Roy Cohn

• Born: February 20, 1927
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: August 2, 1986
• Place of death: Bethesda, Maryland

Lawyer

Known as a fierce anti-Communist and hard-driving, no-holds-barred lawyer, Cohn was on the prosecution team that won the espionage conviction against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Areas of achievement: Crime; government and politics; law

Early Life

Roy Cohn (kohn) was born in New York City, the only child of Albert Cohn, a New York County judge, and Dora Marcus. Roy Cohn spent his childhood in Manhattan. A gifted student, he accelerated in his studies and graduated from Horace Mann School early. Attending Columbia University, he earned a bachelor’s and a law degree in three and a half years. At the time of his graduation at age twenty, Cohen was too young for admission to the bar. Cohn clerked for New York law firms until he was able to take the bar, and then he was appointed to the staff of United States attorney Irving Saypol. When military conscription was reintroduced in 1947, Cohn enlisted, at age twenty-two, in the New York National Guard.

Life’s Work

Cohn’s tenure in the U.S. Attorney’s office occurred when both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) were investigatingCommunist espionage. Much of this was triggered in April, 1947, with the issuance of the U.S. Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations. Quickly, they held sensational hearings on left-wing Hollywood screenwriters and the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers espionage case.

Saypol assigned Cohn the task of prosecuting William Remington, who had formerly worked on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program. Appointed to the Council of Economic Advisors in 1947, Remington was exposed as a Communist spy by his former wife, Ann. Her charges were investigated by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (later known as the McCarthy Committee) and HUAC. Remington and his ex-wife fired charges against one another. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and DOJ opened investigations of their own, including perjury charges. Cohn’s team won a judgment against Remington, and, following appeals, he was sentenced to five years in prison. On November 24, 1954, Remington was found murdered at the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

While the Remington case garnered headlines, the explosion of an atomic bomb by the Soviet Union shocked the nation. The FBI had been monitoring evidence of Soviet penetration of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the first atomic bombs were tested. Laboratory technician David Greenglass admitted that he passed secret documents on to Soviet operatives, including his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg. Most of Greenglass’s network had already fled the country when the news of the espionage was revealed in 1950. Fresh from his triumph in the Remington case, Cohn was assigned by Saypol to help prosecute Rosenberg and his wife, Ethel. Cohn’s position on the prosecution team and the presence of Judge Irving Kaufman helped to defuse charges of anti-Semitism in the case. The couple were found guilty on March 29, 1951, and sentenced to death. After exhausting their appeals, the Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953.

Cohn’s reputation for pursuing Communist espionage brought him to the attention of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Already well known for his own investigations of Communist infiltration, the senator became chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953. McCarthy selected Cohn for chief counsel; another candidate was Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy served as deputy staff counsel for six months before resigning in June, 1953.

McCarthy used his position to investigate vigorously Communist subversion. Controversy marked both the senator’s tactics in hearings and the actions of staffer Cohn. When G. David Schine joined the staff, he and Cohn became close friends. Their visits to U.S. Information Agency libraries to pull allegedly subversive books off their shelves created unfavorable headlines, both at home and abroad. Eventually Schine was conscripted into the Army in November, 1953. Cohn quickly tried to secure special privileges for Schine, even requesting the private’s posting in Washington, D.C. Failing to bring this about, Cohn encouraged McCarthy to investigate Army security at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. The resulting field hearing, in which McCarthy sat as a committee of one, triggered a strong reaction from the President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration, which urged the Army to inform the Senate about Cohn’s efforts to obtain special privileges for Schine. This created an impasse and eventually set the stage for the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, which took place over thirty-six days, between March 16 and June 17, 1954.

Following the hearings, Cohn returned to New York, where he entered private law practice. Between 1961 and 1967, he was under criminal investigation for various allegations of misconduct. Having successfully dodged prosecution for wrongdoing most of his career, Cohn was disbarred in 1986 for wrongful conduct. Shortly later, Cohn died of complications from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) on Aug. 2, 1986.

Significance

Among the most visible Cold War Jewish conservatives, Cohn was indelibly marked by his close association with McCarthy. For eighteen months, from January, 1953, to June, 1954, Cohn was one of the best-known figures in the United States. Mention of his name immediately recalled the Rosenberg case and the Army hearings. He resolutely defended McCarthy long after the senator’s passing. Toward the end of his life, Cohn became an unusually popular personality who mixed with many socialites, the Studio 54 nightclub scene in New York City, and political conservatives. His somewhat flamboyant lifestyle and eventual death from AIDS focused considerable attention on this disease. This led to his becoming a popular cultural subject for a Broadway drama by Tony Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (1991) and a made-for-television biopic, Citizen Cohn (1992).

Bibliography

Adams, John G. Without Precedent: The Story of the Death of McCarthyism. New York: Norton, 1983. The author was an integral part of the Army’s legal time during the McCarthy hearings. Cohn is criticized for the pressing the Army unfairly on many issues. Eisenhower is widely credited as moving behind the scenes to bring about McCarthy’s fall.

Cohn, Roy M. A Fool for a Client: My Struggle Against the Power of a Public Prosecutor. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1971. Very personal account of Cohn’s six-year legal battle with United States Attorney Robert Morgenthau.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. McCarthy. New York: New American Library, 1968. An unapologetic portrait of McCarthy. Many important points surrounding the Army hearings are left out of the narrative. The book’s final chapter is disjointed, perhaps reflecting Cohn’s professional circumstances at the time.

Cohn, Roy M., and Sydney Zion. The Autobiography of Roy Cohn. Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart, 1988. Posthumously published update of Cohn’s earlier book, McCarthy. Zion’s writing makes this an interesting read, especially with regard to Cohn’s problems after the 1950’s.

Herman, Arthur. Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator. New York: Free Press, 2000. Scholarly revision of McCarthy in the post-Cold War era. Herman argues Communist subversion and espionage made McCarthy or a similar figure inevitable. He justifies anti-Communism as a legitimate cause but does not defend the senator’s controversial tactics.

Hoffman, Nicholas von, Citizen Cohn: The Life and Times of Roy Cohn. New York: Doubleday, 1988. A blunt, journalistic biography that portrays Cohn in a highly negative light. The author says many associates had difficulty speaking openly about Cohn, even after his death.

Oshinsky, David M. A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy. New York, Free Press, 1983. Solid scholarly treatment of McCarthy’s life and times. Cohn’s central position in the Army hearings is well explained.

Reeves, Thomas C. The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography. New York: Stein and Day, 1982. An academic study of the senator. The author tries to explain McCarthy less as a villain and more as a tragic figure. The veracity of Cohn’s accounts of major events is called into question.