Editor's notes: Not an example of elite dissinformation, but bad due dilligence at best and inteintional misconduct to forge a claim at worst on the part of Whittney Webb. It sucks because her work undermines the record on J. Edgar Hoovers crossdressing, somethign which has already been peiced together, with a new unsubstanciated narrative about Roy Cohn running a pedo ring—Just a warning so people don't fall for it.
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Perhaps the most complete account of the Cohn Rosensteel blackmail ring appears in the first volume of Whitney Webb's book, One Nation Under Blackmail, in which she presents witness accounts from three different people as evidence of the blackmail ring's existence. New York attorney John Clots, XNYPD detective James Rothstein, and Lewis Rosensteel's ex-wife, Susan Rosensteel Kaufman. John Clattz, the New York lawyer, allegedly became privy to information about the blackmail ring when he was retained by a former client and lover of Roy Cohn's in the early 1980s to defend him against harassment charges initiated by Cohn. As part of his defense strategy, Clots hired private investigators to look into Cohn's personal life. And according to Clots, as quoted in the book Bobby and Jay Edgar by Burton Hirs, his investigators discovered gay orgies hosted by Cohn where powerful men could mingle with young prostitutes at a hotel in New York. Roy Cohen was providing protection. There were a bunch of pedophiles involved. That's where Cohen got his power from. Blackmail. This quotation appears in both the Hirsch and web books, but unfortunately neither of them tell us what exactly Clot saw that led him to this conclusion. To be fair, in the actual quotes we have from Clots, he did not explicitly claim to have seen any blackmail material himself. According to Hirs, it was Clots's investigators who unearthed evidence in the course of their criminal defense work that implicated Cohn in the blackmail operation. So, Clots may be a reputable lawyer and reliable as witnesses go, but we still don't know what it was that he saw exactly. And without more details, it appears he was still at best two degrees removed from seeing any actual proof of blackmail. The next witness cited by Web is the retired NYPD detective James Rothstein. According to Web's book, One Nation Under Blackmail, further confirmation of Rosensteels and Cohn's activities in the Blue Suite, later determined to be suite 233 comes from statements made by Cohn himself to former NYPD detective and ex- head of the department's human trafficking and vice related crimes division, James Rothstein. Rothstein later told John Damp, a former Nebraska state senator who investigated the Franklin scandal of the 1980s that Cohn had admitted to being part of a sexual blackmail operation targeting politicians with minors. During a sit-down interview with the former detective, Rothstein told the following about Cohn. Cohn's job was to run the little boys. Say you had an admiral, a general, a congressman who did not want to go along with the program. Cohn's job was to set them up, then they would go along. Cohn told me that himself. Rothstein later told Paul David Collins, a former journalist turned researcher, that Cohn had also identified the sexual blackmail operation as being part of the anti-communist crusade of the time. Rothstein confirmed his statements to both Damp and Collins in an interview with Whitney Webb that was conducted in early 2020. He additionally told Webb that Cohn had told him that his role in this ring had originally come about because he himself had been entrapped and blackmailed, leading Roststein to feel some sort of sympathy for Cohn. Now you may have noticed that even though web mentions John Deamp and Paul David Collins in this section, every actual claim of fact being made is ultimately sourced from one person, James Rothstein. She quotes John Deamp quoting Roststein. She quotes Paul David Collins quoting Rothststein and then she paraphrases stuff Rothstein told her himself in an interview she conducted with him. There's no indication that Roststein presented any physical or documentary evidence to any of these authors. So ultimately, we're essentially taking Roststein at his word here that he's remembering things accurately and reporting them truthfully. But there are a few reasons for skepticism. According to Roststein, Roy Cohn, the politically sophisticated lawyer and criminal who by all accounts was advising CIA executives, future presidents, and mobsters about legal matters while regularly getting away with all kinds of criminal activity for decades. spontaneously broke down within hours of meeting Roststein and for some unknown reason told him, "Oh yeah, by the way, I've been trafficking children to be abused by politicians and generals because I'm illegally blackmailing them to fight communism, but also I'm only doing it because I myself was blackmailed in a similar way." Because, oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you, I'm actually gay and also a pedophile officer. In the nearly 50 years since Roy Cohn's death, not a single other person who knew Cohn has publicly claimed that he ever confessed anything like this to him. Not his family, not his friends, lovers, co-workers, acquaintances, no one. Is it really plausible that Roy Cohn, the savvy, slickalking lawyer, would confess to blackmail and child trafficking only once, for the first time to a man he just met who happened to be an NYPD cop of all things? Does that sound realistic? To answer that, it might be helpful to know who is this James Roststein character exactly. Well, it does appear to be true that he was an NYPD detective who worked on the Vice Squad for a period and was at least marginally involved in some high-profile cases. Luckily for us, he's recorded hours of interviews where he discusses his entire career, some of which is actually corroborated by contemporaneous news articles. For example, in 1977, Rothstein arrested the Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis for trying to break into a woman's apartment. The fact that the arrest happened is beyond dispute. It was reported