Joseph Raymond McCarthy was an American politician and attorney who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until …
Roy Marcus Cohn (/koʊn/; February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) was an American lawyer and prosecutor who came to prominence for his role as Senator Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel during the Army–McCarthy hearings in 1954, when he assisted McCarthy's investigations of suspected communists.
He is known for alleging that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere. Ultimately, the smear tactics that he used led him to be censured by the U.S. Senate.
Despite McCarthy's acquittal of misconduct in the Schine matter, the Army–McCarthy hearings ultimately became the main catalyst in McCarthy's downfall from political power.
Joseph McCarthy claimed that he had identified "205 card-carrying" members of the Communist party working within the U.S. State Department. The American people believed him and mass hysteria swept the population.
Despite being the popular face of the Red Scare that followed World War II, Joseph McCarthy did not start it. Congress and the American public wide...
Joseph McCarthy framed the Cold War ideological struggle in terms of Christian morality and immoral “communistic atheism.” Throughout the early 195...
In 1953 Joseph McCarthy accused the U.S. Army of harbouring communist subversives. The Army then submitted a report alleging that McCarthy’s attorn...
Roy Cohn was a highly controversial attorney who became nationally famous while in his twenties, when he became a prominent aide of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Cohn's highly publicized pursuit of suspected communists was marked by bravado and recklessness and he was widely criticized for unethical behavior.
Cohn was prosecuted several times, and according to his obituary in the New York Times, he was acquitted three times in federal court on various charges including bribery, conspiracy, and fraud.
As a litigator, Cohn reveled in his reputation for being extraordinarily belligerent. He represented a host of notorious clients, and his own ethical transgressions would result in his own eventual disbarment. Apart from his widely publicized legal battles, he made himself a fixture of gossip columns.
Early Life. Roy Marcus Cohn was born February 20, 1927, in the Bronx, New York. His father was a judge and his mother was a member of a wealthy and powerful family. As a child, Cohn exhibited unusual intelligence and he attended prestigious private schools.
But Cohn's personal obsession with a friend, wealthy Harvard graduate G. David Schine, soon created its own enormous controversy. When he joined McCarthy's committee, Cohn brought along Schine, hiring him as an investigator.
Robert McNamara. History Expert. Robert J. McNamara is a history expert and former magazine journalist. He was Amazon.com's first-ever history editor and has bylines in New York, the Chicago Tribune, and other national outlets. our editorial process.
Becoming known as a ferocious litigator, Cohn enjoyed success not so much for brilliant legal strategy but for his ability to threaten and bully opponents. His opponents would often settle cases rather than risk the onslaught they knew Cohn would unleash.
Family. Joshua Lionel Cowen (great-uncle) Roy Marcus Cohn ( / koʊn /; February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) was an American lawyer who came to prominence for his role as Senator Joseph McCarthy 's chief counsel during the Army–McCarthy hearings in 1954, when he assisted McCarthy's investigations of suspected communists.
Roy Cohn, the flamboyant New York lawyer who catapulted to public prominence in the 1950s as the grand inquisitor of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's communist-hunting congressional panel, died Saturday at the age of 59.
After attending Horace Mann School and the Fieldston School, and completing studies at Columbia College in 1946, Cohn graduated from Columbia Law School at the age of 20.
Born to a Jewish family in the Bronx, New York City, Cohn was the only child of Dora (née Marcus; 1892–1967) and Judge Albert C. Cohn (1885–1959); his father was influential in Democratic Party politics.
In 1984, Cohn was diagnosed with AIDS 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. He died on August 2, 1986, in Bethesda, Maryland, of complications from AIDS, at the age of 59. At death, the IRS seized almost everything he had. One of the things that the IRS did not seize was a pair of diamond cuff links, given to him by his client and friend, Donald Trump.
Cohn had to wait until May 27, 1948, after his 21st birthday, to be admitted to the bar, and he used his family connections to obtain a position in the office of United States Attorney Irving Saypol in Manhattan the day he was admitted. One of his first cases was the Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders.
