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This time, both Cohn and fellow Attorney Gottesman were called to testify before the grand jury. Both, says the indictment, conspired with others to give "evasive, fictitious, fraudulent, vague, false and manufactured testimony." Furthermore, they conspired "corruptly, and by threats and threatening communications, to influence, intimidate and impede, and endeavored to influence, intimidate and impede witnesses before grand jurors."
But Roy Cohn is nothing if not a windmilling fighter—and no sooner had the indictment been handed down than he began swinging out on all sides. The charges against him, he cried, were "conceived by intimidation, threat and blackmail, a vendetta to get my scalp."
The villain, he claimed, was U.S. Attorney Robert Morgenthau "and company," who "have abused the power of their office . . . misused public funds . . . sought perjured testimony" out of "personal animus, the desire for political revenge, and an attempt to pander to the longstanding prejudice of his superiors." Among the "superiors," Cohn hinted darkly, was Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, his old foe from the McCarthy Committee days. "History speaks for itself," Cohn told a press conference. "I have never been invited to any of his swimming parties."
That Certain Feeling. As for Morgenthau's "vendetta," it all went back a dozen years or so, Cohn explained, when he was investigating charges of Communist spy infiltration into the Treasury Department. In the 1940s, Cohn recalled, Communist Helper Harry Dexter White was working in the Treasury, and Robert Morgenthau's father Henry was Treasury Secretary. "I have no personal malice toward Morgenthau senior," added Cohn charitably, "but Morgenthau junior has harbored a feeling about this."
The feeling is so strong, claimed Cohn, that Robert Morgenthau hired "an international bounty hunter" to go out and "get something on Roy Cohn." Cohn accused Morgenthau of leaking stories about him to the press, of harassing him through the Internal Revenue Service, of spreading word through Federal Detention Headquarters that any prisoner willing to implicate Cohn might get a break, and of offering immunity to "gangsters and racketeers in order to get perjured evidence against me." And he referred to "a prominent case recently concluded" in which Morgenthau "obtained the sentencing of all the defendants except those from whom he sought to extract something unfavorable concerning me. To whip these defendants in line, he has 'deferred' their sentences with promises of leniency if they play his game, and threats of long jail terms if they do not." Cohn did not indicate whether the "prominent case" was the United Dye scandal, or if the "defendants" were his old friends from Las Vegas.
The Fight to Come. So blatant is this vendetta, declared Cohn, that a jury trial in a federal court would really not suffice for the presentation of Cohn's evidence. He would much prefer a public investigation by a bar association or the Senate Judiciary Committee. In any case, he is prepared to battle all the way. He should, for if he is found guilty of all the charges against him, he could get $36,000 in fines and 40 years in prison.