60 Minutes - Roy Cohn is Not an Enigma | 60 Minutes: A Second Look

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

When Donald Trump delivered a birthday toast to power lawyer Roy Cohn, back in 1986, 60 Minutes was there to record the future president's tribute to Cohn's loyalty. Much has been written about Cohn's influence on the young Trump and by listening through 60 Minutes' two interviews with Cohn, you can hear why the notorious lawyer is the subject of so much fascination. In never-before-broadcast conversations with Mike Wallace and Morley Safer, Cohn explains his fighter mentality and obsession with winning at all costs -- from his earliest days working alongside Senator Joseph McCarthy to his final months spent denying he was dying of AIDS. For more episodes like this one, search for "60 Minutes: A Second Look" and follow the show, wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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for Mr. Royohn. Thank you. In February 1986, a who's who of New York City's rich and famous gathered in a fashionable apartment. They were there to celebrate the 59th birthday of Roy Cohn, the powerful and polarizing lawyer and political operative. Just hold on to it. You have to make a very special wish. Mike Wallace was there with a film crew documenting the festivities for a story he was reporting for 60 Minutes about Cohn. People out of his past, like former New York Democratic boss Carmine DiSappio, came to pay their respects,

as did people out of Roy Cohn's present. Norman Mailer, Helen Gurley Brown, Lee Iacocca, U.S. Senator Chick Hecht of Nevada flew up from Washington for the occasion, also present Cohn's usual companion, Peter Frazier. Peter and I were just catching up. We've got so much to catch up on. People have very specific feelings about Roy Cohn. They either love him or they despise him. Well, that's understandable in this complex political scene. Cohn's notoriety stemmed from his early days

working alongside Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare, as well as prosecuting accused communist spies, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. It is the first time in peacetime that such a death penalty has been handed down. They were both executed. As Wallace said, Cone was a divisive figure, but he was loyal. Roy Cone always showed up for his friends, and they showed up for him. He's just a good friend who's always there when you need him to talk to about a problem. And one of the friends who showed up that night,

a New York real estate developer who'd been making a name for himself. I came in tonight, I opened the door and a microphone was stuck in my face. And they said, you're in 60 Minutes, Donald, what do you think of Roy Cohn? This sound of future President Donald Trump delivering a toast to Cohn that night was never broadcast on 60 Minutes. Roy's been our friend, he's been loyal, and I just, I'm so happy for Roy because he's doing so well. The two men had become close when Cohn became a mentor of sorts to Trump more than a decade earlier. And Roy, I salute you.

We all salute you. You're a fantastic guy. A great man and a great friend. And thank you. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Donald. After he finished his remarks, Trump sat down on a couch beside Cohn as Cohn patted him on the back, signaling his appreciation.

I was so tickled Donald Trump came tonight. New York Times reporter and Trump biographer Maggie Haberman wrote that, quote, other than his father, the most important influence on the future president was Roy Cohn, who taught him how to construct an entire life around proximity to power, avoiding responsibility, and creating artifice through the media, end quote. The relationship between Trump and Cohn is now the subject of a new film called The Apprentice, starring Jeremy Strong as Cohn and Sebastian Stan as Trump. What's your name, handsome?

I'm Donald Trump. Donald Trump, nice to meet you. Roy Cohn. The Roy Cohn from all the papers and everything. That's right. The Roy Cohn from all the papers. That's right. 60 Minutes interviewed Roy Cohn not once, but twice. The last interview taking place just months before he died of complications from AIDS. You feel that much public curiosity as to whether I had AIDS? That is the question that everybody asks. That's amazing.

