Who is Roy Cohn?
by David Bianco
Roy Cohn, a ruthless, ambitious, and unethical attorney, was the right-hand
man of the infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy. He was also a closeted gay Jew
who used his power against other Jews and gays.
Born in New York in 1927, Cohn graduated from Columbia Law School at 20,
passed the bar at 21, and became the youngest assistant U.S. attorney.
The case that launched his career was the 1951 trial of Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, accused of leaking atomic secrets to the Soviets. Cohn was one of
four attorneys who successfully prosecuted them for treason, but it was he
alone who convinced the judge, an old family friend, to impose the death
penalty.
In January 1953, McCarthy chose Cohn over Robert Kennedy as chief counsel to
the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations. For the next 18 months, Cohn's
vicious and single-minded ferreting out of suspected Communists and
homosexuals in the government made his name a household word.
Cohn brought to the committee his good friend, G. David Schine, as an unpaid
"consultant." The young man's only qualification seems to have been that he
had written an eight-page booklet called "Definition of Communism," which
he placed in the hotels his family owned.
When Schine was drafted and came close to being sent to Korea, Cohn
relentlessly attempted to get him an official assignment on the committee.
Unable to pull the necessary strings, Cohn resorted to intimidating the
Secretary of the Army, Robert Stevens. Charges and countercharges of bribery
flew. The Army accused Cohn of threatening to investigate their ranks unless
Private Schine got a cushy assignment. Cohn maintained that the Army was
holding Schine "hostage" until Cohn agreed to ignore its infiltration by
Communists. The televised Army-McCarthy hearings, initiated by the Senate to
explore the allegations, began in April 1954 and were viewed by an
estimated
20 million people.
Cohn's unwavering devotion to Schine suggested that they were lovers, though
Cohn was probably just infatuated with the handsome young man. During the
hearings, several members of the Senate baited Cohn, pressuring him about
his "special interest" in Schine.
At one low point, Joseph Welch, the Army's attorney, asked McCarthy about
a doctored photo of Secretary Stevens smiling at Schine:
Welch: Did you think this [photo] came from a pixie? ...
McCarthy: Will the counsel for my benefit define - I think he might be an
expert on that - what a pixie is?
Welch: Yes, I should say, Senator, that a pixie is a close relative of a
fairy. Shall I proceed, sir? Have I enlightened you?
The room erupted in laughter, to Cohn's humiliation. Cohn's biographer calls
the photo McCarthy and Cohn's "smoking gun," the proof of their mendacity. By
December 1954, Cohn had resigned and McCarthy was censured by the Senate.
The senator died two years later of alcoholism. Throughout his life, Cohn
called McCarthy "the greatest man I ever worked for."
Over the next 30 years, Cohn built a high-powered law career in New York.
Between 1963 and 1971, however, he was indicted three times for crimes such
as perjury and witness tampering. Cohn was acquitted in each case, but in the
1980s, further allegations of unethical conduct finally led to disbarment,
just weeks before he died of AIDS on August 2, 1986.
Though he himself had been the target of homophobia, to his dying day Cohn
refused to acknowledge being gay or that he had AIDS, claiming he was
suffering from liver cancer. One of Cohn's final campaigns was lobbying
against New York City's gay rights ordinance.
Reeves, Thomas C. The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy (Stein & Day,
1982).
von Hoffman, Nicholas. Citizen Cohn (Doubleday, 1988).
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