Original subtitles

This is my grandfather, Julius Rosenberg,

and this is Julius and Ethel Rosenberg together.

My father and my uncle

were around ten and six

when they were electrocuted.

They were accused of stealing the Atom Bomb Secret.

I want to ask my dad how people started thinking

about why Ethel and Julius stole the Atom Bomb Secret.

Why he accused 'em?

What happened was that the government of the United States

wanted to make your Grandma and Grandpa

make up some lies about a lot of people,

so that these people, who the government of the US didn't like,

would all get put in jail.

But they refused to tell those lies. If they did, other people would be killed.

What I want to do, is I want to say, to the people who killed my parents,

25 years ago you killed two people but you did not crush our struggle.

We are still here and we are still struggling.

And we are united in the statement that it will never happen again.

Roy Cohn, when he was virtually just a teenager,

sent Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair.

You've had 30 years, 30 years since the Rosenbergs were executed.

Have you spent one of those nights sleepless,

for sending this couple to the chair?

Of course not Barry. This couple was convicted by a jury

and if ever the death penalty were appropriate, it was in that case.

Is there a police officer?

What can I say? That I haven't been discreet?

I never claimed to be discreet.

Ernie get out.

Ernie, c'mon!

I claim to be upfront and totally candid,

and I claim not to be a hypocrite.

We believe that the free world is gonna win the Cold War

and win this fight by one thing: the truth.

I'm a guy who's taken tough positions,

starting with the Rosenberg case, starting with the McCarthy period.

I don't see the difference between Nazism and Hitler on the one hand

and communism on the other hand.

What I do, I do on the basis of moral judgments as I make them,

as only I must make them, according to my own conscience.

I reserve the right to make judgments about myself and other people,

and have other people make them about me.

If someone wants to be my detractor, that is that person's privilege.

I just don't care.

And I'll show them what the national interest is,

I'll hold up the army to ridicule.

-I said that? -According to a book I read.

Read another book.

I found out one thing in life:

don't ever threaten unless you intend to follow through.

Everything I do has to be true.

I will not say anything that I cannot repeat under oath.

In 1980, I went to Playboy Magazine

and I said I'd like to do an interview of Roy Cohn for the magazine.

Testing...

Roy Cohn, Peter Manso.

Actually why don't we do this, why don't we just break here?

-Have we covered a lot of... -We're getting there.

I simply called Roy at his law firm, Saxe, Bacon, & Bolan in New York,

left a message, and five minutes later the phone rang and it was Roy.

'Sounds interesting, when do you want to get together to talk about it? '

We started taping at his place in North Greenwich,

an hour or so north of New York.

Go ahead.

So presumably your clients, the wealthy, social register types,

have come to you over the years

because you have gained a reputation for winning.

Does all of this go back to what you learned from McCarthy,

the so-called 'Achilles heel' technique?

I wouldn't say it's what I learned from McCarthy.

I think it's what I started learning during the Rosenberg Trial,

what I learned in the US district attorney's office,

when I made up my mind that law is an adversary profession.

One side wins, one side loses. I don't like to lose, I hate to lose.

So I made up my mind

that I was going to everything I could, in the way of careful preparation...

In the way of tough fighting, to be a winner.

It became clear to me right away that my stereotyping of Roy was inadequate.

To call him evil-it's true.

But, it doesn't explain a hundred other things about Roy Cohn.

He was bright, he was contentious,

but I think what appealed to me most about Roy

is that he was a lawless mad man.

I would say I'm probably more of a maverick.

I do have a crazy list of clients.

The usual reaction isn't 'Roy Cohn represents the Mob. '

It's 'Roy Cohn and Studio 54. Roy Cohn and anti-communism.

Roy Cohn and the archdiocese.

Roy Cohn, the friend of... The lawyer for Donald Trump.

Good friend of George Steinbrenner who owns the New York Yankees.

Roy Cohn, the friend of Congressmen, Senators, Judges. '

Someone had passed America's atomic bomb secrets to Russia.

This was an undisputed fact that the whole world knew.

The government had laid the crime at the doorstep of two New Yorkers:

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

My parents both grew up during the Great Depression.

The communists were the ones who were fighting

for the rights of tenants and of workers,

and so they were naturally drawn to it.

In World War II, given the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union,

Communism was allied with Americanism.

It became a natural thing

to politically support the survival of the Soviet Union.

My father made a big deal at the trial that he liked the Soviet Union,

because it had torn the guts out of the Hitler beast

that killed 6 million of my fellow Jews.

When my children were young,

they learned that Judge Kauffman sentenced their grandparents to death.

David Greenglass, my mother's brother, who was a machinist at Los Alamos,

claimed that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

recruited him to be a spy for the Soviet Union.

And that's where Roy Cohn enters the scene.

He coached David Greenglass to develop his testimony,

examined David Greenglass at the trial.

The two of them together were the reason my parents were convicted

and the reason they were executed.

Think back when you were a kid.

-Were you aware of Roy Cohn? -No.

In 1955, I read The Judgment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg by John Wexley.

And there was the reference to Roy Cohn,

and I'd already heard about him because of McCarthy.

-And how old were you? -1955: I was twelve.

That's quite a book to read when you're twelve.

I didn't understand it much. But the name Roy Cohn stuck in my mind

'cause I'd seen the stuff on TV about McCarthy.

I knew that McCarthy was a bad man, not that I knew any of the details.

I had graduated from college and law school,

and gotten both degrees in three years and four months.

I went to the US attorney's office... I was a kid. I was not yet twenty.

I prosecuted internal security cases, counterfeiting, narcotics,

and I had a minor name because of that.

I examined David Greenglass,

I was then a big fat 23 years old, and I sort of put the case together.

I think that the death sentence, imposed by Judge Irving R. Kauffman

in the Atom Spy Trial, had a very strong deterrent effect.

It's been a very good year on the anticommunist front in this country.

He was known as the guy who got the conviction

and execution of the Rosenbergs,

and I think he saw this as a stepping stone to glory and it worked.

1953, Washington, D. C.

I became Chief Counsel for the Senate Investigating Committee,

when Senator McCarthy became chairman.

Government agencies had covered up security risks

and have left people in sensitive positions.

Our job is to show cover ups.

He had to always be the tough guy in the room.

He had to be the one who was the most macho.

Hw to do it in the 50s: you went after communists.

I don't think you understood. The question was, do you know him?

Can you look at the picture and tell us whether you know him?

Can you answer the simple question of whether he's a communist...

Your statements about him have made it difficult for me...

I want to put on the record the fact that I want...

McCarthy didn't know anything about communists, really.

But Roy found, by being on his shoulder,

by pushing, pushing him, he was a mover and shaker.

He didn't want to be in McCarthy's seat, be in the center,

but he wanted to be the guy behind the powerbrokers.

The last way to be politically ambitious as a Jewish, New York Democrat,

which I was and am, is by becoming counsel for Senator McCarthy,

so I was hardly down there for any political ambition.

I was down there to do more in this type of work,

in which I believed then and which I believe now.

Roy was a hero to many who had seen Communism up close,

as was the case of myself.

