Cohn

Roy M. Cohn

Roy Marcus Cohn (February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) was an American lawyer who came to prominence during the investigations by Senator Joseph McCarthy into alleged Communists in the U.S. government, especially during the Army-McCarthy Hearings. He was also a key figure of prosecution in the Rosenbergs trial. A highly controversial figure, he wielded tremendous political power at times.

Early life

Born in New York, New York, Cohn was the only child of Dora Marcus and Albert Cohn, a New York judge who was influential in Democratic Party politics. He lived with his parents until his mother's death in 1969, after which he lived in New York, the District of Columbia, and Greenwich, Connecticut.

A 1946 graduate of Columbia College, Cohn graduated from Columbia Law School at the age of 20, and began working for the office of United States Attorney Irving Saypol in Manhattan, a position many have attributed to his politically connected father.^{[citation needed]}

Although he was registered as a Democrat, Cohn supported most of the Republican presidents of his time and Republicans in major seats across New York.

Anti-Communist investigations

As Saypol's assistant at the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan, Cohn helped to win a number of high-profile anti-Communist cases. He was known for his zealous prosecution of William Remington (a former Commerce Department employee convicted of perjury relating to his membership in the Communist Party), for the prosecution of 11 Communist Party leaders for sedition under the Smith Act, and for his work in the Alger Hiss case.

Cohn was most famous for his prominent role in the 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Cohn's direct examination of Ethel's brother David Greenglass produced the testimony (in which the brother later claimed he perjured himself) that was mostly responsible for the Rosenbergs' conviction and execution.

Cohn took great pride in the Rosenberg case, and claimed to have played an even greater part than his public role: he said in his autobiography that his own influence had led to both Saypol and Judge Irving Kaufman (a family friend) being appointed to the case, and that Kaufman had imposed the death penalty on Cohn's personal advice.

The Rosenberg trial brought the 24-year-old Cohn to the attention of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover, who recommended him to McCarthy. McCarthy hired Cohn as his chief counsel, choosing him over Robert Kennedy, reportedly in part to avoid accusations of an anti-Semitic motivation for the investigations. Cohn soon gained power nearly equal to McCarthy's own in the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, becoming known for his aggressive questioning of suspected Communists. Cohn tended to be disinclined to hold the hearings in open forums. This mixed well with McCarthy's preference for holding "executive sessions" and "off-the-record" sessions far away from the Capitol in order to minimize public scrutiny and to question witnesses with relative impunity. Cohn was given free rein in pursuit of many investigations, with McCarthy joining in only for the more publicized sessions.

Cohn confers with Senator McCarthy at the Army-McCarthy Hearings

It was Cohn who invited G. David Schine, an anti-communist propagandist, to join McCarthy's staff as a consultant. When Schine was drafted into the army in 1953, Cohn made repeated and extensive efforts to procure special treatment for Schine. He contacted military officials from the Secretary of the Army down to Schine's company commander, and demanded that Schine be given light duties, extra leave and not be assigned overseas. At one point, Cohn is reported to have threatened to "wreck the Army" if his demands were not met.^[1] This conflict led to the Army-McCarthy Hearings of 1954, in which the Army charged Cohn and McCarthy with using improper pressure on Schine's behalf, while McCarthy and Cohn counter-charged that the Army was holding Schine "hostage" in an attempt to squelch McCarthy's investigations into Communists in the Army. Although the findings of the hearings placed the blame on Cohn rather than McCarthy, they are widely viewed as a key element in McCarthy's fall from power. After the Army-McCarthy Hearings, Cohn resigned from McCarthy's staff and went into private practice.

Later career

After leaving McCarthy, Cohn built a 30-year career as a high-powered attorney in New York City. His clients included Donald Trump, Mafia figures Tony Salerno, Carmine Galante and John Gotti, Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, the Archdiocese of New York, and the New York Yankees baseball club. He was known for his active social life, charitable giving, and combative personality. He maintained close ties with conservative politics, serving as an informal advisor to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Cohn was the grandnephew of Joshua Lionel Cowen, founder of the Lionel model train company. By 1959, Cowen and his son Lawrence had become involved in a family dispute over control of the company. Cohn and a group of investors stepped in and bought the majority of both of the Cowens' shares of stock, thus gaining control of the company. Under Cohn's leadership, Lionel was plagued by declining sales, quality control problems, and huge financial losses. In 1963, he was forced to resign from the company.