Today on 60 Minutes, A Second Look, we revisit the broadcast's time with Roy Cohn and see why nearly 40 years after his death, his fighter mentality continues to influence our culture and politics, all the way up to the highest office in the land. Roy, let me read to you the lead to the Newsweek piece on you. First, there are the eyes, large hooded ovals that dominate his face. His hands tremble and the red lines around his ears are constant reminders of a trip to the operating table for cosmetic surgery. Back in 1979, Morley Safer was the first 60 Minutes correspondent to sit down with Roy Cohn. If you don't have a mental image of Cohn,

this description that Morley Safer quoted from Newsweek magazine should do the trick. To keep his tan as neat and even as the hairs on his head, he uses a custom-made blend of lotions that has cured his skin to a light tobacco color. He's a street fighter who's made his reputation by lunging for the throat. A fair portrait? A fair physical portrait, Morley? No, not really. I don't have any blend of lotions. I do love the sun. There's no question about that. As far as the hairs on my head, there are not as many as when some members of your audience who have still survived saw me back 25 years ago. 25 years before this interview, Roy Cohn was best known as the young legal counsel sitting beside Republican Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy as he chaired hearings to out suspected communists in the government. run across in Washington who had guts and the guts to stand up for what he believed in and didn't care about the gentlemanly fellow senator rules and all of that hogwash. He cared about this country.

I cared about this country. By the time Morley Safer arrived to interview Cohn in 1979, the McCarthy hearings were considered to be nothing more than witch hunts. You were held this country to ransom. I think that was a really a great exaggeration, Wally. I realize it's part of history because unfortunately history is written by historians, not by people with common sense who know what's going on. But we didn't hold the country by ransom at all. It wasn't us. It was a period in this country's history when World War II was over, and having gotten rid of Hitler and Nazism, we suddenly found out there was something just as bad, communism, which was just as much of a threat to the free world. And it was a question of what entity, entities, people, people are going to come along and

do something about it. Ben Wattenberg- Well, one can see that communism is a threat to this country, and undeniably. What I'm talking about, though, we're talking about the personality of Roy Cohn and the personality of the time, where you guys ran around not only the country but the world declaiming on this, declaiming on that. How old were you? 25, 26. 25, 26. Threatening to wreck the army. Safer was talking about Cohn's reported threat to wreck the

army after they did not give his friend and former colleague David Shine preferential treatment when he was drafted. The incident played out in the 2023 Showtime miniseries Fellow Travelers about the targeting of gay government employees during the McCarthy era. If it turns out that the Army command is riddled with commies, we'll smoke them out. Every last stinking pinko traitor. Actor Will Brill played Roy Cohn. And when we do, Dave, they won't dare to touch you.

That takes a certain degree of, how should I put it? Chutzpah. Nerve. It would take a certain degree of stupidity to think that one person was going to wreck the army. But you said it. No, I didn't say it. Oh, you threatened it. I did not threaten it. You suggested it. I did not suggest it. And now look, I wasn't that dumb. Although I was 25 or 26 years old, I had been with the Justice Department since I was 19. That's right. Roy Cohn was a teenager when he started working at the Justice Department. Roy Cohn came to law with good connections.

His father was a gentle-mannered New York state judge, and young Roy met all the right people. When I went down as chief counsel for the McCarthy committee, I totally broke with my own background, with my own past. In other words, here I was, a young Jewish Democrat from New York, supposedly the most liberal or one of the most liberal cities in the United States, going down to become chief counsel for a fellow like Joe McCarthy. To what extent was Roy Cohn, the Jewish lawyer from New York, going out to prove that he was as good an American as any Irish Catholic or WASP lawyer?

I buy your thought, and I think there is something to it, but the script was a little bit different than that. I did resent very much the idea of associating Jews with a sympathy toward communism. And I do admit the fact that this is something that has always bothered me, and I've tried in every way I can to make it clear that the fact my name is Cohen and the fact that my religion has nothing to do except perfect compatibility with my love for America and my dislike for communism. But McCarthyism did not last. In a stunning fall from grace, McCarthy was censured by the Senate in 1954,

and though he remained in office, he died three years later. Meanwhile, Roy Cohn forged a new identity for himself, the go-to power attorney for the rich and famous. Don't mess with Roy Cohn has become a motto Roy wears with pride. identity for himself, the go-to power attorney for the rich and famous. Don't mess with Roy Cohn has become a motto Roy wears with pride. The man who wrote the Esquire cover story, Ken Aleta, is a reporter who regularly measures Roy Cohn's impact on politics, business, and the law. He believes that it's war, and that outside of his small circle of friends, he inhabits the jungle. And all of these forces out there, be they the federal government,