For me, Communism was far worse than any, anything I'd ever seen.

I could imagine the worst thing you could be was a Communist,

because you were a danger to our way of life, to our way of thinking.

And Roy was brought up in that climate.

I imagine this guy coming of age during World War II.

And the terror of what would happen when we ceased

to be the only country in the world that had nuclear weapons.

The Communist Party is not a political party.

It's a criminal conspiracy.

Its object is the overthrow of the government of the United States

by force and violence.

As soon as the right time arrives.

They're traitors to America.

Why don't we do something about it?

They are enemies, they are not Americans...

They're homosexuals, they're communists!

They're communists!

The two groups that were initially tagged with the 'red taint'

more than any other groups in this country were homosexuals and Jews.

There's another group about which I hesitate to talk,

but I think the picture isn't complete unless we do.

Some of them have that unusual affliction

because of no fault of their own, most because they're morally weak.

The pervert is easy prey to the blackmailer.

It follows that if blackmailers can exhort money from these individuals,

espionage agents can use the same type of pressure.

They're dangerous to this country.

We know that communists writing about the United States

are not giving the true picture.

And that is why we don't believe that Amerika Haus,

which is supposed to give a true picture of life in the United States,

should contain books written by communists,

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.

The McCarthy Committee was now charging that State Libraries overseas

contain subversive volumes.

Cohn, and his friend G. David Schine,

the young Harvard graduate and heir to the Schine Hotel fortune,

were dispatched on a tour of our libraries overseas.

We suddenly became the enemy of McCarthy and his cohorts.

They said, 'Do you have The Maltese Falcon?'

I said, 'Yes, they're right over here in the library'

and Cohn turned and says,

'Nothing but Communist books here in the library.'

They didn't really succeed very much on this particular junket.

But they became notorious.

They were two kids,

that were encouraged by McCarthy and others to go make this global trip.

The people who encouraged them

were adults who didn't realize how bad it was gonna look.

There are stories that I had heard of them sort of chasing each other

through the Ritz in Paris in their towels.

After Cohn and Schine came back from Europe, Schine got drafted.

He was just a G.I., just a buck private.

Roy used his position with McCarthy

and tried to get the army to give Schine favorite treatment.

1954 Army-McCarthy Hearings

Senator McCarthy said:

'Roy thinks that Dave ought to be a general

and operate from a penthouse of Waldorf-Astoria,'

or words to that effect.

I asked him, 'what would happen if Schine got overseas duty? '

He responded with vigor and force: 'we'll wreck the army!'

I never knew what hung on Schine's wall, sir.

You knew what hung on Schine's wall when that was handed to you!

Did you think this came from a pixie?

Counsel, for my benefit, define,

and I think he might be an expert on that what a pixie is.

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

Roy Cohn risked being exposed on national television

as a pixie, the close relationship to a fairy

He went after the U. S. armed forces

because he wanted his boyfriend back.

And he dragged poor, drunk, stupid McCarthy along with him

into this debacle for the two of them.

Final vote condemns M'Carthy for abusing Sente and Committee.

Cohn resigns M'Carthy post.

Everybody thought he was finished after that.

This little snot-nosed, 26-year-old who was grilling people.

They thought he was just going to be some has-been

and everybody was going to dance on his grave.

And you know, from the ashes he rose.

By the time you returned to New York after leaving McCarthy in 54',

there was quite a lucrative law practice waiting.

I suppose through my derivative friendship with my father's friends,

who have known him in the course of his quarter of a century on the bench,

that brought me together with the top Democratic leadership in New York.

And from there on I steadily worked my way up.

There's always the one event, that one party,

where some people want to be and they want to be seen there.

The limousines came to the back door of Studio 54 tonight.

Roy was celebrating his birthday at a black tie affair

for over 200 of his close friends, thrown by close friend Steve Rubell.

Some of Cohn's friends included former Mayor Abe Beame,

Deputy Mayor Herman Badillo,

and Brooklyn democratic leader Meade Esposito.

I was here for his last year's birthday party,

and it was really fun so I had to come again.

Why does Joey Adams come to say happy birthday to Roy Cohn?

Roy is my buddy for a long time and I don't need him.

I'm not getting a divorce, I'm not a member of the mafia,

I don't sniff coke, I don't need him and yet he's my friend.

They know I'll be there, and I always know that they'll be there

so the people here tonight aren't a question of who did what for whom,

it's a question of who's meant what to whom over a long period of time.

That's him in his Greenwich house

Being his usual notorious, pernicious self.

Yes indeed.

A lot of people have family members they don't want to talk about.

-But he was a personification of evil. -Absolutely.

-Every family has its Roy Cohn. -I hope not.

The world would be a terrible place if that happened.

I grew up in a family where our family activity

was to march against the Vietnam War.

So I was very conscious of the fact that my parents,

were very upset about the Rosenbergs, about McCarthy,

all these things that Roy was intricately involved in.

But I was a budding journalist and I paid attention to him.

Roy was the outer borough kid,

for an only child who grew up in the Bronx.

Roy's mother was Dora Marcus, who married Al Cohn who became a judge.

His dad was a very powerful Democrat in the Bronx

who mingled with Democrats all the time.

And yet Roy somehow morphed into a Republican,

somehow morphed into arch-conservative.

I think Roy grew up with this notion he had to do better than his father.

He had to be more important, more impressive, more in the news.

And then he had to live with the specter of his Uncle Bernie,

who was involved in a savings and loan problem,

going to Sing Sing.

He always talked about going to see Uncle Bernie in Sing Sing.

And that was a scarring, scary memory for him.

I can't help thinking that he then sent my grandparents to Sing Sing.

I'm sitting here, talking to you about my cousin

who sent your grandparents to Sing Sing

after watching my grandfather go to Sing Sing... and be ruined.

Roy's lesson was... That's never going to happen to me.

I'm never going to be the victim.'

AIDS Quilt Memorial

Do you remember when we went to DC and went to see the AIDs quilt?

Yes. We walk in from a particular location,

and right in front of us, the first quilt we see is Roy Cohn.

-It was crazy. -It really was.

Thousands of panels and probably, you know, I mean,

any number of ways we could have come on to the Mall.

-Absolutely. -We couldn't believe it.

And what's interesting about that is, if we had come some ways else,

we might not have even known he had a panel.

It was like a 'holy shit' moment.

It's almost like God wanted us to find Roy Cohn's panel

to remind us that we were still in the middle of this unbelievable battle.

I see, the universe, Joe,

as a kind of sandstorm in outer space,

with winds of mega hurricane velocity.

But instead of grains of sand, it's shards and splinters of glass.

I think that the character of Roy Cohn jumped out at me

because he was not only Jewish, like me, but also gay like me.

He also seemed to be one of the worst human beings that had ever lived.

You think I'm the only lawyer in history ever missed a court date?

Don't make such a big fucking hold, you hag!

Most people, when they think of Roy Cohn,

think of the character in the play.

And it's only now that people really are more aware

of the real person, Roy Cohn.

I think Mr. Vidal has lapsed into an uncharacteristic modesty

and I don't think he should; he's very articulate.

