohn fit in perfectly.

- Then tell me what direction.
- You got 50 people here...

Zl ri n:
Cohn began to represent mobsters.

He represented
all of the New York families

that controlled la cosa nostra.

Newsman: Galante arrived at the federal
courthouse in a long black limousine

and walked inside, shielded from
photographers by two of his daughters.

Woman: Aah!
Man: Stop it. Please!

News man: Galante is now regarded
by federal authorities

as one of the most
important men in the mafia.

Woman: Come on, daddy, run!
Reporter 1: What are you doing here today?

Turn around and roll, frank.

- Come on, baby. Let's go. Let's go.
- Woman: Stop pushing me!

Reporter 2: Are you Mr. Galante's attorney?
Cohn: Yeah.

- And what is your name, sir?
- Roy cohn.

Federal investigator said Mr. Galante is
the boss of organized crime in this country.

Would that be a correct characterization,
the godfather of the New York mafia?

From my experience, practically everything
they've said is totally incorrect and inaccurate.

- You believe they're not treating your client fairly?
- Pardon me?

No, I just said it's just a total publicity
stunt, or all of you wouldn't be here, right?

What are you doing here today?

Cohn: I'm a lawyer.

He was very clever in protecting
his clients, by far and large,

from long criminal sentences
that would put them out of business.

Sudler: Roy was assigned by the gambino
crime family to represent John gotti.

When gotti and a couple of his guys

walked into a bar

in front of a lot of witnesses and
shot this guy in the head and killed him,

Roy managed to get gotti off.

Instead of 25 to life on a murder,

got him into some degree of manslaughter

and gotti ended up
serving only two years in prison.

Amazing that he did that.

An excellent result for gotti
and a great injustice at the same time.

As a result of that case,
Roy had a perpetual client of the mafia.

Newsman: Tony salerno, recently indicted,
has long been one of Roy cohn's clients.

Tony, you've read the charges
in this indictment.

- Did you do any of those things to anyone?
- All false.

Zirin: Cohn was more an advisor.

He was the guy who whispered in the ear of
the Don and told him what to say, what to do.

He was full of advice.

Cohn: What are you gonna do
when you get to the country?

Well, I mean, I planted peppers last week.
Now I'm gonna plant tomatoes.

Safer: His name is carmine galante,
the late carmine galante,

who the papers said
was the godfather of the mafia.

Cohn: You think that had an influence
on the federal judge,

when he held that you were right
and the parole commission was wrong?

- I think so.
- He thinks a farmer ought to be able to seed.

I think so. I mean, it's very well known
that that's what I do.

Safer: A few months after this meeting, be
was gunned down as he sipped a glass of wine.

Newsman:
Present for the service was Roy cohn,

who had been galante's lawyer through
many of the mobster's legal difficulties.

I pass no moral judgment on Mr. Galante

any more than I pass a moral judgment
on anybody else,

because that's for the almighty to do,
not for me.

Reporter:
Do you have any idea why he was murdered?

As somebody once said a long time ago is,
"all I know is what I read in the papers."

Brenner: The mafia was the entire
power underbelly of the city.

And Roy had all of the
network at his disposal.

Dave: Steinbrenner would be on line one,
and carmine galante would be on line two,

and some mafia boss who had
a cement company would be on line three,

and somebody would be waiting,
Roger stone would be in the anteroom.

And Roy wanted that attention.

He was an only child
whose mother doted on him every second.

And he needed that attention
years after she died.

Vassallo:
There's a story about dora

that gives you a pretty good insight
into Roy's relationship with his mother

and into how Roy operated.

Every Jewish family has its own passover
story, and our story is an unusual one.

I was the youngest child, and as such,
I had to ask the four questions.

Dave: First question was, "why is
this night different from all others?"

And dora finally blurted out...

"Why is this night different?
Because the maid's dead in the kitchen!"

Turns out the housekeeper passed away,
was in the kitchen, dead.

And in order not to
disrupt the passover dinner,

dora saw to it that the housekeeper was
kept in the kitchen under the serving table.

She was embarrassed about how it interrupted the
seder, not the fact that a life had been lost.

Dave:
That's totally Roy's spirit.

His lack of ethics, his lack of empathy.

That came from dora.

For Roy, life was transactional.

