No Apologies, No Conscience, No Regrets
OSHINSKY, DAVID M.
No Apologies, No Conscience, No Regrets The Autobiography of Roy Cohn By Sidney Zion Lyle Stuart. 284 pp. $18.95. Citizen Cohn By Nicholas von Hoffman Doubleday. 483 pp. $19.95. Reviewed...
...Zion learned this from one of Roy's doctors, who had been treating him for years...
...She's the older one, she's the one with the brains, she recruited her younger brother into the Young Communist League and into the spy ring, she's the one who typed the atomic bomb documents, she engineered this whole thing, she was the mastermind of this conspiracy...
...I watched Carmine and Meade as if they were potato bugs, " writes Zion...
...He didn't "own" the home...
...His motto was simple: No apologies, no conscience, no regrets...
...Roy's father had helped get him a Federal judgeship...
...I guess it ranked with the phoniest conversations of the 20th century...
...As for Ethel, he worried about the public relations consequences—not the morality—of sentencing a young mother to the electric chair...
...The words came slowly, and he did not have much time...
...A] young lawyer...
...Unfortunately, his "autobiography" ends about here...
...Only Kaufman can answer that question, though his sentencing speech hit on every one of these points...
...He was promiscuous as hell, " said the doctor...
...He had just come back from Europe, he'd chartered a plane and gone over with a bunch of his lovers...
...Cohn denied he had AIDS because he denied he was gay...
...Because he knew that the Army was losing and that a compromise would be viewed as a surrender...
...So, Roy, wherever you are, the slate is now clean...
...He was too sick, dying of AIDS...
...Zion liked the idea...
...Makethis point, makethat point, don't forget this that and the other thing...
...Several years ago, Cohn decided to write his autobiography...
...Although prosecutors and judges are forbidden to engage in ex parte (private) communications without the presence of defense lawyers, Cohn now admits that "the prosecution team—particularly Irving Saypol and I— were in constant communication with Judge Kaufman" during the trial...
...It was nothing at all, just words strung together...
...He had worked nearly three years to produce this zero...
...He knew no other way...
...Everybody wants the case, you've got to do it, Roy, call Dave Sweeney...
...When Roy was in the courtroom," writes von Hoffman, "he might arrive baggy-eyed and bleary from another night at Studio 54...
...I read it in one sitting," Zion recalled, "and it was the dopiest [thing] I ever came across...
...But once a case got to litigation, Cohn was in big trouble...
...Irving and his wife were in Boca Raton, I was in Palm Beach...
...Roy and Sid were old friends...
...According to Zion, however, Cohn had been an active homosexual since the age of 15...
...Lacking "the stamina to continue a linear narrative," he turned to Zion, who wrote the final chapters himself...
...I talked to our friend in New York," he said...
...Roy loved the excitement, the chance to associate with older, powerful men...
...Al wanted to beajudge...
...The average Federal judge in 1951 would have forfeited his pension rights to handle this case...
...At the time, Kaufman was busily portraying himself as a man wrestling with his conscience...
...His mother, Dora, is barely mentioned...
...One day, she tacked this note to the door of their Bronx apartment: "Dear Al, I have moved to 1165 Park Avenue...
...The names, together, recall a frightening period in our history, a period of Redhunts and blacklists, of wrecked friendships and broken careers...
...In 1953, Cohn went to work for Senator Joe McCarthy as chief counsel of the Subcommittee on Investigations...
...The bulk of von Hoffman's research comes from interviews with Cohn's relatives, clients, friends, enemies, and lovers...
...He knew how to intimidate, how to make the right phone calls, how to delay a case he couldn't fix...
...Worst of all, Ithink, is the way von Hoffman spreads a preposterous rumor and then indignantly casts it aside...
...He even claimed to be seeking divine guidance in his Park Avenue synagogue...
...One gets the impression that, yes, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and U. S. Attorney Robert Morgenthau were out to destroy him, and, yes, they couldn't have chosen a worthier guy...