On talk shows, he's nerdy, creepy, but very sort of lawyerly, polite.

Everyone is Mr. and Mrs.

But in private, I think he was very different.

I first met Roy as everybody did in those days in El Morocco. In '56.

And he of course was famous by then.

El Morocco was the chicest and most exclusive nightclub of the time.

It was the kind of place where only very high society went,

plus some loose characters

who were welcome because it gave sort of some spice to the place.

And that's where Roy made all his contacts.

He would come in with those hooded lids, looking so ominous.

He was like Dracula coming out of his box at midnight.

What came out of the McCarthy period, even its disasters,

was the feeling that I was different from most other lawyers.

People didn't perceive me as a typical bill-by-the-hour,

do-nothing shyster, but as someone who could be trusted.

When people call Roy Cohn to solicit his services,

what are they buying?

I think a principal thing they're buying is scare value.

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.

People hired Roy because Roy was without conscience,

and Roy would get them a victory because he knew no rules.

He would do whatever he needed to win.

It has been mentioned in the media that you have represented

or continue to represent the world's richest men.

Okay. There's a prominent New York real estate tycoon,

very young man who's made it.

He started off with a few million dollars that his father had made.

Maybe 10 million, 20 million.

-Can we identify him? -Donald Trump.

Is it fair to say that he's the most powerful real estate guy in New York?

I think it is.

His currency was money, but he was a boy from Queens.

And he was a sheltered boy from Queens.

He didn't have any access to the big city,

so at first, Roy brought him into New York.

I met him at a supper club, which I rarely go to.

I have so much work to do during the day,

and I guess the same can be said of Donald.

He hates anything social,

and he really doesn't like anything political very much either.

One night at Le Club, we were seated at tables next to each other.

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

about a case we have.' It was a civil rights case.

'I've followed your career and you seem a little bit crazy like I am,

and you stand up to the establishment. Can I come see ya?'

This was a lawsuit against numerous landlords in New York

and I didn't like it because it wasn't true.

We'd never discriminate, we don't believe in it.

I thought I should fight and other landlords didn't.

Trump was delighted by Roy's attorney's response

to this suit against the two Trumps.

And that was to countersue the U.S. Justice department.

Roy called them Nazis. Roy called them the Ku Klux Klan.

But the whole point was to resist. To throw it back at 'em.

And Trump fell in love with that: never admit that you're wrong.

And, the suit was settled.

You serve a complaint, start an action, and then there's a settlement.

Roy settled 65-75% of all his cases out of court.

He used his influence with magazines,

newspapers and individual journalists to get people to settle lawsuits.

The fear of publicity

can be a very important factor in inducing a settlement.

And we'd all be crazy if we didn't acknowledge that as a fact.

Roy grew to understand he could use me

when I joined the New York Post.

There were stories he was doing, and it would've served him

if I would take care of the people he didn't like.

-How did he pull that off? -By asking me.

And I did it, because he was my friend. So it's loyalty.

A good part of my life legally and extra legally,

consists of having friends in all walks of life.

The way I met Rupert Murdoch, when they wanted a front page interview

with Carmine Galante, the Godfather.

I never heard of a Godfather giving a newspaper interview before.

The metropolitan editor to The Post called me and he said

'We really want this interview,' and the boss says:

'He's read about you. If you put your mind to something you can get it done.'

-Did you do it? -Yes.

He wanted to make himself this indispensable power broker.

Sort of like the original fixer.

There was no clear boundary

between his personal life and his professional life.

It all kind of overflowed.

The townhouse was this combination of residence and place of business.

Upstairs there were floors of offices.

Second and third floors were his apartment.

And then, way up top was the roof deck.

He would sit up there with his shirt off

and he would even receive clients while he was doing this.

I assume that this law firm had been in existence for many years,

but his name was not on the masthead.

And my understanding is that he had divested himself of all his assets

so that he could not be sued; everything was owned by the firm.

It's true? That you personally own nothing at all?

One hundred percent true.

Reason number one, obviously, is my dispute with Internal Revenue.

I made up my mind I was not going to have bank accounts.

I carry cash, I also have no credit cards.

You live very very well.

You have jets, limousines, yachts at your disposal.

I have very rich friends and clients who have confidence in me.

I can name you ten right now. I could call up and say

'Look, I hate to trouble you, but I'm having a few problems.

Would it be convenient for you to loan me a large amount of money?'

The answer would be, instantly, 'Yes. '

Roy Cohn manages to spend I guess a half a million dollars a year

as expenses without paying a penny of tax on it.

When we talk expenses, now that isn't so.

First of all, I have paid an astronomical amount of taxes.

I very frankly don't want to earn any more than I have to earn,

because I don't like the way this country punishes the workers,

the middle class, the blue collar people,

the white collar people; I think it's lousy.

Roy Cohn wanted to die owing the IRS millions.

He never paid his bills.

Here we have a bill from a lease for a 1983 Porsche Cabriolet.

This vehicle was repossessed on 4/30/84

for reason of 3 months delinquency.' In Roy's handwriting,

'Lillian,' one of the women who worked at Saxe, Bacon, Bolan,

'please try to close it out with no payment. '

The Four Seasons Clift Hotel in San Francisco,

Roy's handwriting, 'not necessary to pay.'

Unpaid laundry bill of $1,598.21.

The 21 Club, ten and a half grand.

Sheridan Hotel, 1,100 bucks in Hawaii.

Did any of these establishments really go after him?

There were suits against him, but did they collect?

Roy wanted to have some Indonesian and Ming artifacts.

I have a dealer here.

So, Joey said, 'Let's take Roy,'

and I said, 'No not good because Roy doesn't pay his bills.'

Roy wanted to go anyway and he went and he picked out three items.

It was about $70,000.

Six months went by, he hadn't paid.

Finally, the dealer came up to me and he says,

'Your friend, he don't pay nothing.'

And I said, 'Not to worry.'

I brought my car down there, and I went and knocked on the door.

Elvira was his longtime housekeeper,

and she knew me for years and years and years,

and I said 'I came to collect something.'

She says 'Go ahead, take whatever you want.'

So I went in with my driver and we took out the 3 pieces of art,

put them in the car, brought them back to the dealer.

That night he took me to dinner, he never mentioned it,

he never brought it up, ever.

As we walked out, he said to the maître d,

'The check is in the mail. '

I had been very active in judicial reform politics.

So, in 1979 I decided that we needed a task force on Roy Cohn.

A lot of people knew that what Roy Cohn had

was enormous power with the media.

And we were trying to create a counterweight, essentially,

and also document what was really going on with Roy Cohn.

Roy Cohn was a hidden investor in a series of businesses

that dealt with all cash primarily.

Among them was parking lots.

His cash cow was city owned parking lots by the water

and he controlled the companies that had the parking lots

that were city owned and it was an enormous amount of money.

The guy who leased those parking lots to him, Rick Mazzeo,

wound up under federal investigation

and they found his body in the trunk of a car,

and all he did was give parking lots to Roy Cohn.

That's what he did for a living.

Roy Cohn was one of the most evil presences,

and I mean evil presences,

in our society during most of my adult life.