or the U.S. Attorney's Office, or journalists, or others are out to get him. Ken Oletta's 1978 Esquire cover story, Don't Mess With Roy Cohn, has long been considered one of the definitive profiles of Cohn. Oletta called Cohn a legal executioner and, quote, the toughest, meanest, loyalist, vilest, and one of the most brilliant lawyers in America. You cannot hurt Roy Cohn. He's just invulnerable because he recognizes that the more publicity he gets, no matter what the publicity is, he benefits. I would do anything that is legally permissible to do 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 it's that attitude that

brings in the clients if we make what I feel is a reasonable work out of everything okay if we don't make a reasonable work out of everything I fight all the way you fight all the way but I leave everything in your hands because you know what the article says you you never mess with Roy Cohn. As long as a few people believe it. Among Cohn's clients, the Archdiocese of New York and Donald Trump. He represented Trump and his father, Fred, in a racial bias suit arising from one of their housing developments. There were also the reputed mafia figures like John Gotti, Tony Salerno, and Carmine Galanti.

To law students who object to Cohn's defense of underworld clients, he offers no apologies. I don't have to believe a person is innocent, like we keep talking about Galanti or Tony Salerno or something like that. I don't have to believe in their innocence in a particular case. I have to believe one of two things. Number one, that that person is innocent in the particular case, or that there are some extraordinary circumstances which make the prosecution unfair. Roy Cohn's had his own troubles with the law. He's been tried three times on criminal charges

that could have put him away for years, but he was acquitted each time. That's helped his reputation that if you're in trouble, get Roy Cohn. The client is an Italian countess. She gets the royal treatment at a smart New York restaurant and a ride in Cohn's Rolls Royce. The lunch is a business deduction, and so is the rolls. 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 guarantee you I have paid more taxes than any of the last three presidents of the United States added up together. I probably hold the world's record of never having had a completed audit by Internal Revenue Service for over 20 years. I'm supposed to remember now, in 1979, who I had dinner with in February 1958. I very frankly don't want to earn any more than I have to earn to subsist the way I want to subsist because I don't like the way this country punishes the workers, the middle class, the blue-collar people, the white-collar people, middle America. I think it's lousy. There are people who think that Roy Cohn's takeovers are lousy. They say there's a pattern in which Cohn takes on a client and then somehow ends up as the

beneficiary of that client's business assets. As far as businesses are concerned now, I'll tell you one thing. I have no interest in business of any kind. I don't have an interest in any businesses. I'm interested in practicing law. I don't want assets. I don't have a family. I don't have an interest in any businesses. I'm interested in practicing law. I don't want assets. I don't have a family. I don't need assets. For a man without assets, Roy lives quite well in a grand New York townhouse whose ownership is unclear, a house that also houses his law firm, a law firm in which he is not even named as a partner, all of which may be helpful in getting around certain tax obligations. Despite Cohn's reputation as being invincible, he has lost a number of cases.

It's just that he always makes them sound like victories. As for that townhouse, 60 Minutes got a tour of Cone's bedroom, and viewers were in for a bit of a surprise. Hanging on the door was a Mickey Mouse-themed license plate spelling out Roy, and then Morley Safer described what's inside. In the musical Pal Joey, the song goes, A canopy bed has lots of class, and so does a ceiling made of glass. Cohn has them both in his ornate bedroom, which is also a kind of recreation room and office and gallery for his collection of frogs. Stuffed frogs, china frogs, and toy soldiers.

Another surprise, Roy Cohn at Studio 54. Here gather the hip and the old and the odd. Any night, it is the mob scene from a Fellini movie. Cohn may look and feel uncomfortable in this goofy setting, but he goes. Lately, he goes because the owners of the place are his clients, and they've pleaded guilty to income tax evasion. Federal authorities say they've skimmed millions in cash from the place. They'll be sentenced next month.

