What makes Roy Cohn tick?
A love of a good fight.
A certain pleasure I derive in fighting against power
and the establishment.
I will take on a cause against practically anybody.
I hate hypocrisy.
You describe yourself, and it rings true, as a non-conformist.
Right. I am myself, an oddball in a lot of ways.
I don't like conventional things or conventional standards
or conventional people or conventional boredom,
or anything along those lines.
In fact, I, very early in life, broke with tradition,
and left my Jewish upper-class-oriented life, in New York,
and became a contradiction of everything I was supposed to stand for.
- Let me talk to you about your boat. - Sure.
- Okay. What did you--? The boat sunk off Florida. - Okay, it was not my boat.
It was owned by a corporation.
And it was leased part-time by the firm.
A crew member's killed on a boat that many considered yours.
So it was not my boat.
The name of the crew member was Charles Martensen, he was 21,
and his father, who I've talked to...
In effect-- Not in effect, just out and out thinks you murdered his son.
- He thinks I murdered his son? - To get the insurance on the boat.
Well, of course, let's look at it this way.
A, I didn't own the boat. B, I didn't get the insurance.
C, the statement is an outrageous falsehood.
Four, how am I gonna get angry at a man who lost his son?
Couldn't be sorrier for him and for what happened.
Many people who I've talked to have said to me,
"Do you know that Roy is a homosexual?"
I would answer you this way.
Anybody who knows me, or knows anything about me,
or who knows the way my mind works,
would have an awfully hard time reconciling...
that with any kind of homosexuality.
In other words, every facet of my personality,
my aggressiveness and my toughness, and everything along those lines,
is just totally, I suppose, incompatible with anything like that.
But he didn't say he was, he didn't say he wasn't.
A lot of people say they see you with a lot of good-looking young men.
I like young people. There's no question about that.
I like being around young people. They're more fun.
If I said to you, "Roy Cohn, what are your flaws?"
What are my flaws?
Okay, I'll tell you what my flaws are.
My flaws are being completely tactless.
I cannot listen to baloney. Impatience.
A total failure to sympathize with the emotional element in life.
Last question today.
A fair number of people say Roy Cohn is amoral.
He will use anything to win, do anything to win.
Employ any trick, any subterfuge, etcetera.
I'd say that has to come, probably, from people who have lost to me.
- Because I... - But here...