American lawyer who gained notoriety as Joseph McCarthy's assistant during the Communist scare of the 1950s. Shortly before his death he was disbarred in New York for unethical practices.
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Attorney, federal prosecutor, and communist-hunter, Roy Marcus Cohn built a flamboyant, successful, and troubled career on his prominent role in Cold War politics. As a wunderkind whose legal prowess quickly brought him to national attention, Cohn took part in the controversial espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1951. By the mid-1950s, he helped engineer Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's notorious anti-Communist witch hunts. From the 1950s to the 1980s, his private practice put him in the top rank of celebrity attorneys, but questionable ethics ultimately led to his being disbarred in 1986.
The privilege of family connections helped launch Cohn's career. He was born on February 20, 1927, in New York, New York, the son of a prominent state supreme court judge. His father was well connected in the Democratic party. By age ten, Cohn had already met Franklin D. Roosevelt. Academic brilliance helped Cohn sail quickly through college, and he earned his law degree from Columbia University in 1947 at the age of twenty. He then had to wait one year in order to meet the state's minimum age for admission to the New York State Bar. Meanwhile, he worked for two years in the U.S. district attorney's office before moving to Washington, D.C., in 1950, to join the Justice Department as an assistant U.S. attorney.
In Washington, Cohn established his anti-Communist credentials. For the period of the Cold War, this was a good career move: hysteria was about to grip the nation, and he would help tighten the grip. At twenty-three, he served as the third-ranking prosecutor on the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the American Communists who were convicted and sentenced to death in 1951 for furnishing A-bomb secrets to Soviet spies. During the trial, Cohn held a number of improper ex parte—one-sided—private conversations with Judge Irving Kaufman outside of court. According to Nicholas von Hoffman's 1988 biography Citizen Cohn, the attorney probably used these talks to convince Judge Kaufman to impose the death penalty. Cohn denied doing so in his posthumously published 1988 book The Autobiography of Roy Cohn, but claimed that the judge told him the verdict of the trial even before it began. The American Bar Association ultimately exonerated both Cohn and Kaufman for their conversations.
The Rosenberg trial put Cohn on a fast track to prominence. Adding to his reputation as an enemy of radicalism, he toured U.S.-sponsored libraries in Europe in 1952 on behalf of the U.S. Senate, confiscating subversive books. In 1953, he was a special assistant to Attorney General James McGranery, but he left the job for greater visibility. He became chief counsel to the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, beating out Robert F. Kennedy for the position. The subcommittee would make history as the bully pulpit for Senator Joseph P. McCarthy, who used it to conduct his relentless pursuit of Communists in the United States government.
Cohn was McCarthy's right-hand man. In the Senate, he sat beside the senator and took part in the grilling of witnesses who were hauled before the committee. Officially, his role as McCarthy's special counsel made him the senator's assistant, but the relationship worked differently behind the scenes. Cohn knew more people than McCarthy did and was smarter. He helped compile lists of witnesses and suspects, a task made easier by his friendship with FBI Director J. EdgarHoover. When McCarthy blundered by challenging the Army in 1954, his political career went down in flames. Cohn came in for criticism for having sought special favors for a friend in the Army. But unlike McCarthy, who was censured by the Senate and died a broken man in 1957, Cohn escaped to a new, lucrative career.
In private practice in New York, Cohn flourished. Although many intellectuals excoriated him for his role in the McCarthy witch hunts, he gained prominent clients from across the political spectrum. He represented everyone from alleged mob bosses to pop stars, and he was largely successful often without having to appear in court. Cohn had developed the right friends: newspaper columnists, publishing magnates, politicians, judges, and lawyers. He was as feared for his ability to get headlines published as he was for any oral argument he might make. Outside of his practice, he wrote widely in the popular and legal press, and authored four books, including How to Stand Up for Your Rights—And Win! (1981).
Though successful and popular until shortly before his death, Cohn was a complicated and enigmatic figure. Although he was Jewish, he befriended anti-Semites and used anti-Semitic jibes. Outspoken against homosexual rights, he was a gay man himself. He concealed to the end the fact that he was dying of AIDS. Pursued for twenty years by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), he had no bank account and owned little property; the IRS was unable to collect the reported $7 million he owed in back taxes. Months before his death on August 6, 1986, Cohn was disbarred for ethical abuses that included lying, stealing, attempting to defraud a client, and forgery.
| Wikipedia: Roy Cohn |
| Roy Marcus Cohn | |
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Roy Cohn in 1964 |
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| Born | February 20, 1927 New York City |
| Died | August 2, 1986 (aged 59) Bethesda, Maryland |
| Cause of death | AIDS |
| Education | Horace Mann School Fieldston School Columbia College Columbia Law School |
| Occupation | Lawyer |
| Known for | Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial (1951) Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel (1953–1954) |
| Parents | Dora Marcus Albert C. Cohn |
Roy Marcus Cohn (February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) was an American conservative lawyer who became famous during Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations into Communist infiltration of U.S. government, and especially during the Army-McCarthy Hearings. He was also an important member of the prosecution team for the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
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Born in New York City, Cohn was the only child of Dora Marcus (1892–1967) and Albert Cohn (1885–1959), a New York judge who was influential in Democratic Party politics.[1][2][3] He lived in his parents' home until the death of his mother Dora Marcus Cohn in 1967 (his father Albert Cohn died in 1959), after which he lived in New York, the District of Columbia, and Greenwich, Connecticut.