It was all about connections
and accruing power.

Auletta: If I said to you,
"Roy cohn, what are your flaws?"

Cohn: What are my flaws?

Okay, I'll tell you what my flaws are.

My flaws are being completely tactless.

I cannot listen to baloney. Impatience.

A total failure to sympathize
with the emotional element in life.

The biggest business in New York then, and
it probably still is now, was real estate.

That's where the real power was.

He represented a number of real-estate
figures, among them Donald Trump.

Johnston: Donald Trump grows up in a household
where his father Fred is deeply mobbed up.

His business partner, Willie tomasello,

is an associate of the gambino
and genovese crime families.

80 Donald comes to Manhattan
to make a name for himself.

He naturally gravitates toward Roy cohn,

the consigliere for the head of the gambino
family and the head of the genovese family.

Short answers or...?

Interviewer: Well, whatever
you'd like. It doesn't matter.

-I'm not as long as archbishop
o'Connor, but... interviewer: No one is.

Mr. Cohn, how did you meet Donald Trump?

I met him at a new
York club called le club.

And we were seated at tables next
to each other. We were introduced.

He was 23 years old
then. He said, "listen."

He said, "I've spent two days
with these establishment law firms

about a case we have."

It was a civil-rights case or something.

"And they were all telling us, give up,
do this, sign a decree and all of that."

He says, "I followed your career,
and you seem...

You're a little bit crazy like I am,
and you stand up to the establishment.

Can I come see you?" And I said, "sure."

Dave: The justice department
was going after Fred trump and Donald Trump

for not letting blacks in their housing.

Rather than making a deal,
rather than admitting guilt,

Roy said to trump, "you need to go
full-bore after the justice department."

Auletta:
Roy cohn was very clear what to do: Attack.

Don't settle. Don't apologize. Attack.

Roy would always be
for an offensive strategy.

Those are the rules of war.

You don't fight on the other guy's ground.
You define what the debate is gonna be about.

I think Donald learned that from Roy.
I learned that from Roy.

Roy cohn began this whole new mode of
what you see today, of get off the issue,

attack law enforcement,
attack the government, attack the press.

Create phony issues
so that you can totally change the debate.

-Here's a little mccarthyism going on
right now. Cohn: He shouldn't disclaim...

I mean, total inability to cope
with any of these current topics.

- He does it with great... with great pre...
- Keep talking, Roy. Keep talking.

- Great precision.
- Keep talking.

- This is known as "filler." You know, what... you...
- Well, I...

You throw your mud, and then the filler goes
on until they've forgotten what the point was.

Zirin: They counterclaimed
against the government for $100 million.

Now, the counterclaim was soon dismissed,

but had the effect
of keeping the opponent off balance.

We fought it, and we did extremely well.

For all practical purposes,
we won the case together.

Auletta: Trump settled,
but that, for him, was a victory,

because he didn't admit
he did anything wrong.

And it's very consistent with Roy's advice.

"Never admit you're
wrong. Never apologize."

Settling is not an apology.

In fact, Donald Trump, when he settles,

he often times will cast the settlement
as a victory, not a defeat.

Ever since that day,

he knows I have the same kind of
crazy fight in me that he has in him,

and he knows that...

He believes you can fight city hall.

I believe you can fight city hall.

And we both fought it together.

Cohn looked at Donald Trump
as something of a protégé.

He saw him as a man

who was governed
by the same sort of situational ethics.

They were cut from the same cloth,
in many respects.

Roy cohn begins teaching Donald,

"here's how you keep law enforcement
off your back.

Don't leave a paper trail.
Don't keep a calendar.

Never do things in writing.

And if somebody gets onto you,
rat out other people."

Steve, you're gonna have to start pushing
these people a bit,

because it's getting ridiculous,
as far as I'm concerned.

So just start pushing
and start pushing as hard as possible.

Cohn taught trump how to
ingratiate yourself with powerful people

and how to manipulate
them for your own ends.

Woman: Roy, just hold on here.

You have to make a very special wish.

Wallace: It was like this funny game he
played that he could bring someone like me,

you know, to these total antigay
republican stronghold of a party, you know?

And no one would say a word.

Auletta: Roy cohn's
friends justified him as a friend.

They knew about the McCarthy years,
the army-McCarthy hearings,

some of the dastardly things
that Roy may have done.