He was not just a lawyer for the mob,

he was an active participant.

There were times where I'd be farmed out to pick up something or other.

One time I went to Philadelphia to some federal penitentiary

to pick up parole papers for whoever the Godfather was.

There were trips over to New Jersey for various client matters.

It sounds almost like you're a gangster now.

Is this what drew such, alleged, let me, let me put it this way,

Godfathers, Galante, Genovese, 'Fat Tony' Salerno...

Let's eliminate Tony Salerno right away.

Tony is a, is a good guy. Tony is a gambler.

He's filed income taxes, paid heavy income taxes for over 40 years.

I like him better than a lot of my other clients.

I know that I can take his word.

I know he has guts.

I found him to be a warm, decent human being

in his treatment of other people who needed help.

What are the charges against your client Anthony 'Fat Tony' Solerno?

This indictment says that they supervise gambling, prostitution...

They talk about a cement company and labor piece,

and that's really about all.

If there's substance to this, I just don't see it.

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

did you do any of those things, any one?

All false.

In 1981 there was a strike of cement workers.

No ready mix concrete project in Manhattan

was allowed to receive concrete by the Union.

Only Trump Tower got their ready mix concrete.

Trump Tower when it was completed was the tallest concrete structure,

all concrete structure in the US; no steel in the building.

Donald made that choice at a time when the mob

completely controlled the concrete industry in New York.

Trump tower and Trump Plaza, his co-op project,

they were built by 'Fat Tony' Salerno's company.

Donald met in Roy Cohn's office with 'Fat Tony' Salerno

during the very time period that they were in construction.

Through Cohn, Trump received access

to the worst organized crime figures on the New York crime scene.

Open up the files! No to the FBI!

Open up the files! No to the FBI!

After we were adopted, we had extraordinarily normal lives.

Went to high school, went to college, got married, had kids.

Very few people that we knew

knew that we were the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

It wasn't until 1973 Robby and I made a decision

to come out publicly and reclaim our parents.

Michael and Robert Rosenberg, age ten and six,

paid a final visit to their parents at Sing Sing.

25 years later, they and their supporters

are still fighting to clear the Rosenberg's name,

still insisting their parents were railroaded in a climate of hysteria.

They have taken the name of Meeropol after the family which adopted them.

Working through the Freedom of Information Act,

the Meeropols have compelled the government

to release one hundred thousand pages of secret documents.

Among other things, the papers suggest the Rosenbergs

might have been granted a last minute reprieve

had they volunteered to confess and testify about their activities...

It's the era of Watergate, it's the era of Nixon being forced to resign.

This is a time to launch a campaign.

FBI close down, open up the files!

I remember my brother in speeches

saying that by exposing the frame-up of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,

we were fighting Watergate at its roots, and that's true.

We were actually sticking it to the government, and that felt good.

We felt confidence in ourselves, that we could make the case.

I took a leave from my job, Robby was only working part time,

we wrote our book together, we went on speaking tours.

Basically, from spring of 1974 through June of 1978,

I had three jobs.

I had my job to earn money,

my job to be your and Greg's dad and mom's husband,

and the job of public Rosenberg fighting to reopen the case.

I'd like to see a judicial judgment, not just that my parents were innocent,

but that individuals

conspired criminally to convict them falsely.

I'd like to see the perpetrators locked up.

This was the 1970's, so you know sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

I was relatively serious, didn't do much drugs by any means.

I liked music.

My music experience was sitting around in the living room

with four people playing guitar singing songs.

-Do you go there for fun? -Sure.

Do we see Roy Cohn on the dance floor?

I like to go there and watch.

If they go back to Viennese Waltz I might come back into style.

You look to your left and you see a bunch of kooks.

You look to your right you see movie stars, ambassadors,

senators, congressmen and it's a kick, it's just a thing all of its own.

Why was Roy Cohn involved with Studio 54?

It was the hottest disco in the world,

and somehow Roy was the lawyer for one of the partners

and also sort of the lawyer for Studio 54.

We cooperate with the authorities, but if you want a bond poster

that no one ever smoked a joint in a discotheque in the United States,

you're talkin' to the wrong guy.

Roy knew how to get permits taken care of.

Unions to do your bidding. The Mafia to leave you alone.

Roy played Godfather to Rubell and Schrager.

And they rewarded him appropriately.

They not only paid him well, but Roy had a key to the joint.

Studio 54. It was the first time

that a nightclub operated on a completely different level.

There was sex upstairs. Open sex, mostly gay.

And people dancing downstairs. And a hell of a lot of drugs.

And Roy was there a lot.

Roy had alliances. I don't think he ever had relationships.

Roy was not interested in a relationship.

For years, Roy pretended to be straight.

To the extent of announcing he was engaged to Barbara Walters.

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

Roy would call Cindy Adams and would say, you know,

'would you put an item in your column?

Barbara Walters and I may get married.'

I knew the boyfriends. I can't remember who they were now.

But they were nice looking and young.

Should happen to me.

Absolutely, it was fine. Yes, of course I knew.

We all knew.

Homosexuality is an enigma. Even in this era of bold sexual mores,

it remains a subject that people find disturbing, embarrassing.

Most Americans are repelled by the meer notion of homosexuality.

The homosexual, bitterly aware of his rejection,

responds by going underground.

In the 70s, I was working, hooking at a bar called Rounds.

I was picked up by this guy that I thought was very attractive.

'Great 'cause I'm going to get paid plus he's really cute. '

They wanted me to meet somebody. And they drove me deep in the woods.

It was very secretive, it was cover operation like.

Sitting on the sofa was Roy in this black velour robe.

He was very tanned and very... you know, kinda lizard-like.

But like an old auntie,

like that just came home from bingo and was cold.

He asked me to sit down on the Sofa next to him.

He made me a cocktail. I think I asked for a screwdriver.

I saw an album of Mabel Mercer and Bobby Short

and I was a fan of this album.

He was really surprised that I knew who Mabel Mercer was.

After a very long talk I went upstairs

and had sex with this guy that I guess was his boyfriend.

And then a couple weeks later it happened all over again

where they brought me to him but I thought we were friends.

I said, 'what did you want me to come here for?

Was I suppose to have sex with you?'

That's when it turned... in a very strange way.

And he got angry with me.

Didn't raise his voice so much as his eyes and the tone of voice was strange

and he said, 'I asked you here to discuss music.'

He was done with me at that point.

It's sort of like Blanche Dubois.

'I don't want reality, I want dreams'.

He came from a generation where you obviously couldn't be openly gay.

And work in the world that he was working in.

I remember that there was an assistant named Vincent.

He was a young, good looking guy who kinda passed in

and out and gradually it dawned on me

that there was probably some kind of personally relationship

between him and Cohn.

Did you remember I have a lunch date with Barbara Walters?

-When is that? -Today.

He knew how to be a gay man who was in the closet.

But he'll play games with it also.

He was flaunting it in a certain sense and sort of daring people

to see how much room there was to do whatever you wanted.

I'm basically an introvert, a private person.

When I'm with my friends

under circumstances of privacy that's what I really love.