at the time by local media that Roststein made the arrest and he testified in Sturgis' case, which was ultimately dropped. But decades later, Roststein started telling interviewers that once he was arrested, Sturgis began spontaneously confessing his secret involvement in the JFK assassination. According to Roststein, Sturgis admitted that he was actually in D Plaza the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and in fact, he was the long hypothesized second shooter firing at Kennedy from the grassy null. To put this in context, Sturgis was indeed a CIA connected mercenary involved in gununning and guerrilla warfare in Cuba. And after his arrest in the Watergate case in 1972, he was publicly accused of involvement in the JFK assassination from multiple angles, with some suspecting that he was one of the three tramps in the famous photo from Dy Plaza, and others believing he had met with Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination. But Roststein didn't make his accusations publicly until decades after the arrest when the rumor of Frank Sturgis being in Daily Plaza was already an entrenched part of JFK lore. Roststein also claims that he was the investigator who uncovered the information that exposed the Franklin Credit Union scandal. Then while working on the Franklin scandal, he began investigating the Johnny Gosh disappearance and a group of CIA agents joined him to work on the Gosh case. But according to Rothstein, the CIA intentionally derailed the investigation by appointing a pedophile as their lead agent on the case who was soon arrested for abusing children, causing the case to implode. Just to be clear, the CIA does not investigate missing person cases, much less on American soil, and there's no evidence they've ever been involved in the Johnny Gosh case in any capacity. Roststein has also said that William Colby, the retired CIA director who died on his boat on a river near his house, was actually murdered because he was about to reveal the truth about the blackmail ring that had trafficked Johnny Gosh. Roststein further claims that while working as a detective for the NYPD, Pope John Paul I personally asked him to investigate corruption in the Vatican bank. And Roststein soon discovered that the Pope was secretly gay and being blackmailed. And when the pope died just a few days later, Roststein learned that he had not suffered a heart attack as was widely reported, but rather he had actually been poisoned by Joseph Ratzinger, the cardinal who would go on to become pope years later. Just like his story about Roy Cohn's blackmail ring, the only evidence for any of these claims is Roststein's testimony. And even then, he never mentioned any of the stuff publicly until decades after the events in question. There's no evidence whatsoever that Roststein was involved in investigating the Franklin scandal or the Vatican bank besides his word. No news articles from the time, no government documents, no case notes that anyone's ever seen, nothing. In fact, John Deamp even interviewed Roststein for his book on the Franklin scandal called the Franklin coverup. But Roststein is only quoted in the book anonymously in relation to Roy Cohn's alleged blackmail ring. If Roststein was really so involved in the discovery of the Franklin scandal, why would John Deamp, the primary authority on the Franklin case, neglect to mention this in a book in which he interviews Roststein? If he was so central to the Franklin investigation, wouldn't Damp have at least named Roststein in the book instead of just anonymously quoting him one time about a different case? To be clear, I think Whitney Webb's choice to present Roststein's accusations about Roy Cohn without the context of Rostin's larger biographical claims is irresponsible, bordering on dishonest. The likelihood that Roy Cohn randomly confessed to Detective Roststein about running a child trafficking operation the day he met him is already low. the probability that Roststein was getting calls from the blackmailed gay pope while solving the JFK assassination, uncovering the Franklin scandal, sussing out pedo CIA agents, and unraveling Roy Cohn's blackmail ring seems astronomical. And unfortunately, this wasn't the only cause for skepticism. In Whitney Webb's footnotes in the section of One Nation Under Blackmail discussing Meer Lansky's possible blackmail of Hoover, we find the passage's widow also later claimed that her husband had acquired quote hard proof of Hoover's homosexuality and used it to neutralize the FBI as a threat to his own operations. The citation web provides for this quote leads us to source number 59, a book called Conspiracy in Camelot, the complete history of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy by a guy named Jerome Croth. The passage websites can be found on page 233. But if we go to page 233 and look at the section containing the quote, we find citation number 59 from Jerome Croth telling us he got that quote from the Anthony Summers book, Official and Confidential. Now, Whitney Webb cites Official and Confidential repeatedly throughout her book, including multiple times in that very same chapter. That's weird. Why would Whitney Webb quote from this Jerome Croth guy's book if Jerome Croth was saying that he had sourced the quote from another book that's already on Web's list of citations? Well, according to Cross, he got that quote from page 213 of official and confidential. Let's see what that page says. Oh, I guess that's why she didn't cite the original. Cross had attributed this statement to Myer Lansky's wife and put it in quotation marks as if it was a direct quote of something she actually said. But the actual passage he was citing isn't in quotation marks and doesn't even mention Myer Lansky's wife at all. Instead of Lansky's wife, Summers attributes the claim to quote other information, not a specific person. Web cites Official and Confidential dozens of times in her book. She must have been aware of this discrepancy. So why print the book like this? Why quote from Jerome Croth quoting Anthony Summers when you can just quote Anthony Summers himself? Why make it look like the quote came from