But that was overwhelmed
by their feeling that he was their friend,

and genuine friend, and
they cared about him.

I've tried to give loyalty,

and I've tried to give
friendship, and I find in life,

when you extend friendship
and you extend loyalty, you get it back.

Dave:
He was the one who threw the great parties,

who knew Norman mailer,
who hung out with Andy warhol.

All these people who were larger-than-life
people, they were orbiting Roy.

Epstein: Everybody came, mayors,

governors, police chiefs, firemen,
anybody from the newspaper.

Who didn't go?

Zirin:
And cardinal spellman would come.

Real-estate magnates would come.

Trump would go.

And there he would see
the leading politicians of New York City

who would be very helpful to him
in his business.

Joh nston:
He navigates this world

between the people who hang out
at sardi's and the 21 club,

and this other world
that has these mobsters,

and it creates a sort of glamour.

So cohn is this bridge

between the legitimate world
and the illegitimate world.

Zirin:
Cohn was a legend in his own mind.

If you approach things that way,

pretty soon,
the appearance contributes to the reality.

Everyone knows the most famous legal eagle,
my pal and yours, Roy cohn.

- Good evening, Nikki. How are you?
- I'm fine. How are you?

Well, this is a very exciting occasion.
Here is trump tower.

Marble waterfalls,
the greatest stores in the world.

When something like this
can be created in New York

and take the city by
storm, it's a real event.

Donald Trump wanted
to construct a building,

which is now known as trump tower,
at fifth Avenue

between 56th and 57th street.

Johnston: He got a hold of
the bonwit teller department store,

this prime piece of real estate.

Donald hires, to tear down the building,

a Syracuse window-washing firm
with no experience whatsoever.

And it uses 200 illegal
immigrants from Poland.

And then they don't get paid.

Zirin: Buildings of that sort at the time
were made largely with structural steel,

because to make them out of concrete
was quite costly

and also involved dealing with the mob,

which controlled the
poured-contract industry in New York.

Strangely, trump chose
to make it out of concrete.

Now, why out of concrete?

Because cohn introduced him
to his mafioso clients,

and it was through them
that he was able to make the deal.

Everything about this project was corrupt.

Cohn: Donald Trump is probably one of
the most important names in america today.

What started off as a meteor
mounting from New York and going upward

is gonna touch the rest of this country
and parts...

Good parts of the world.

Donald just wants to be
the biggest winner of all.

Rosenthal: Donald had the money,

and Roy had the balls and the shrewdness,

and also some of the connections

to move trump beyond the world of housing
developments in queens and Brooklyn.

And it was clearly mutually beneficial.

Cohn:
Let me tell you about this.

This is a picture of Donald and me,

in which he says,
"Roy is my greatest friend."

And then there's a letter from him.

He says, "needless to say,
your representation of me

with regard to the trump tower case
was brilliant.

Everyone scoffed at our pursuit

of this difficult victory,
saying it couldn't be done."

Now, here's a typical Donald Trump.
He's gotta come in with a crack at the end.

He says, "the skeptics,
however, were at a disadvantage.

They never saw Roy cohn in action,
especially when he really wants to win."

By the way, this picture hangs in my office

directly next to a picture I treasure
of the president and Mrs. Reagan.

Two of my favorites.

Roy was responsible, according to Roy,

for everything important
that happened in the United States,

whether it's an election of a governor,

an election of a president.

Snyder:
If you had been Attorney General

when Richard Nixon was in office
during the Watergate times,

do you think you could have solved
that problem?

I think Nixon could have solved
the problem, Tom.

Or counseled him on how to solve it.

I think the problem could have been solved
very easily by getting rid of the tapes.

Roy cohn's reach in American politics
is absolutely extraordinary.

He's got Richard Nixon as a connection

because Nixon's rise depended
on the whole anti-communist fervor.

Has connections to Ronald Reagan,

who cooperated with the McCarthy-type
investigations in the early 50's.

Cohn became an important figure
in republican politics.

He was a registered democrat, yet he most
closely identified with the political right.

Stone:
In 1980, Reagan won the election

because Roy cohn arranged
for John Anderson,

who had challenged Reagan
for the republican nomination,

to be the liberal party nominee.

There's a three-way split in New York.