...It is hard to imagine, for example, that Cohn actually prepared for the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case by "devouring" the works of Marx and Lenin and other Communist thinkers...
...And then Roy Cohn—victim—went home and cried...
...He was always attacking the gay community...
...Zion went to work...
...These parties attracted all the big movers— from Donald Trump to George Steinbrenner to "Fat Tony" Salerno...
...At another point, he writes: " But whatever the Cardinal's sexual preferences, the little available evidence indicates that [Spellman] and Roy were not lovers...
...His recollections of this period are the highlight of the book...
...Without direct quotations this massive book would barely reach 100 pages...
...Oddly, the book does not suffer from this switch...
...Themoney would be good...
...WhenCohn died in 1986, Zion finished the book himself...
...He lies about his low grades and does not mention the pull his father exerted to get him into law school and out of the Army during the final months of World War II...
...Do you vouch for him...
...Suddenly, there was a loud splash...
...His racket, quite simply, was to take a cash retainer from a client and then do as little as he could...
...Because he knew the Army was losing and a compromise would be viewed as a surrender...
...Clients believed he could fix anything...
...Hecutthemanuscript, got Cohn on tape, and coaxed somejuicy storiesfromhim...
...Al treated Roy as alittle adult, never as a child...
...the characters repeat themselves...
...Kaufman asked Cohn for his opinion...
...Roy continues: "Irving Kaufman sighed...
...There's no way to be popular in a case this fraught with emotion and political overtones...
...So did many of his friends and associates, who refused to see what was right in front of their eyes...
...The narrative lurches back and forth through time, with no apparent direction...
...I think he called me 50 times a day...
...One of the studs tried to throw Roy in, fully clothed...
...From the beginning, Roy lived a very special life...
...Needing money for the payoff, he married Dora Marcus, the homely daughter of a wealthy financier...
...Owners have to pay taxes...
...Attorney for the Southern District of New York...
...Near the end of his book, von Hoffman provides a useful—and withering—critique of Cohn as a practicing attorney...
...I didn't hang around arguing with my buddies about whether DiMaggio was better than Mel Ott...
...He would have a forum and the Army would not.'" Here is Cohn/Zion on the same decision: "Ike wants hearings open and televised," Hagerty wrote, on May 11, the day of the committee vote...
...A few thought he "went gay" when his mother died in 1969...
...He spent his time in older company, learning the ways of the world...
...Saypol, it seems, had been handed the job of U.S...
...According to Cohn, however, Kaufman had made up his mind to execute Julius Rosenberg before the trial even began...
...Cohn could not finish the story...
...Al went...
...His contacts were everywhere—the mob, the press, the bench, the jet-set, the Archdiocese, the WhiteHouse.The word was out: "Don't mess with Roy Cohn...
...The terrible irony is that Ethel Rosenberg was not the mastermind of this atomic conspiracy...
...We might as well have been in the same room...
...Furthermore, he figured that closed sessions would benefit McCarthy, who "would use his old trick of coming out...
...Protective and domineering, she would live with her son until the day she died, by which time he was 42 years old...
...Reviewed by David M. Oshinsky Professor of history, Rutgers...
...His father introduced him to the world of backroom deals and political favors...
...One of them, Irving Kaufman, knew exactly what to do...
...Hesaid, 'I can tell you about the ones in the cabin, but the guys in the cockpit...'" Citizen Cohn is more thorough than Zion's account, but far less entertaining...
...Of course, Cohn adds, "he was terrific to me," and that's what mattered most...
...remembered Roy sliding in next to him during a case, listening for a few minutes and then asking, 'What time is it?' Upon being told, Roy whispered, 'Don't you think it's time we move for dismissal?' To which the junior man answered, 'Roy, it's our motion.'" Cohn was disbarred in 1986...
...Call Dave Sweeney, call Dave Sweeney, call Dave Sweeney...
...Cohn notes, correctly, that such practices were not uncommon in the 1950s...
...Saypol was a friend of the family...
...His description of these tumultuous days is culled largely from his ghostwritten book on McCarthy, published two decades ago...
