AMERICAN SCOUNDREL 

A superlative new biography explores the corrupt lawyer who, in twentieth century America, symbolized the narcissistic and divisive politics that the country still labors with today…
Roy Cohn (1927-1986), the infamous trial lawyer forever connected with the dark days of McCarthyism, returns to the American consciousness amid the very political atmosphere he helped create, in Kai Bird's riveting and meticulously sourced American Scoundrel (co-authored with Susan Goldmark).

The impact of Roy Cohn on American politics and society continues to haunt us, as Bird makes crystal clear in this new look at the notorious power broker's flamboyant life. Born an only child to a loveless and "fractured household" in 1927's Manhattan, Cohn was an "odd little boy" coddled by his mother, Dora, who at eight years old began a habit of reading the court briefs of his father, Al, a judge. Growing up in an upper class New York milieu "drenched in turn-of-the-century Jewish culture," Cohn learned a lasting lesson from each parent:

"His father the judge taught him that life was a transactional game, and his mother taught him that if he wanted something he could demand it."

Resulting from this upbringing, Cohn naturally entered the legal profession, graduating from Columbia University Law School in 1947. Bird paints a picture of a young man harboring grudges he would take into adulthood and into Congressional courtrooms. As the Cold War descended on American life and politics, Cohn aligned himself with the country's far-right anti-communists and earned a reputation as an aggressive prosecutor in espionage cases during the 1940s. His successful prosecution of the Rosenbergs for communist espionage, resulting in the execution of the husband and wife, was a result of both Cohn's career ambitions and the deep resentment he felt at the "notion that Jews could be disloyal Americans," Bird states.

This high-profile win brought him to the attention of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, who took Cohn on as his chief counsel to his Senate Investigating Committee in early 1953, as McCarthy began hunting for supposed communist subversion within the U.S. government. Bird's analysis of the McCarthy hearings and the "codependency" of their relationship is gripping. He suggests that the Catholic McCarthy and the Jewish Cohn were a dangerous pairing of a demagogue and a clever, Manhattan socialite with a vendetta against the "Reds" within Republican President Dwight Eisenhower's administration. The two men shared similar instincts of isolationism, nativism, and a distrust for the federal government and expert opinion. Bird makes apt contemporary allusions to the current Trump administration, arguing that McCarthy's rabid followers were "not unlike the bedrock supporters of Donald Trump's 'Make America Great Again' (MAGA) movement decades later."

While the book chronicles a litany of Cohn's repulsive tactics as a lawyer in this period, it also extends its branches into Roy's personal life as a closeted gay man. The nature of Cohn's sexuality was a cause of insecurity throughout his life, Bird says. Bird relates the dizzying heights of Cohn's hypocrisies: even as a sexually active gay man, he attacked homosexuality publicly for the rest of his life (Cohn would die of AIDS in 1986). One chapter examines at length "a scandalously spicy story" involving J. Edgar Hoover that gave rise to rumors of the FBI director's cross-dressing and homosexual orientation. While not definitive, Bird's skillful evaluation of the sources raises eyebrows, regardless.

The biography moves freely, sometimes resurfacing people and events previously related in earlier chapters, but it lends the narrative a fizzy, gossipy pace that is nothing but entertaining. But the entertainment factor pales alongside the vicious and ugly nature of his subject, who, despite Bird's best attempts at neutrality and fairness ("Roy was often seductive, charming, and sweet to his friends"), comes across as a generational American villain and scoundrel of titanic proportions. Indeed, throughout his life as a communist prosecutor, lawyer, and millionaire businessman with connections to all Five Families of the New York mafia, Cohn is "proof of the ability of one individual to change the arc of history," Bird argues. Bird makes the persuasive case that Cohn's life, words, and actions "gave us the narcissistic politics of Donald Trump" (see Beyond the Book).

Using a wealth of contemporary sources, interviews, and his own discerning insights, Bird provides a necessary reassessment of America's most consequential power broker whose corrosive influence still eats away at the nation's political and social establishment. American Scoundrel is required reading for anyone curious about how the country reached its current nadir of broken government and corrupt leadership.