Cohn also goes because he likes to be seen with this week's jet set. Once in a while, he'll escort a model, but New York's matchmakers have given up on it. He's just not the marrying kind. Though at one time he says he and Barbara Walters almost got married. Yes, that Barbara Walters they first met in 1955.

Barbara won't comment except to praise Roy for his loyalty. Walters wrote in her memoir that Cone had her loyalty and gratitude after he helped her father with the legal matter. We're getting married when we're both 60. Although I must say in fairness to her Cohn had her loyalty and gratitude after he helped her father with the legal matter. always felt that being a controversial person and being a person that people are always going to be fighting about and over and always destined to be always in some kind of battle or other, that I could go through it better if all I had to worry about was myself, not a wife and kids

who are going to have part of the heartache pushed over on them. While Morley Safer did not ask Cohn about his sexuality, there had been rumors about his relationships with men since the McCarthy days. Barbara Walters revealed in her memoir that the extent of their physical contact was a peck on the cheek. Needless to say, they did not marry when they were 60.

Today he says he is suffering from liver cancer and he denies the persistent rumor that he is dying from AIDS. Coming up on 60 Minutes, A Second Look, Mike Wallace's interview with Roy Cohn in his final months. 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. This episode is brought to you by Square. You're not just running a restaurant. You're building something big.

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I think anyone who's been involved in controversy, and at the moment I'm constantly under attack and under praise, depending on what source you talk to. When Roy Cohn sat across from Mike Wallace in 1986, it was a little more than six years after he spoke with Morley Safer. This time, Cohn was fighting for his life on two fronts. First, professionally, he was facing disbarment. They want to disbar him for allegedly playing fast and loose with some of his client's money. In parts of the interview that were never broadcast, Cohn insisted he was under attack and still being blamed for his days with McCarthy. I will never get away from them. And I'm not saying I want to get away from them. I believed in what I was doing then.

I believed in our system of government is against Soviet aggression. And I still believe that way. These people come from the liberal legal establishment in New York, and they're the country club set and the martinis and the tennis matches on Saturday afternoon and all that. But 32 years after the fact, they're still going after Roy Cohn. Why? Okay, because certain members, it's a small panel, and certain members of the panel do not conceal their intense dislike for me. You know, Mike, you covered all these things. And when it comes to McCarthy, it's not, well, he had some good points, he had some bad points. Is he the worst guy who ever lived? Or he's done more for the country and he was persecuted, and you're

on one side or you're on the other. Cohn ultimately was disbarred even though friends like Barbara Walters and Donald Trump agreed to testify as character witnesses on his behalf. You feel pretty good. I feel great. But Wallace's question about how Cohn was feeling had less to do with legal woes and more about Roy Cohn's other fight, the fight to live. I mean, you were at death's door six months ago, three months ago.

I was shaving one morning and I felt a little bump. So I called the doctor, he said, come in. And he did a biopsy and they found I had liver cancer. And they found that it spreads in strange directions. And I was treated for three and a half weeks at the National Institute of Health and by Sloan Kettering here in New York. And the doctors tell me,

I've strong faith in doctors now. You're in remission? I'm in total remission. For any viewer watching that night, Roy Cohn's appearance was rather shocking. He looked gaunt. 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 the reason I ask is that in in researching there that much public curiosity as to whether I had a that is the question that everybody asks. That's amazing. My doctors have gone on record as exactly what I did have. No, they haven't. They say it's a life-threatening disease, but the words liver cancer are not in their affidavits at all. Well, if you want to get them, just call up Dr. Safai or Dr. Dick or any of them and you'll... Dr. Sam Broder?

Sam Broder's fine. We called them and they said that without Roy Cohn's permission, they couldn't talk to us. But we were told by other sources that Roy Cohn's name was on the NIH computer for AIDS. Well, I shouldn't be. I'm glad you told me that. I'll get that taken care

of very fast because I am in a division which AIDS is also in, but it's a cancer division. And the doctors who taken care of very fast because I am in a division which AIDS is also in, but it's a cancer division. And the doctors who take care of me basically are cancer specialists. And the drug with which I was treated is an anti-cancer drug. And then Mike Wallace went there. You know, of course, why people ask about AIDS and Roy Cohn.