After attending Horace Mann School[4] and the Fieldston School,[5][6] and completing studies at Columbia College in 1946, Cohn graduated from Columbia Law School at the age of 20. He had to wait until his 21st birthday to be admitted to the bar, and used his family connections to obtain a position in the office of United States Attorney Irving Saypol in Manhattan the day he was admitted.[1]
Although he was registered as a Democrat, Cohn supported most of the Republican presidents of his time and Republicans in major offices across New York.
As Saypol's assistant at the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan, Cohn helped to win a number of well-publicized 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 USA), 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 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 had perjured himself[citation needed]) that was mostly responsible for the Rosenbergs' conviction and execution.
Cohn took great pride in the Rosenberg verdict, 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 assisted McCarthy's work for 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 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 invited his friend 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.[7][8] 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. During the hearings, a photograph of Schine was introduced, and Joseph N. Welch accused Cohn of doctoring the image to show Schine alone with Army Secretary Robert Stevens.[7] Although the findings of the hearings blamed Cohn rather than McCarthy, they are widely considered an important element of McCarthy's disgrace. After the Army-McCarthy Hearings, Cohn resigned from McCarthy's staff and went into private practice.
After leaving McCarthy, Cohn had a 30-year career as an 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 Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and the New York Yankees baseball club. He was known for his active social life, charitable giving, and combative personality. In the early 1960s he became a member of the John Birch Society and a principal figure in the Western Goals Foundation. He maintained close ties in conservative political circles, serving as an informal advisor to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.[1]
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. In October 1959, Cohn and a group of investors stepped in and gained control of the company, having bought 200,000 of the firm's 700,000 shares, which were purchased by his syndicate from the Cowens and on the open market over a three-month period prior to the takeover.[9] 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 after losing a proxy fight.[10]
Federal investigations during the 1970s and 1980s charged Cohn three times with professional misconduct, including perjury and witness tampering.[1] 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.[11] He lost his law license during the last month of his life. At this time, National Review senior editor Jeffrey Hart referred to him as "an ice-cold sleaze."
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 Schine as chief consultant, speculation arose that Schine and Cohn had a sexual relationship, although some historians have more recently concluded the friendship was platonic.[12][13][14] During the Army-McCarthy hearings, he denied having "special interest" in Schine or being bound to him "closer than to the ordinary friend."[12] 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, and is, a derogatory term for a gay man. The people at the hearing recognized the allusion and found it amusing; Cohn later called the remark "malicious," "wicked," and "indecent."[12] Cohn and McCarthy targeted many government officials and cultural figures not only for suspected Communist sympathies, but also for alleged homosexuality.[15]
In 1984, Cohn was diagnosed with AIDS[16] and attempted to keep his condition secret while receiving experimental drug treatment. He participated in clinical trials of AZT, a drug initially synthesized to treat cancer, but later developed as the first anti-HIV agent for AIDS patients. He insisted to his dying day that his disease was liver cancer.[17] According to Republican political consultant Roger Stone, for whom Cohn was a role model, Cohn's "absolute goal was to die completely broke and owing millions to the IRS. He succeeded in that."[18]
He died on August 2, 1986 in Bethesda, Maryland, of complications from AIDS at the age of 59.[6] He is buried in Union Field Cemetery in Queens, New York.[1][7][19]
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 is haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg as he lies dying of AIDS. In the initial Broadway production, the role was created by Ron Liebman; in the 2003 HBO version of Kushner's play, Cohn was played by Al Pacino. 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, by Joe Pantoliano in Robert Kennedy and His Times, and by George Wyner in Tailgunner Joe.
Cohn is portrayed by actor David Moreland in the X-Files episode "Travelers", in which an elderly former FBI agent speaks to Agent Fox 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 Ron Vawter's one man show Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, with Cohn's part written by Gary Indiana.[20]
Kurt Vonnegut included a fictionalized character named Roy M. Cohn in his 1979 novel Jailbird. Vonnegut used Cohn with his verbal permission, promising in a January 1979 telephone call 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 prologue of the novel.[21]
Roy Cohn is mentioned in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire".
The nasal voice of the unnamed but recurring Blue-Haired Lawyer character on The Simpsons, often retained by Mr. Burns or acting as the prosecutor, is based on that of Roy Cohn.[22] As well, a mock Paul Harvey radio broadcast in The Simpsons episode "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" reports "that little boy that nobody liked grew up to be... Roy Cohn. And now you know the rest of the story." In "Thirty Minutes over Tokyo", another episode of The Simpsons, money management guru Chuck Garabedian explains that he got his suit cheap "because Roy Cohn died in it."
Roy Cohn plays an important role in Mary-Beth Hughes' 2002 novel Wavemaker II.
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