...Whatever I do I'm sure to be criticized...
...The editor claimed that Roy's manuscript was a little "flat...
...Roy was "tight" with Dave Sweeney, the court clerk in charge of the criminal calendar...
...It needed some color, so perhaps Sid could interview Roy, mine some nuggets, rework the prose...
...Now it was Roy's turn to get him the Rosenberg case...
...His book is oddly reminiscent of the Kennedy "biographies" that conservative columnist Victor Lasky used to knock off in two or three months...
...Roy Cohn survived that era, proud of what he had done...
...I cannot attest to their accuracy, and Zion offers no help on this score...
...Asked by reporters for a comment, he said what they knew he' d say: " I could care less...
...he simply "lived" there...
...Your supper is there...
...So all right already, I'll call Dave Sweeney...
...Cohn is vague about his boyhood...
...The problem, of course, is that Zion is an investigative reporter, and the book lists him, not Cohn, as the author...
...Gosh, Nick, I feel better already...
...But it's my duty...
...He provides a chilling portrait of Al and Dora Cohn, Roy's parents, by getting Al's side of the family to dump on Dora, and Dora's side to dump on Al...
...So unless you're willing to say that a woman is immune from the death penalty, I don't see how you can justify sparing her...
...On the contrary, it allows for the discussion of issues that Cohn refused to touch...
...and telling reporters anything he wanted...
...If you don't call him some other judge is liable to put pressure on him...
...There was a lot of laughing and wrestling...
...He's a good guy.' What did I know about the word'vouch...
...Most of his pals assumed he was "asexual...
...What followed is worth quoting at length: "We were vacationing in Florida during the Christmas season of 1950...
...Themanknownasa"killer," a legal "assassin," says the author, was really second-rate...
...I was21 yearsold.lt really meant I was putting my name on the line for Saypol, if it went wrong it could have been my head...
...I asked him to tell me what he knew about them...
...Nicholas von Hoffman is a liberal journalist...
...Cohn's life after McCarthy is a mad tangle of lawsuits, vendettas, shady deals, wild parties, and homosexual affairs...
...Indeed, as acquittal followed acquittal, he became the symbol of invincibility, a man the system couldn't beat...
...At one point, for example, he assures us that "no evidence exists of a [homosexual] affair" between Cohn and J. Edgar Hoover, as if that were really big news...
...Kaufman was—you guessed it—another family friend...
...Cohn skims quickly over his days at Horace Mann, Columbia College and Columbia Law School...
...And sure enough, this scene was not registering on their retinas, they had willed it away...
...Here, for instance, is the way I described a crucial decision by President Eisenhower's forces during the Army-McCarthy hearings: "On May 11, the day of the vote, [Press Secretary James] Hagerty wrote in his diary: 'Ike wants hearings open and televised...' Why...
...He refused, and she went quietly to her death...
...If y ou want to eat, go there tonight...
...The Cohn-Kaufman relationship did not end here...
...the stories go stale...
...Joe McCarthy was a nice guy, Justice Douglas was a nice guy, Eisenhower was not a nice guy, the Rosenbergs were guilty, Alger Hiss was guilty, Roy Cohn was not guilty, and God Bless America...
...he didn't know the laws or the precedents...
...the 21-year-old prosecutor replied: "The way I see it is that she's worse than Julius...
...he hated to prepare...
...When you take this job you must accept the consequences.' "This was minutes after he had been hustling my ass to get him the case...
...In 1949, Cohn joined the staff of theU.S...
...But Cohn was good to me when I wrote my book, and he may have felt I owed him one...
...There are no revelations here: Joe is simply a "nice guy...
...Was Kaufman influenced by Cohn's opinion...
...He would have a forum and the Army would not.'" In most quarters, we call this plagiarism...
...The call went through and Kaufman got the case...
...The key issue is homosexuality...
...In 1985, Cohn's editor called Sidney Zion, a former reporter for the New York Times...
...He had never learned to do research...
...Four or five of Roy's young studs had slipped into their swim togs and...