Federal investigations in the 1970s and 1980s charged Cohn three times with professional misconduct, including perjury and witness tampering. He was accused in New York of financial improprieties related to city contracts and private investments. He was never convicted of any charge. In 1986, a five-judge panel of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court disbarred Cohn for unethical and unprofessional conduct, including misappropriation of clients' funds, lying on a bar application, and pressuring a client to amend his will. In this case in 1975, Cohn entered the hospital room of a dying and comatose Lewis Rosenstiel, the multi-millionaire founder of Schenley Industries, forced a pen to his hand and lifted it to the will in an attempt to make himself and Cathy Frank-- Rosenstiel's granddaughter-- beneficiaries. The resulting marks were determined in court to be indecipherable and in no way a valid signature.^[2] He lost his law license during the last month of his life.

Private life and death

Rumors of Cohn's homosexuality began to spread throughout Washington shortly after Joseph McCarthy appointed him chief counsel to McCarthy's subcommittee.^{[citation needed]} When he brought on the wealthy and handsome G. David Schine as chief consultant, it became widely speculated that Schine and Cohn had a sexual relationship, although some historians have more recently concluded it was just a friendship.^[3][4][5] During the Army-McCarthy hearings, he denied having "special interest" in Schine or being bound to him "closer than to the ordinary friend."^[3]

Joseph Welch, the Army's attorney in the hearings, made an apparent reference to Cohn's homosexuality. After asking a witness if a photo entered as evidence "came from a pixie," he defined "pixie" for McCarthy as "a close relative of a fairy." (Fairy was a common term for a homosexual person.) The people at the hearing recognized the allusion and found it amusing; Cohn later called the remark "malicious," "wicked," and "indecent."^[3]

Cohn and McCarthy targeted many government officials and cultural figures not only for suspected Communist sympathies but - in a move of suspected hypocrisy on Cohn's part - also for alleged homosexual tendencies, sometimes using sexual secrets as a blackmail tool to gain informants. The men whose homosexuality Cohn exposed often lost jobs, families, and homes; some committed suicide. It is said that when Cohn learned that one of his victims had killed himself, he celebrated with a bottle of champagne.^{[citation needed]}

During debates over New York City's first gay rights law, Cohn said homosexuals should not be allowed to be schoolteachers.

In 1984, Cohn was diagnosed with AIDS, and he attempted to keep his condition secret while receiving aggressive drug treatment. He participated in clinical trials of the new drug AZT, but reportedly used his influence to persuade the researchers to keep him out of the control group, which received inert substances rather than the experimental drug.^{[citation needed]} He insisted to his dying day that his disease was liver cancer.

He died on August 2, 1986, of complications from AIDS at the age of 59. He is buried in Queens, New York.

Fictional portrayals and references in popular culture

Al Pacino as Roy Cohn in Angels in America

A dramatic, controversial man in life, Cohn inspired many dramatic fictional portrayals after his death. Probably the most famous is his role in Tony Kushner's Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, in which Cohn is portrayed as a self-hating, power-hungry hypocrite who refuses to accept himself as a homosexual, and is haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg as he lies dying of AIDS. In the 2003 HBO version of Kushner's play, Cohn was played by Al Pacino, and Rosenberg was played by Meryl Streep. Cohn is also a character in Kushner's one-act play, G. David Schine in Hell.

Cohn has also been portrayed by James Woods in the 1992 biopic Citizen Cohn, and by Joe Pantoliano in Robert Kennedy and His Times.

Cohn is portrayed in an episode of The X-Files, in which an elderly former FBI agent (Darren McGavin) speaks to Agent Mulder about the early years of the McCarthy era and the beginning of the X-Files.

In the early 1990s Cohn was also one of two subjects of The Wooster Group's Ron Vawter's one man show Roy Cohn/Jack Smith.

Kurt Vonnegut included a fictionalized Roy M. Cohn in his 1979 novel Jailbird. Vonnegut used Cohn with his verbal permission, promising to "do him no harm and to present him as an appallingly effective attorney for either the prosecution or the defense of anyone," according to the introduction of the novel.

Roy Cohn, Rock Hudson, and Michel Foucault are the main characters in Matias Viegener's widely anthologized story, "Twilight of the Gods." The three men meet for HIV treatment in the American Hospital of Paris and a strange settling of scores and love triangle ensues.

The nasal voice of the unnamed but recurring "Blue-Haired Lawyer" character on The Simpsons is based on that of Roy Cohn, according to DVD commentaries by show writers Al Jean and Mike Reiss.^[6]

Notes

References and further reading

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