That three-way split
allows Reagan to win the electoral votes

with 45 percent of the vote.

It was a setup, and it worked.

Cohen: I was present in his office
when Nancy Reagan called him

and thanked him
for getting her husband elected.

John Anderson wasn't the only political fix
Roy was responsible for.

He also torpedoed the vice-presidential
campaigns of eagleton in '72...

And ferraro in '84.

Roy was the one who made the link
between organized crime and her husband.

The New York post and the daily news,
as you might imagine, went to town.

Cohn saw himself as a political puppeteer.

He started an evolution.

This would certainly be the beginning

of the infiltration of
the political-right media

into American government.

Stone: Rupert Murdoch
and the New York post endorsement

is something that Roy cohn
works on every day for eight months,

mostly by giving Rupert Murdoch himself
a window into Reagan's campaign.

Zirin: It's not surprising that he could be
with Ronald Reagan and Rupert Murdoch,

who developed fox news, in the oval office,

as though he engineered
the entire relationship.

You can see what cohn set into motion,

winding up with the type of
political environment we have today.

Epstein: I can't think of anything else
like him in American history or anywhere.

People should have ignored him
and put him in jail.

And here he is flying around in his own
plane to go have dinner at the white house.

Go figure that out.

I think the Reagan anticrime program
is gonna take the emphasis off

certain types of white-collar crimes,
minor things...

That's good for you.

Minor things and all that,

and put it on where the
real root of the problem is,

violent crimes,
so that the people of this country

are once again in control
instead of the criminals.

- Are you running for any office?
- Cohn: No.

Have you been called
by the government of France

to restore the guillotine
and conduct a campaign there?

No, but I'll tell you, I'd like to restore
capital punishment in the United States

so that when people
are gonna kill a policeman

or people are gonna mug and kill an
old person, they're gonna think twice.

He did whatever he wanted.

And he felt he was good enough
at everything to get away with it,

and he did for a very, very long time.

Roy cohn has managed to stay out of jail
all these years,

and I admire him for that,
and I'd like to have him for my lawyer.

Roy famously argued that all of
the expenses of his law firm were...

You know, were deductible.

The IRS did not see it this way.

Roy told me that the whole point
of dealing with the IRS

was to die owing them
as much as humanly possible.

The United States government
filed a lawsuit against Roy cohn

for failing to pay nearly
$7 million in back taxes.

Wallace: You are a tax avoider.

No, I'm not. I'm a tax avoider?
We're all tax avoiders.

- The president's a tax avoider. Everybody's...
- You're more successful at it than some of us.

Don't blame me for your inadequacy.

Here was a guy who
was so evidently crooked,

he was so evidently dishonest,

yet nobody was doing anything about it.

There were serious disciplinary complaints,

and they were sitting at the bottom
of the desk drawer for years.

Auletta: Last question today.

A fair number of people say
Roy cohn is amoral.

He will use anything to
win, do anything to win.

Employ any trick, any subterfuge, etcetera.

Cohn: I'd say that has to come, probably,
from people who have lost to me.

Because I... auletta: But here...

Auletta: No, wait a minute. Let's
stop right there. Cohn: Yeah, sure.

He was eventually disbarred
for stealing from his own clients

and trying to defraud his own clients.

Ultimately, we disbarred him
on the basis of four cases.

Sec brings a case
against the pied Piper yacht company.

Almost all the money from the company
has managed not to go to the creditors,

but they've gone to Roy
cohn and his partners.

Second, he stole from his client
by promising to pay her back

when he had no intention of paying
her back, and then lying about it.

And third, he tried to deceive a dying,
incompetent man

to making him the executor of his will.

Cohen: One of Roy cohn's major clients
was schenley,

a distributor of liquors and wines.

And lew rosenstiel, its chairman,
was a personal friend of Roy's.

Among the charges brought against Roy

were the fact that he had documents
executed in a hospital room

when Mr. Rosenstiel was not capable
of knowing what he was doing.

My dad had a stroke,
and he was in a hospital in Miami.

These two people
appeared at the hospital...

One of whom was wheeling the bed around
and fixing the covers.

It was then made clear to
me that it was Roy cohn,

and that Roy was having my father
sign some papers

awarding himself as trustee
of my father's estate.