Greenglass testified that he had given the Rosenbergs classified documents from the Manhattan Project that had been stolen by Klaus Fuchs. Greenglass would later claim that he lied at the trial in order "to protect himself and his wife, Ruth, and that he was encouraged by the prosecution to do so." Cohn always 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 Chief Prosecutor Saypol and Judge Irving Kaufman being appointed to the case. Cohn further said that Kaufman imposed the death penalty based on his personal recommendation. He denied participation in any ex parte ( on behalf of) discussions.
Joseph McCarthy, in full Joseph Raymond McCarthy, (born November 14, 1908, near Appleton, Wisconsin, U.S.—died May 2, 1957, Bethesda, Maryland), American politician who served in the U.S. Senate (1947–57), representing Wisconsin, and who lent his name to the term McCarthyism.
McCarthy proceeded to instigate a nationwide militant anticommunist “crusade ”; he appeared to his supporters as a dedicated patriot and guardian of genuine Americanism, to his detractors as an irresponsible self-seeking witch-hunter who was undermining the country’s traditions of civil liberties. Joseph McCarthy.
McCarthy was at first a quiet and undistinguished senator. He rose to prominence in February 1950 when his public charge—in a speech given in Wheeling, West Virginia—that 205 communists had infiltrated the State Department created a furor and catapulted him into headlines across the country.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. After McCarthy’s reelection in 1952, he obtained the chairmanship of the Committee on Government Operations of the Senate and of its permanent subcommittee on investigations.
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. ...
Boston attorney Joseph Nye Welch during the 1954 McCarthy-Army hearings. It was during these hearings that Welch uttered the famous phrase, 'Have you no sense of decency, sir?'
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Cohn became chief counsel to McCarthy as well as a chief architect of what we now call “McCarthyism”—the interrogation and purging of federal employees based on McCarthy’s unsupported claim that the government was filled with communists. In addition to this very public Second Red Scare, Cohn and McCarthy also led the less-public Lavender Scare ...
One of the most notorious is Roy Cohn, a man whose influence spans several decades of hot button issues, Republican politicians and LGBT history. Cohn was a prosecutor in the Rosenberg spy trial, chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy, a close friend to Nancy Reagan and a personal lawyer for Donald Trump. He was also a closeted gay man who helped ...
That man was future Republican president Donald Trump, and Cohn advised, “tell them to go to hell.”. Soon afterward, Cohn started working as Trump’s personal lawyer. Cohn served as a mentor to the businessman, helping him to navigate the world of New York's power brokers.
The chief architect of McCarthyism prosecuted the Rosenbergs, purged suspected communists and LGBT government workers and was portrayed in 'Angels in America.'. There are certain behind-the-scenes figures in American politics who, like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, seem to turn up everywhere. One of the most notorious is Roy Cohn, a man whose ...
The Rosenberg trial brought the 24-year-old Cohn to the attention of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover. With support from Hoover and Cardinal Spellman, Hearst columnist George Sokolsky convinced Joseph McCarthy to hire Cohn as his chief counsel, choosing him over Robert F. Kennedy. Cohn assisted McCarthy's work for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on I…
Born to a Jewish family in the Bronx, New York City, Cohn was the only child of Dora (née Marcus; 1892–1967) and Judge Albert C. Cohn (1885–1959); his father was influential in Democratic Party politics. His great-uncle was Joshua Lionel Cowen, the founder and longtime owner of the Lionel Corporation, a manufacturer of toy trains. Cohn lived in his parents' home until his mother's death, after which he lived in New York, the District of Columbia, and Greenwich, Connecticut.
Cohn had to wait until May 27, 1948, after his 21st birthday, to be admitted to the bar, and he used his family connections to obtain a position in the office of United States Attorney Irving Saypol in Manhattan the day he was admitted. One of his first cases was the Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders.
In 1948, Cohn also became a board member of the American Jewish League Against Communism