Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [141]
Roy Cohn flaunted his homosexuality around Susan. He openly caressed one young man, a former congressional associate, in front of her. He seemed to take pleasure in telling her about the sexual proclivities of her husband’s friends – including, especially, the homosexuality of Cardinal Spellman.
Sometime in 1958, probably in the spring, Rosenstiel asked his wife whether, while living in Paris with her previous husband, she had ever witnessed an orgy. ‘A few weeks later, when Cohn was there, he commented that I was a “regular” and knew what life was, that my first husband had been gay and I must have understood because I’d stayed with him for nine years. And they said how would I like to go to a party at the Hotel Plaza? But if it ever got out, it would be the most terrible thing in the world. I told them, “If you want to go, I’ll go.” Cohn said, “You’re in for a big surprise …”’
A few days later Rosenstiel took his wife to the Plaza, the venerable hotel overlooking New York’s Central Park. They entered through a side entrance and took an elevator to a suite on the second or third floor. She had the impression her husband had been there before. ‘He knocked,’ Susan recalled, ‘and Roy Cohn opened the door. It was a beautiful suite, one of their biggest, all done in light blue. Hoover was there already, and I couldn’t believe what I saw.’
According to Mrs Rosenstiel, Edgar was dressed up as a woman, in full drag. ‘He was wearing a fluffy black dress, very fluffy, with flounces, and lace stockings and high heels, and a black curly wig. He had makeup on, and false eyelashes. It was a very short skirt, and he was sitting there in the living room of the suite with his legs crossed. Roy introduced him to me as “Mary” and he replied, “Good evening,” brusque, like the first time I’d met him. It was obvious he wasn’t a woman, you could see where he shaved. It was Hoover. You’ve never seen anything like it. I couldn’t believe it, that I should see the head of the FBI dressed as a woman.
‘There was a bar set up with drinks, and we had drinks. Not too much. I think it was about then that Roy muttered to me that Hoover didn’t know that I knew who he was, that I’d think he was someone else. I certainly didn’t address him the way I had at other times, as Mr Hoover. I was afraid of my life by then.
‘The next thing, a couple of boys come in, young blond boys. I’d say about eighteen or nineteen. And then Roy makes the signal we should go into the bedroom. It was a tremendous bedroom, with a bed like in Caesar’s time, with a damask spread, blue, I think, like the suite. And they go into the bedroom, and Hoover takes off his lace dress and pants, and under the dress he was wearing a little, short garter belt. He lies on the double bed, and the two boys work on him with their hands. One of them wore rubber gloves.’
After a while, said Susan Rosenstiel, the group returned to the living room. ‘Cohn had brought up some food. Cold stuff, so as not to have room service. So we had a little something to eat.
‘Then Rosenstiel got into the act with the boys. I thought, “You disgusting old man …” Hoover and Cohn were watching, enjoying it. Then Cohn runs to get himself satisfied – full sex – with the two boys. Those poor boys. He couldn’t get enough. But Hoover only had them, you know, playing with him. I didn’t see him take part in any anal sex. Rosenstiel wanted me to get involved, but I wouldn’t do it.’
Later the Rosenstiels went home in their limousine, leaving Cohn and Edgar, with the boys, in the suite. Rosenstiel would not discuss Edgar’s part in the evening’s events, but Cohn later laughed about it. ‘He said, “That was really something, wasn’t it, with Mary Hoover?” He told me, as if it had happened before, “I arrive at the Plaza first with his clothes in a suitcase.” Cohn said Hoover came in through the side entrance on Fifty-eighth