...There was no running out after dinner to play ringaleevio," Cohn remembers...
...The moment we learned about AIDS I was terribly afraid for him...
...Cohn describes him as a mean-spirited ass-kisser—"obsequious to his superiors, contemptuous of those under him, wrong-headed, supercilious...
...I almost threw up, but I stifled myself and played the game...
...In fact, the newly released FBI files on the Rosenberg case show that Ethel was at best a peripheral member of the espionage ring, and that government officials used her sentence as a kind of "lever" to force Julius to confess...
...Their marriage, we learn, was something less than loveat first sight...
...It happened a few months before his death, and it brought glee to many hearts...
...I would have been flattered had he—or Zion—bothered to use quotation marks or any kind of attribution at all...
...And Costello had learned of Saypol through Generoso Pope, who had cleared the name with Cohn...
...and telling reporters anything he wanted...
...As soon as I said that, Irving called me so many times I couldn't get through to Dave Sweeney...
...were frolicking in the moonlit water...
...author, "A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy" When people think about Roy Cohn, they think about Joe McCarthy...
...Often, Roy would throw big parties at his "home" in Greenwich, Connecticut...
...Employing the vacuum cleaner approach to history, it scoops up all the available dirt and deposits it in random piles, without much interpretation or serious thought...
...Furthermore, he figured that closed sessions would benefit McCarthy, who 'would use his old trick of coming out...
...Al loved the Bronx, where he and his political cronies lived...
...The couple had nothing in common save Roy, their only child...
...The result is fine entertainment but dubious history...
...Well,' he said, "you've really put me in the soup now, my friend...
...There is a five page recollection by a gossip columnist from the New York Post, and an even longer one by the bouncer at Studio 54...
...The project did not go well...
...Cohn relayed the news a few minutes later...
...He once gave a speech against homosexuality to the Society for the Preservation of the Family, accompanied by his latest boyfriend...
...At one of them, says Zion, "Roy was standing around the pool with Carmine DeSapio and [Brooklyn Democratic Party boss] Meade Esposito...
...Attorney by mobster Frank Costello, who ran Tammany Hall through his stooge Carmine DeSapio...
...For whatever "new" material he presents, Cohn relies heavily on my 1983 biography of the Wisconsin Senator, A Conspiracy So Immense...
...They went back 20 years, when Roy was on trial for just about everything and Sid was covering the case...
...He was in the highest risk group...
...The only drawback was the manuscript itself...
...Pope, another family friend, had asked Roy: "I said, 'Sure...
...Your furniture is there...
...It's done...
...I told him he would do justice, he would perform in the great tradition of the Federal judiciary...
...Saypol and Cohn were the main prosecutors in the Rosenberg case...
...But his descriptions of prosecutor Irving Saypol and Judge Irving R. Kaufman are both devastating and difficult to dismiss...
...His father, AI, was an Appellate Court judge and a power in the Bronx Democratic machine...
...He went to Roy Cohn...
...At home on Park Avenue, his mother smothered him with attention...
...Dora wanted Manhattan, with its status, its culture, and its private schools for Roy...
...In fact, Roy had few friends...
...Nevertheless, thecontentof these communications (particularly on the sentencing issue) is shocking...
...They didn' t see it because they thought of Cohn as a tough guy, a "fag-basher...
...His law practice boomed...
...These two old pois, these veterans of a thousand and one smoke-filled rooms—you don't have to ask what they thought of fairies—they weren't going to see this at all...
...The interviews ramble badly...
...After setting the stage, though, von Hoffman loses his way...
...Von Hoffman is at his best when describing his subject's early life...
...His two great loves, apparently, were anal sex and a postponement in court...
...But Cohn did not beg or bargain or break...
...She was not the engineer...
...Called "the crime of the century," it involved the funneling of atomic secrets to the Soviet Union...
...Zion never questions the accuracy of his main source, believing, perhaps, that Cohn's story should be told by Cohn himself...
Vol. 71 • May 1988 • No. 9