Newsman: The squibbly and scrawling signature
at the bottom of the last will and testament

of multimillionaire Lewis rosenstiel

purports to be
that of the late Miami philanthropist,

designating attorney Roy cohn,

rosenstiel's granddaughter
Kathy finkelstein,

and her husband James
as trustees of a $50 million estate.

Other members of the rosenstiel family
are contesting the will's authenticity.

His signature was illegible.

Scrolly sort of x,
and a little wandering down off the line.

There's no image on that line that looks
anything like any letter of the alphabet.

Kabler:
I mean, it was ridiculous.

Man: You were cited as dressing up as a male nurse
and getting a fraudulent codicil signed to the will.

- What's interested in it... what's more interest...
- What I thought was amazing was the judge said...

Hey, mister, what's more interesting,

interesting to me, is
how somebody like you,

who's aspiring
to be one of the leaders of the future,

could have your facts so screwed up.

I was no... never any insinuation

that I could have dressed up as
a male nurse or anything like that.

And the charge you are referring to was
thrown out by the bar association in New York.

Why'd you appeal the case, Mr. Cohn?

Why do I have to appeal when I win?

- Did you win, Mr. Cohn? I thought you lost.
- Yes, well, maybe you...

You would've been disbarred
as a member of the Florida bar.

Oh, jeez.

London: He was a liar.

There are a year and
a half worth of hearings

in which he challenges everything
and tells the same lies all over again.

He makes the matter worse

and makes an application to the d. C. Bar
where he lied under oath.

He tells lies about the rosenstiel codicil.

He tells lies about the schlesinger.

He just tells the same lies
over and over and over again.

If you see a pattern
there, you're not foolish.

And if you have no conscience about...

Or shame about whether you're telling
an untruth or you're using hyperbole,

you get away with it.

Roberts:
When he was about to be disbarred,

it was no surprise
who shows up as character witnesses

for Roy cohn,

but Barbara Walters,

William f. Buckley Jr.,

Donald Trump.

The same people who he had cultivated and
who, in effect, had used him over decades.

Lo n do n:
Thirty-seven witnesses testified.

You know what they all said under oath?

"Roy cohn has an excellent reputation
in the community for integrity."

And they said that with a straight face
after taking an oath?

Man, that's power.

Wallace: Here's what the disciplinary
committee of the bar says about you.

Quote, "a total absence of moral character
and professional fitness.

A cruel public use of your illness.

Pleading for clemency for a dying lawyer
and showing up in court the next day."

They couldn't say it about me, because I never
cited my illness as a reason for anything.

Anyone who knows me knows I don't plead,
and I'm not pleading in this case.

I don't like any of them.
I've called them a bunch of yoyos.

And there might be other lawyers

who have a guilty conscience
or feel they have to crawl.

But I don't have a guilty conscience,

and I'm not gonna crawl before this
committee or any committee like it.

He wouldn't plead to anything.

Roy cohn went out and
hired excellent lawyers.

But we had him. He
wasn't getting out of this.

He was a pinned moth.

Roy gave a private dinner for his
closest friends and relatives every year.

And the one I was invited to
took place after he had been disbarred.

And when I got there,
this long table was set, and nobody came.

He had a lot of friends until he was disbarred,
and then he had no friends. They all ran away.

Man: I wanna know why he's objecting
to the way people are treating him now.

Why don't he remember what he did,
not only with McCarthy,

but with fifth Avenue bus lines, Lionel trains,
and is be proud of his record as an attorney?

I 'ii hang up.

- King: Okay.
- Okay, the answer is yes.

I am proud of my record.

When you would try to get him
to talk about Joe McCarthy

or the army-McCarthy trials
or that whole period,

j. Edgar hoover,
you couldn't get much out of him.

On the rosenbergs,
I asked him how he felt about it.

I told him I'd read the case,
and he said, and I quote,

"if I could've pulled the switch,
I'd have done it myself."

That doesn't sound like remorse.

I think Roy was a hardliner to the end.

You feel pretty good.

-I feel great. —why?

I mean, you were at death's door,
six months ago, three months ago?

They found I had liver cancer
and they found that...

Which spreads in strange directions.

- Tell me... I'm in total remission.
- Are you in remission?

When I talk to friends and tell them
that I am doing a profile of Roy cohn,

they say, "ask him this, please."