What makes my adrenaline go more than anything else is this combination.

I can't have one without the other. Public and private. Right.

Many people were shocked that Roy Cohn appeared in Provincetown.

Which is probably the worlds leading summertime gay community.

He was summering in Provincetown out in the open, quite conspicuously.

Roy loved the craziness of Provincetown.

He loved the drinking, he loved the games,

the social crap that went on downtown.

When I saw him, I was appalled that he was here.

The only place I ever saw him in person that I remember

was in Front Street repeatedly.

It was a jumpin' scene in there. It was the place to be in Provincetown.

And he was always in there with hustlers and it infuriated me.

All these boys around a table.

They were ordering champagne and fancy food and... you know.

It didn't seem they were discussing the history of communism.

I would have been a communist then.

Just meant a liberal really. I was worse.

I was a young lunatic myself really so I never spoke to him.

And complained that he was in there to the people that owned it,

who was my dear friend Howard Gruber, who was jewish.

He said I always spit in his food every time when I serve him.

I would've done more than spit.

He'd stop into Front Street to make a reservation for 25 person seating.

He was a true perfectionist.

Before any of the guests arrived he had to see it set up.

He would bring in these candy dishes and he would fill them with cocaine.

A substantial amount of cocaine.

He would then place these Tuinals to the right of every setting.

It's a sedative so if they got too crazy on the cocaine,

they would have a Tuinal to level themselves out.

It was a coke pit. It was during the cocaine years.

And I did cocaine in the bathroom, everybody did.

Did I ever do coke with him?

I wouldn't have had my nostril on the same straw as that pig.

He came here for easy sex, and handsome men,

and probably easy access to drugs, and no paparazzi.

And maybe the fact that people didn't know who he was.

This is Roy's cottage that he rented, there.

It's fixed up somewhat now.

And this is my house.

So you can see we were very connected.

A neighbor up the street came to me that he had a renter.

I had never been here before, I said great.

And he didn't tell me who it was. He said but don't worry about it.

So low and behold Roy Cohn moves in.

I didn't know that much about Roy but I knew enough.

The neighbors right away knew much more than I did.

'How could you have done that to us?'

'How could you made that man live across the street from me? '

But the rent was paid the house was clean and he was a good tenant.

He had lots and lots of guests all the time.

Tall, blonde, blue eyed, built like... yummy.

I never saw him alone, except for when he went swimming.

That's an interesting thought.

Never alone, always at least two or three people, if not more.

Hovering.

How important is it to spend time with yourself.

I rented to him a second year

and he then came to me and said he wanted to buy it.

And I said well it's not for sale.

He looked at me with these very cold eyes.

He said, 'things have a way of being sold that aren't for sale, Anne'.

And I just shivered.

Fortunately, he bought the place two house from me.

Norman Mailer and I were buying a house together.

Roy jumps into that project

and snags for himself the cottage that's on the property.

I can recall one Sunday on his big deck.

Roy is surrounded by newspapers.

The LA Times, The New York Times, London papers.

Norman Mailer had recently gotten back from Russia,

where he did a piece for Parade Magazine,

praising Russia to the skies.

He loved Russian food.

You've never had borscht like you can get in Moscow.

Russian women - nothing like it.

Roy was looking at Norman's piece

and Roy looks up at me and he says, 'have you read this?'

Your friend Mailer is so fucking in love with the Russians,

he'll really be happy when the Ruskies drop a nuke on him.

That'll bring him to his senses maybe. '

A discussion of "The Rosenbergs"

Guilty or innocent?

The question lingers after 30 years

and still divides many people here and abroad.

I would like to introduce briefly our guests tonight.

To my left, Marshall Perlin, a lawyer involved with the case.

To my left, Professor Michael Meeropol,

one of the sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.

And to my right, attorney Roy Cohn.

When Robby and I got a lot of publicity,

we discover that Roy Cohn has taken on the mantle of defending the government.

Why was clemency not granted? What was standing in the way?

It is justified in the case of two people

who stole secrets involving a bomb,

which could take thousands of human lives

and turning it over to an enemy,

which has blacked out a good part of the world

and taken many human lives.

What could be worse than selling out your own country?

-Mr. Meeropol? -Yes.

The first thing that people have to realize is, of course,

that the man who is saying all of this was part of a prosecution team

that engaged in subornation of perjury

and a conspiracy to deprive civil rights by false prosecution.

He's not going to stand on television in the US and confess to doing that.

He hasn't been in the habit of confessing crimes in his entire career

and I don't expect he's going to start now.

The fact remains that ever since 1953,

we have uncovered perjuries on the part of prosecution witnesses,

we have uncovered forgeries, we have uncovered factual material.

-You're accusing me of corruption! -No...

Let me make a very interesting comment

that your viewers might be interested in. We have a way of reopening the case.

If I just told a lie about Mr. Cohn's criminal conduct,

we've got a perfect chance to have a courtroom.

-We don't want to get into this. -He knows what he did!

I would like to hear more about the motivation.

Course he did know what he did. The point is he didn't care.

If it wasn't for me, Joe,

Ethel Rosenberg would be alive today.

I would have fucking pulled they switch if they'd have let me.

Why? Because I fucking hate traitors.

Because I fucking hate Communists. Was it legal? Fuck legal!

Am I a nice man? Fuck nice!

They say terrible things about me in The Nation.

Fuck The Nation!

You want to be nice? Or you want to be effective?

Make the law, or subject to it! Choose.

The Rosenbergs convicted themselves by taking the witness stand

and lying through their teeth.

There were a number of other people recruited by the Rosenbergs,

working with the Rosenbergs, who escaped.

I welcome the full inquiry.

I urge you to use the power of subpoena, get secret documents,

talk to witnesses, put people like Mr. Cohn under oath

and keep at him about things that were developed,

prosecution changes, etc.

I feel the people who framed my parents trampled the American flag in the mud

and I think it's up to us to wash it.

I could look him in the eye and I could point at him and say,

'You knew what you did'.

I kept saying, Come on, if I'm lying sue me!'

And he just brushed it off.

'Who elected Ronald Reagan?

It was union members, defying their leaders.

It was the blue-collar worker, the truck driver.

Because they're the ones who are getting hit by our economy.

It's the middle class that's been going under.'

You know what? That is the subtext to the election of Donald Trump.

And this was what? 1981.

You have claimed you've been a fan of Ronald Reagan, supporter of Reagan.

-I haven't claimed, I have been. -Wonderful. For many years.

Way before on a national level.

When he made the speech for Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Ronald Reagan came across as a giant.

We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind

in his long climb from the swamp to the stars.

And it's been said if we lose that war,

and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours,

history will record with the greatest astonishment

that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.

Many people did not expect the governor from California,

who was not sophisticated about international relations,

to be elected.

Roy predicted that he would be elected well before he was.

Roy ushered in that Republican revolution.

Since the time Governor Reagan in New York

made his announcement until the election,

I don't know where I got the time from,

because my partner Tom Boland had the main role

as finance director for Governor Reagan in New York,

but I had to do an awful lot and through all hours of the night.