Myer Lansky's wife when she must have known that it wasn't a direct quote and Lansky's wife wasn't even the source of that information? Did she think it would sound more authoritative if the quote was attributed to Lansky's wife? Whatever the case, it's hard to imagine how this could have happened accidentally. The very next sentence of Web's book says, "The photos showed Hoover engaged in sexual activity, specifically oralosex, with his longtime friend, FBI director Clyde Tolson, and directs us to end note number 60 as the source for this information. But if we go to the UPI story that number 60 links to, it doesn't say that Hoover had specifically oral sex with Clyde Toulson. And in fact, oral sex isn't mentioned in the article at all." Whitney Webb also wrote a series of articles for the website Unlimited Hangout, summarizing and elaborating on her research from One Nation Under Blackmail. In her article, Government by Blackmail, Jeffrey Epstein, Trump's mentor, and the dark secrets of the Reagan era. Web posits a connection between Roy Cohn's alleged blackmail ring, the public relations man Robert Keith Gray, and the CIA, writing, quote, "It was later revealed by former Nebraska State Senator turned investigator John Deamp that Robert Keith Gray was a specialist in homosexual blackmail operations for the CIA and was reported to have collaborated with Roy Cohn in those activities. But what is the evidence for these assertions? The only citation Web provides is a hyperlink that leads to a PDF copy of John Damp's book, The Franklin Coverup. Web doesn't specify a page number, but if we search Damp's book for Gray and Cohn's names in relation to blackmail, and cross reference the claim with a similar passage from Web's book, One Nation Under Blackmail, it turns up only one possible candidate from pages 178 and 179. Quote, Gray's own sexual proclivities were the subject of an article in the July August 1982 issue of the Deep Backgrounder titled Reagan inaugural co-chairman powerful closet homosexual. The Deep Backgrounder tabloid featured exposees of homosexual networks in Washington DC. Its contributing editor was a former senior CIA official named Victor Marchetti. During the Watergate era, Robert Keith Gray served on the board of Consultants International, founded by CIA agent Edwin Wilson. When Wilson and fellow agent Frank Turple got caught running guns abroad, Gray tried to deny his connection with Wilson. Yet, 10 years before, according to Peter Moss' book, Manhunt, in a top secret Navy review of Wilson's intelligence career, Gray described Wilson as a person of unqualified trust, with whom he'd been in contact professionally two or three times a month since 1963. Author Jim Hogan in Secret Agenda reported another aspect of Wilson's work for the CIA. According to fugitive ex CIA officer Frank Turple, CIA directed sexual blackmail operations were intensive in Washington at about the time of the Watergate scandal. One of those operations, Turple claims, was run by his former partner, Ed Wilson. In a letter to the author, Turple explained that historically one of Wilson's agency jobs was to subvert members of both houses of Congress by any means necessary. Certain people could be easily coerced by living out their sexual fantasies in the flesh. A remembrance of these occasions was permanently recorded via selected cameras. Ray's associate, Wilson, was apparently continuing the work of a reported collaborator of Gray from the 1950s. McCarthy committee council, Roy Cohn, now dead of AIDS. According to the former head of the Vice Squad for one of America's biggest cities, Cohn's job was to run the little boys. Say you had an admiral, a general, a congressman who didn't want to go along with the program. Cohn's job was to set them up, then they would go along. Cohn told me that himself. Now, remember the claim that supposedly being proven was quote, "Robert Keith Gray was a specialist in homosexual blackmail operations for the CIA and was reported to have collaborated with Roy Cohn in those activities." But what evidence do we actually have here? Well, if that last quote sounds familiar, it's because it's the exact same quote we covered earlier from XNYPD detective James Rothstein. So ultimately, our evidence is that Robert Keith Gray worked with a guy who was accused of involvement in sexual blackmail by the gunrunning fugitive exia agent Frank Turple, which hardly makes Gray himself an expert in blackmail. Plus a single quote from James Roststein, who claims to have been involved in every conspiracy from the JFK assassination to the Franklin scandal to the Vatican bank and an article alleging that Robert Keith Gray was a closeted homosexual from some tabloid called the Deep Backgrounder. And just what was this Deep Backgrounder tabloid anyway? Well, according to a contemporaneous article from Harper's magazine, Deep Backgrounder was a newsletter dedicated to outing supposedly closeted politicians published by the Holocaust denying white nationalist group, The Liberty Lobby. In fact, the very same issue of the Deep Backgrounder that accused Robert Keith Gray of being gay also carried a story about a Senate page from Arkansas named Leroy Williams Jr. who said he'd had gay sex with three congressmen and procured gay prostitutes for others. But Williams later admitted he'd made up the whole story because he was being investigated for stealing another page's car. Is this evidence sufficient to establish the claim that Robert Keith Gray not only specialized in homosexual blackmail, but that he did so for the CIA in collaboration with Roy Cohn? Well, ultimately that's up to you. But I have to admit, I'm skeptical. And I hate to have to say it, but this became somewhat of a pattern when delving into Whitney Webb's work. I'd come across a claim that I wanted more information about. check the footnotes and then discover that the original document she cited was vague or presented misleadingly or missing context that totally changed the meaning of the text she had cited.
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By: Psych History Show
Raped by: Otto Heckel
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