And I'm sure you know
what they tell me to ask you.

- Do you have aids?
- Oh, no.

That's easy to answer.

Dave: Peter Fraser, his companion,
helped him everywhere.

Roy was forgetting things left and right,
which never had happened before.

And he looked at me with these pale
blue eyes and these hooded kind of eyes,

and quivering, and he said...

I said, "they say you have aids."

And he said, "who is they, and
what do they know about me?"

Even at the end,
he refused to admit that he was gay,

and he refused to admit that he had aids.

It was almost hard for me to believe
because of the man I had grown to know.

Gary: It was a mistake for Roy
to deny that he had aids.

It was a mistake to deny
that he was a homosexual.

If he had come out and said,
"look, I'm homosexual. I have aids.

We need to do something,
not just for me, but for the community,"

he would have been a hero.

Instead, he was a hypocrite.

And at the same time, he took advantage of
his connections to get special treatment.

The Reagan white house actually got him
into the national institutes of health

to do an experimental treatment
that nobody could get into.

So here was President Reagan
and all the people around him

basically denying there
was an aids epidemic,

and yet Roy was flying down there

and going there a lot
for this experimental treatment.

Smith: And he acted like
he was there on a mistake.

He didn't really have aids.

You know, he never gave up on his own myth.

Are you gonna win this one too?

You're darn right I am, Larry.

Thanks for being with us, Roy.

I enjoyed it, and I hope not so much
time goes until I'm with you again.

Roy was incredibly loyal to friends.

And he was intensely loyal to Donald Trump.

Trump took his legal business to
somebody else when Roy had aids.

He stopped seeing Roy and calling Roy
and hanging out with Roy.

You know, of course, why people ask
about aids and Roy cohn?

- Sure. Of course. Of course.
- Because they believe that you're a homosexual.

And that you simply have never
acknowledged the fact.

And a good friend of mine,
and a good friend of yours, I should say...

Tell him, if he wants to admit anything,
he can, but it's a lie.

No, a good friend of mine who is a woman

says that she believes that Roy cohn wants
to, in effect, come out of the closet.

"Come out of the closet" meaning,
make a very dramatic statement about...

Yeah, just acknowledge it. There's
certainly nothing horrible about it.

Mike, we've been here, we've been doing
a very intensive 20 minutes or more on me.

Um... I think you can see me.

I think you can see, and the audience can, I ain't
dying from nothing, to start with, number one.

- Right. Right.
- Number two, you asked me categorically.

And I tell you categorically,
I do not have aids.

- Where do all these stories come from?
- It's a cinch, Mike.

Take this set of facts.

Bachelor, unmarried, middle-aged.

Well, young middle-aged, and, um... uh...

Then all the stories go back
to the mccarthy/schine days.

Schine was a bachelor too.

- We were both bachelors.
- Wallace: So was McCarthy.

Cohn:
Right, and so was McCarthy.

Stone:
At that point, his phone calls are erratic.

They don't make much sense.

He tires very, very easily.

Gary: I called the hospital.

I asked for his room,
and Tom bolan answered the phone.

And I said, "Tom, I wanna see Roy."

And Tom said, "don't come. It's too late.

He won't recognize you." He said he's...

And then I realized
I had missed my chance to say goodbye.

Wallace: If you had a
chance to write your epitaph...

How would you like to be remembered?

I guess I would like to be
remembered most... look, I...

We know what my epitaph is gonna be
in all the papers.

What's it gonna be?

It's gonna be
"Roy cohn dies, was McCarthy chief aide."

No matter what I do, good or bad,
for the rest of the years of my life,

that's what it's going to be.

My mother told me that she found a list
of Roy's career path.

It started out as prosecutor,
which he was right out of law school.

And then a series of political positions,
ending up with governor of New York.

He never reached
the kind of public-policy power

that he had envisioned himself as having.

But it's undeniable
that his impact on politics lives on.

Roiphe: Roy was an evil...

Produced by certain parts
of the American culture.

There always is the possibility of another
person who cares not about our traditions

or our laws or our protections

who can come in and wreck it,

and wreck it for the weakest among us
and the most vulnerable.

Zirin: Power in the hands of someone
who is that reckless

and that arrogant is a
very dangerous thing.