Roger Stone was a young campaign person who was working in New York,

and he met Roy because Roy hosted him at parties,

actually introduced him to Donald Trump.

And Roger Stone got a lot of money, so that when Reagan was elected,

Roger Stone, Ed Meese and people around him

felt that they owed a lot to Roy

for making connections and getting him money.

Ronald Reagan also helped his fellow Republicans

make a major change in the philosophy of Congress.

It has become much more conservative in the Senate and in the House.

1980, it was a big Republican year,

and I got elected to Congress as the youngest member of Congress.

I'd just turned 27 during the campaign, so I was young.

And, within a week or two after I got elected,

I get a phone call and a letter asking a favor

from this law firm that was Tom Boland and his law partner, Roy Cohn.

They wanted their friends to get jobs from the Reagan White House.

They asked me to support a candidate for federal judgeship.

Along the way, they asked me to write this letter,

and they keep pushing it, which I ended up writing.

It might have been the first letter of recommendation I wrote,

and it was for Maryanne Trump,

Donald Trump's older sister, to be a federal judge.

I've never been asked to do such a thing in my life.

A year earlier I'm in school.

And, in the new administration the next year,

President Reagan did appoint her to the federal bench.

They were very influential with the President of the United States.

I became very involved in the issue of American prisoners of war

that were left behind during the Vietnam War.

I am now on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House,

and I have a Laotian pilot

that I'm hiring to go back to Laos to look around for information.

But we needed to accelerate his citizenship.

So I ask Roy Cohn.

And, to this day, it is the single,

most impressive use of power that I've seen in my life.

He said, "I've got it all set, here's what you're gonna do.

You're going to go to Los Angeles.

You're going to go to the Federal Courthouse.

You're going to go to some courtroom,

and there is a Judge Roy Carstairs will be running a federal trial.

And you will wait in the back of the courtroom, standing.

Judge Carstairs will see you there, he will call a recess of the trial,

and he will swear your Laotian in as an American citizen right on the spot.

That is how to wield power.

Before I met him, I knew him as a fixer.

A guy who got things done.

It wasn't what you knew, it was who you know.

Claus Von Bülow Case

The occasion I had to work with him was during the Claus Von Bulow case.

I was handling the criminal aspect of it.

He was handling the estate.

I was, I wouldn't say charmed by him, but I was pleasantly surprised

by the fact that he wasn't the ogre that I had been told he was.

And he was determined to make me like him somehow.

He emphasized that he really admired me because of my support for Israel,

my support for Jewish values.

He tried to persuade me

that he grew up at a time

when communism was associated with being Jewish.

Not only the Rosenbergs, Klaus Fuchs

and so many of the other people who were alleged to be spies were Jews,

and so many leaders of Communist parties were Jews.

He thought it was terrible that Jews were being associated with Communism.

And he made a decision to stand up against Communism

as a visible Jew with a name like Cohn,

that can be seen around the world as Jews standing up against Communism.

And he went into great detail with me about the Rosenberg case.

He told me that they knew for certain that Julius Rosenberg was a spy,

they had wiretaps from some embassy that they couldn't disclose

cause they are not supposed to be taping embassies,

but they were 100% confident.

But they couldn't use the evidence and so they enhanced the evidence.

They improved the evidence,

and he thought it was a morally just thing to do.

The star witness for the prosecution was David Greenglass.

He now says this man made him do it.

Did Cohn encourage you to testify that you saw Ethel typing up the notes?

-Of course he did. -Did you realize at the time

or when you were testifying the importance of this,

the evidence you were providing?

I had no idea it was important.

He also said that he did have many ex-party conversations

with Judge Irving Kaufman, that they talked on the phone,

they had agreements about how to handle certain pieces of evidence.

He never denied that the case was fixed.

He used the term, 'We framed guilty people.'

We framed guilty people.'

We tampered with the evidence

in order to persuade the judge and the jury

that these guilty people were in fact guilty.

In 1995, the CIA released the Venona Transcription

that attempted to prove that the government was right,

that Julius Rosenberg, my father, was a spy.

The media's reaction was, The Rosenbergs are guilty. '

We were skeptical of it.

But I had to contemplate 'what would it mean if it were true? '

If we agreed that this stuff was real,

half of our case was already made for us.

It was clear that your grandmother was not a spy.

She never got a code name.

If the whole truth had come out, we would have known at the time

that Julius was guilty of being a spy for the Soviet Union,

but that the information he provided them

was not nearly as important or critical

as the way the government made it sound.

He was not the man who gave the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.

The other thing that we would know for sure, is that Ethel Rosenberg

was not guilty of the crime for which she was charged.

But there was a plot afoot.

And the plot was, from the highest levels of government,

to frame Ethel Rosenberg

in order to get Julius to want to save her life

by ratting out the people who he was in contact with.

I don't think we've ever had a miscarriage of justice

that parallels the Rosenberg case in my lifetime.

You told me before why you never wanted to go to the grave.

I didn't want to put myself through the anguish of actually seeing the grave.

Most of the reopening effort was highly intellectual.

It involved arguing, articulating.

But there is a very, very personal side to this.

Remember the family was broken up for a good 2 years.

The period of time when we visited them was so amazing.

Hugging them and kissing them. We played, we sang.

There was no pain because it was always...

'we still got hope' and 'see you next time'.

The last visit was so terrible because there was no next time.

I was wailing, 'One more day to live, one more day to live.'

Then they kissed us and left.

The last place I saw your grandparents was Sing Sing.

Going to Sing Sing is a way of connecting to that ten year old.

Memory is important.

Reminding myself of it is important.

There were times in my teen years, and in my twenties where...

the press of everyday life would sort of like take charge.

But I always, I always reminded myself where I came from.

Roy Cohn represents a type of person who recurs throughout history.

We know the Roy Cohn but every era has a Roy Cohn,

an opportunist, somebody who will stretch the law and ethics,

to make the ends justify the means.

This picture of Donald and me hangs in my office.

He says, 'Roy is my greatest friend.'

The man is, as I say, the closest thing to a genius I've ever met in my life.

When he sees an opportunity, he's always there to take it.

And I have a feeling, someday, not too far distant future,

you're going to see Donald Trump in other parts of the country as well.

In the early 80s, I was living in Washington

and I had just joined The Washington Post.

After 30 years, the Republicans were hot again.

And all of us as young reporters were pursuing all the new young operatives.

Among them was Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort...

And, somewhere in there Roger Stone, who I'd cultivated as a source,

said, 'You need to meet my friend Roy Cohn.'

Roy was very magnetic, and he knew how to cultivate the media.

I used to see him at parties and he'd be in town.

He'd always stay at The Madison, which is across from The Post.

And he's saying, 'I'm at the bar. Come on over and have a drink.'

And he would say, 'I've got a good story for you,'

but it always served his purposes too.

Which is how I came to do a profile on Donald Trump.

Throughout the whole two hours I'm with him all Trump says is

'Either you got it or you don't. ' About everything.

Either you can get a table at a restaurant or you can't.

Either you can do this or you can't.