Sure. 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 as far as I'm concerned. 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...

Just acknowledge 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. I think you can see me, I think you can see in the audience can. I ain't dying from nothing to start with, number one. Number two, you ask me categorically and I tell you categorically, I do not have AIDS. Where, Roy, do all these stories come from? Oh, it's a cinch, Mike. Take this set of facts. Bachelor, unmarried, middle-aged, well, young middle-aged. And then all the stories go back to the McCarthy-Shine days.

Shine was a bachelor, too. We were both bachelors. So was McCarthy. Right, and so was McCarthy. Again, David Shine had been a consultant to McCarthy, working alongside Cohn. Blacklisted playwright Lillian Hellman had a nickname for all three men. Lillian Hellman called you Bonnie and Bonnie and Clyde. Right. She did. Definitely. As she was tripping over her Wheaton luggage, leaving the Pierre Hotel in New York with her

jewels or something like that. No, I actually love limousine liberals. I think they're a fascinating class with the sable coats and the diamond necklaces and all that, telling us how to help the downtrodden in the world. If our estate turned in some of her jewels and fur coats, we could wipe out half of the Social Security system. But in any event, I was a bachelor. All three of us were bachelors. Of course, Senator McCarthy subsequently got married. Dave Schein got married and has six children. And I'm sure if we ask him to, he'll keep on having them if it adds anything to the legend. So there I am, third man in a combination like that.

In a strange way, in a strange way, it's like the whispering campaign of the McCarthy years. Name-calling without proof in the minds of a good many people characterized the McCarthy years. Isn't that really quite a big jump to make? Actually, haven't you made that same jump? I haven't made any jump at all. 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, we know what my epitaph is going to be in all the papers. What's it going to be? It's going to 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. And he was right. Roy Cohn, the flamboyant New York lawyer, died today of heart failure and effects of the AIDS virus. His career began as chief counsel in the McCarthy anti-communist hearings. It ended with disbarment for dishonesty. Roy Marcus Cohn died in August of 1986, the same year that his interview with Mike Wallace was broadcast. Cohn lost his last fight, but his legacy lives on in popular culture and politics. A dramatized version of Cone appeared in Tony Kushner's 1991 Pulitzer

Prize-winning play, Angels in America. Al Pacino played the dying Cone in the 2003 miniseries adaptation. You want to be nice or you want to be effective? You want to make the law or subject to it? Choose! Multiple documentaries followed, and just last year, there was the Showtime miniseries Fellow Travelers, and of course, the new feature film The Apprentice. The 60-minute story plays a role in the film. How are you, Roy?

Terrific, Mike. It's great to see you. In 2016, Donald Trump was elected president for the first time. After he assumed office, she reportedly asked his existing legal counsel, where's my Roy Cohn? Roy Cohn is not an enigma. He's simply a man who is seen differently by different people. If you engaged in amateur analysis, you might say that Roy Cohn was the kid on the block that all the bullies beat up on. And so when Roy Marcus Cohn was growing up, he was determined to get rich and get even.

And he has. This episode of 60 Minutes, A Second Look was produced by Megan Marcus and Hazel May Bryan. Maura Walls is the story editor and Jamie Benson is our senior producer and engineer. Recording assistance from Alan Pang. Bill Owens is the executive producer of 60 Minutes. Tanya Simon is the executive editor and Matthew Polivoy is the senior producer. Joseph Worshba produced the 1979 Morley Safer story, and Marion Golden produced the 1986 Mike Wallace story.

Thanks also to the crews and editors of the original pieces. And as always, a very big thank you to the incredible team at CBS News Archives, who helped make this podcast possible. I'm Seth Doan. Thanks so much for tuning in to 60 Minutes, A Second Look. We'd love to hear what you thought about the episodes from this season, so please take a moment to share your feedback by rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thanks for listening, sharing, and for every bit of support you've shown 60 Minutes A Second Look. We appreciate it.