During the course of this, he says,

'I could be the nuclear arms negotiator. '

He said, 'I could know everything there is to know

about missiles and nuclear arms in an hour and a half. '

And he said, 'Roy really wants me to do this.

Roy thinks that I would be a really good nuclear arms negotiator.'

And during this period, he apparently sends word back

to one of George Bush's operatives

that he could be working in the administration.

So he was starting to feel pretty heady about himself

and what he could be doing in government.

Would you like to be in a position of negotiating disarmament?

Is that really what's in your head?

I don't know who's negotiating for us, who had in the past.

I used to watch under Jimmy Carter's regime,

I used to watch people going over and looking at these Russians.

I could look at the Russians,

at these people on our side and I could see there's no chance.

That's like the Pittsburgh Stealers playing my high school football team.

Is it arrogant of Donald Trump

to even think about negotiating a treaty with the Russians?

It's not arrogance.

It's the fact that he sees he has a talent in a certain area.

Look his next stop might very well be Moscow.

I think what Roy Cohn saw in Donald Trump

was sort of an unpolished stone.

He had some smarts, he had ambition and he had money.

And he had nerve. He wanted to shake things up.

Roy is building this foothold in Washington D. C. ,

and Don wants a piece of this, and Roy wants him to have a piece of it.

There's this wonderful photograph

of Roy and his arm candy lover, Peter Fraser,

at the White House on a receiving line.

And there's Nancy and there's Ron.

He's introducing his beautiful, for hire boyfriend.

And both he and his lover, are being received like royalty.

Like they're very important people.

In the early through mid-80s,

Peter Fraser was Roy's squeeze of choice.

Peter Fraser was tall, blonde, athletic-looking New Zealander.

Roy got him made the Aramis man of the year.

Aramis is the mens division of Estee Lauder Cosmetics.

Estee and Joe Lauder were Roy's twenty, thirty-year-old, right-wing,

multi-millionaire friends and clients.

Peter Fraser was the kept partner

and actually served a function in the Roy orbit.

Here is a letter dated February one '85 on Saxe, Bacon, and Boland letterhead.

To whom it may concern...

This is to confirm that Peter Fraser's employed

by the law firm Saxe Bacon, and Boland

and he resides at the company house in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Yours Truly, Roy M. Cohn.'

Wild!

Pay to the order of Peter Fraser. $5,284.

Here are credit cards receipts in Peter Fraser's name.

Roy could not use credit cards,

'cause any purchase would be trackable and subject to IRS scrutiny.

Who is this? My god, this is more transfers.

Holy shit. Bank of New Zealand for 10,012.50 dollars.

On the same day, there was another transfer of 10,000.

Jesus Christ!

Deposits 43,000, 50, 90,000 dollars, 45,000, 50,000 dollars.

This is money laundering.

Roy is using Peter as a cut-out.

You know what a cut-out is in spy language?

You're on one side of the fence, I'm on the other,

but I have this guy over here,

and he gets everything I have even though you're focusing on me.

I don't know what these 90-100,000 $ balances in his account represent.

Where is that money coming from?

It's coming through Roy, but where is that coming from?

Two years ago, Richard Dupont had this idea.

He would open a health club in the West Village for gays.

He took over an abandoned 6-story warehouse on Greenwich street,

and spent the next year and almost one million dollars renovating it.

What I think most people are afraid of

is the very fact that they may see homosexual people as real people,

as people who aren't deviants and perverts.

Richard Dupont originally met Roy in Miami Beach,

where he turned a trick for Roy as a gay prostitute.

Richard Dupont was a grifter, a guy who lived on his wits.

And such people could be useful to Roy Cohn.

Ray Kiley, N. Y. County District Attorney's office,

today is July 17, 1980, the time is now 4:25 pm.

-Hello? -My name is Richard Dupont.

It's very simple Mr. Kiley. Mr. Cohn was my partner in a health club.

And unfortunately, Roy sold me out for a half a million dollars.

Whatever legal procedures I can go after Mr. Cohn I will do it.

And the guy decided to wreck revenge.

And he got to Roy like no one else got to Roy, ever.

He would call the airline and say, 'This is Roy Cohn calling.

You know my reservation for 2 o'clock to Texas? Cancel it. '

Roy Cohn would show up with his bags and his reservation had been canceled.

At the Ford shareholders meeting, a woman came

with a delivery of flowers for him, and the flowers were wilted.

There was a note with the flowers , 'Roy Cohn can lick anyone!'

I believe that was a double entendre.

One morning, where Roy's office was on East 68th street,

for the whole block, every five feet,

there was a stenciled message: 'Roy Cohn is a Fag.'

Roy was going crazy.

I mean this is the devil, visiting the devil, as it were.

-Hello, Richard? -Yes.

-Roy Cohn. -Yes, Roy. How are you?

-Richard, when is this going to stop? -When is what going to stop now?

I don't know where to start. I don't know what you want of me,

and I don't know how much it is you expect me to take.

You call up the Greenwich police department,

an evening that I had a bunch of people up there.

Said a man had been stabbed to death in the house, and others are in danger.

You called the fire department, said the place was burning.

And a half hour later, we had a house full of police and firemen.

I have never called the police on you.

What do you mean, "on me?"

You said to me I called the police department on you.

You seem to put some magic in the words, "on you."

-I know you called the police. -I did not call the police.

I don't play with dynamite. And that's dynamite.

I would just urge you and implore you to please stop.

I'm surprised he didn't have him killed, but maybe it would too obvious.

He couldn't scare him off. And Dupont just kept going.

In 1980, on Gay Pride day,

there was a publication of a magazine called Now East,

which contained all of Dupont's fantasies about Roy Cohn.

It's obvious that you are out to do in Roy.

Do you think that you'll outlast Roy?

God! The second issue.

The second issue is going to do him in you think?

-And the third issue. -There's a third one coming too?

Yes, there will be every issue.

How long's this magazine going to go on?

People eventually may become bored with Roy Cohn.

I don't know whether they'll be become bored with Roy Cohn or not.

These were distributed, they were left in restaurants,

fancy clothing stores, gay bars.

Roy was genuinely agitated and Roy didn't show anxiety easily.

'I'm gonna get that motherfucker. I'm gonna kill him. This is gonna end. '

We have a story about a man who is now charged with a violent crime,

but he is the object of a lot of attention

from the Manhattan district attorney.

This is Richard Dupont.

He was arrested in what his lawyer described as a 'pre-dawn raid,'

in which four detectives came crashing into his apartment.

I received information from my client,

that he had learned from associates of Mr. Cohn,

that he was to be indicted on Friday.

Were we here because of Now East? Baloney.

We're here because Richard had the temerity

to ignore that warning and mess with Roy Cohn.

I think that this is Roy's chance to go after somebody.

Because no one else has ever done these things to Roy.

No matter who they are.

He was acquitted the first two counts,

but he was convicted of four or five misdemeanors.

Misdemeanor clients don't go to penitentiaries.

And I felt at the time, given who he was dealing with,

the virtual member of organized crime,

or the attorney Roy Cohn,

that Richard wouldn't have lasted in a penitentiary.

And Richard Dupont as I recall served 18 months in state prison

for fucking with Roy Cohn.

Don't mess with Roy Cohn. Moral of the story.

In the eighties, you could be fired as a school teacher

if you were known to be gay.

You could be denied an apartment.

That happened constantly in a liberal bastion like New York City.

You could be denied service in a restaurant or a bar.

You had no recourse.

For 15 years, the Gay Rights Bill came up for a vote, and it was voted down.

My greatest concern is not about open restaurants or this gay rights bill.

I think if you are a man about things and you can fight your own fights,

things come out okay in the long run.

Roy Cohn was very involved with politics in New York City.

He was a lobbyist and spokesperson for the archdiocese of New York,

which in those years was very powerful politically,

because the cardinal of New York had enormous control and veto power

over legislation on the City Council.

Roy Cohn started making public comments.

First of all, I don't like any of these rights bills.

Women's rights bill as such was defeated in New York very properly.

I don't like that. If the Gay Rights Bill goes to a referendum,

I think the people will defeat that too.

I think that there are features of that bill

that constitutes a clear and present danger

to the upbringing of children and to family life,

and I don't think it's a cut and dried issue at all.

Taking a very public, hostile stance to gay people

made everybody who wasn't in the know feel,

'There's a rumor that Roy Cohn is a homosexual, that's ridiculous.'

The other thing was the Catholic Church.

And they had a similar problem.

Cardinal Spellman was thought by many people to be gay.

He was a very close social friend of Roy Cohn's,

and he was very reactionary.

That's the environment that Roy Cohn reinforced

and pushed and supported in a way that oppressed millions of people.

To know that this man was actively gay

in his personal life, his social life and his sex life and so on.

Again, I say the ninth circle of hell is reserved for hypocrites.

-You feel pretty good? -I feel great.

You were at death's door 6 months ago, 3 months ago?

I was shaving one morning and I felt a little bump.

I called the doctor he said, 'Come in,' and they did a biopsy',

and they found I had liver cancer, which spreads

in strange directions.

I was treated for 3 and a half weeks at the National Institute of Health.

He told me he was in an experimental program for liver cancer.

I think they did not have an experimental program for liver cancer.

It was trying AZT and other drugs for AIDs.

Health officials will announce today whether an anti-aids drug

is safe enough for widespread use against the disease.

The drug AZT has been tested on 140 aids patients around the country.

While AZT does not cure the disease, it does reduce some of its symptoms.

Did you get that radical treatment at NIH

that that Doctor, Rosenberg I believe, is now doing?

-No. -You did not undergo that?

No. I did not undergo that.

-You scored! -Impressively!

There may be 30 people in the whole country getting this drug?

-Now there are 31. -There are 100 000 people who need it.

He spent a lot of time here when he had AIDs.

That's when I would see his poor, diminished body,

'cause I lost a lot of friends too.

The town was so struck by AIDs, three quarters of my friends died.

He was one of the whole town that was dying basically.

I wonder what Roy thought about the fact that he got AIDs.

Those that escaped it, and those that didn't, but not Roy Cohn.

He shouldn't have gotten AIDs.

Right?

I felt sorry for him.

Doesn't mean I liked him or approved what he did,

but I felt sorry for him as an individual.

He didn't hide in that corner. It was right over there.

But he didn't want to be out there,

he wanted to show the poor kid he was with that he did have a life here.

And he certainly couldn't take him dancing,

he was at the point where he couldn't walk, never mind dance.

He was gay, and he was sick,

and he's got this child with him that he's infecting.

This really is sick.

I was looking at a broken man, and it was everything he didn't want to be.

-Do you have AIDs? -No. That's easy to answer.

I'm going, Ethel.

Finally done with this world at long, long last.

The Almighty parts the sea of death,

and lets his Roy boy cross over to Jordan

on dry land had still a lawyer.

Don't count your chickens, Roy. It's over!

-Over? -I wanted the news to come from me.

The panel ruled against you, Roy.

No, they only started meeting two days ago.

They recommended disbarment.

Why do you think they're after you? There are disbarment proceedings...

We're talking about two cases

in neither one of which anyone was injured even slightly, except me.

He borrowed 100,000 dollars from a client, Ivy Schlesinger,

and then despite his numerous written promises,

he failed to repay her that 100,000 dollars.

I had taken her case, handled it for two years.

Never gotten a dime for a retainer.

Until I had gotten her 3.5 million dollars.

-But was it a loan? -Pardon me?

But was it a loan?

It's one of those words that's so difficult to define.

What is a loan?

Anyone who knows me knows I don't plead.

And I'm not pleading in this case.

He's fighting for his life, and on some level more importantly his reputation.

He probably cried more over the disbarment than the AIDs diagnosis.

That's how important it was to him.

In this last interview, I show up in Florida and I was taken aback,

because I hadn't seen in him in about a year and he was extremely frail.

He had lost a lot of weight, he had to be helped into a chair,

his clothes were baggy, but he was game.

He wanted to get stuff off of his chest

and we talked for an hour or so in this mansion that was,

I don't even remember whose it was,

but it was this beautiful mansion on Worth Avenue,

and then we went out to dinner.

And I asked him, what do you think about now, what do you dream about,

and he said, I dream about death, and I think about my funeral.

My guess is that it hasn't been very pleasant for you at all

reading these reports and watching everybody.

The tabloids in New York are calling it a "Death Bed Battle".

I'll tell you how I've felt. I have felt as though I died.

And then I have been present at my own memorial service,

noted who was there and who was not there,

got the word on who said what, you know like:

good, the S.O.B. isn't around anymore

or what a shame, he was a tough fighter,

but he was really a good guy.

You actually went through all of this in your mind?

All of it, everything!

You have to make a very special wish.

Did he feel that people were abandoning him?

I'm not sure that he would ever show that side of him.

But there are some of us who don't abandon friends.

No matter what.

Donald was plugged in. And I'm sure he had heard that Roy had AIDs.

When he's dying, Trump pulls away. And it hurt Roy.

He felt like he had done a lot to promote,

to help bring Donald Trump along.

Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in a salute

to a winner and friend: Mr. Donald Trump.

Thank you. I would like to introduce my family: my wife, Ivana; my father, Fred;

my sister, the Judge, thanks to the president.

It was a wrenching thing to watch.

But a lot of Roy's so-called friends blew him off after he got sick.

Roy Cohn, the unorthodox and colorful lawyer

who may have made more prominent enemies and more prominent friends

than any American of his time, is dead.

Cohn died earlier this morning of a heart attack.

The virus HTLV3, which is believed to cause AIDs,

was listed as a secondary cause of death.

How do you want to be remembered?

I have no choice.

I know how I am going to be Joe McCarthy's Chief Counsel

for the rest of my life,

no matter what else good or bad I should ever do.

If you could turn back the clock to 1953 or 4...

-Would you do anything differently? -Sure.

Who, 25, 30 years later wouldn't do something differently?

Do you think you were too abrasive as some people say?

Sure. But I'm not sure

if I haven't been too aggressive if I could've gotten any results.

What do you say to people who say you ruined people's lives?

I say name one.

Because I know what the truth is and they don't.