Roy Marcus Cohn | Biography

Roy Marcus Cohn was one of the most prominent and controversial lawyers in the United States between 1950 and the mid-1980s. Cohn's combative personality, which first came to the public's attention during Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's anti-Communist Senate hearings in the 1950s, attracted many famous clients, including organized crime bosses, Roman Catholic Cardinal Francis Spellman, artist Andy Warhol and real estate tycoon Donald Trump.

Cohn was born on February 20, 1927, in New York City, the son of a prominent state trial court judge. A precocious student, Cohn entered college early and graduated from Columbia University Law School in 1947 at the age of twenty, which made him one year too young to sit for the bar exam. After reaching 21, he joined the U.S. district attorney's office in New York and immediately became involved in the investigation and prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for providing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. Despite his youth he played a major role in one of the most controversial trials in U.S. history. His withering cross-examination of Ethel Rosenberg's brother led him to name his sister as part of the spy ring. The Rosenbergs, who were admitted Communists, were convicted and sentenced to death in 1951. Though a great deal of evidence was finally released in the 1990s that showed the Rosenbergs were guilty, details emerged over the decades about questionable contacts between the trial judge, Irving Kaufman, and Cohn. It was alleged that Cohn passed on confidential FBI information about the Rosenbergs that could not be introduced at trial. Such ex parte conversations are forbidden by codes of attorney and judicial ethics and could have led to the overturning of the verdicts if they had been revealed at the time. In later years Cohn did not deny having the conversations. However, he claimed that they had made no difference in the outcome.

After the Rosenberg trial, Cohn became went to Washington, D.C. to become an assistant U.S. attorney during the last year of the Truman administration. Because of his impeccable anti-Communist credentials, he was named chief counsel to the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee headed by Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin. Cohn's aggressive temperament matched that of McCarthy, who had begun a crusade to root out Communists and other political subversives from the federal government. At a time of great public concern about nuclear weapons and the Cold War, McCarthy quickly drew a national audience when he conducted public hearings on Communist subversion.

Cohn became a public figure at these televised hearings, interrogating witnesses about their alleged Communist connections. As McCarthy became more powerful, Cohn used this power to make demands on government officials. This led to the downfall of McCarthy in 1954, when Cohn sought to have his close friend, David Schine, named an Army officer. After the Army refused this request, Cohn threatened high-ranking officials. The resulting Army-McCarthy hearings destroyed McCarthy's credibility and lead to his censure by the Senate.

After this debacle, Cohn returned to New York City and became a high-priced criminal defense attorney. He courted the news media to retain his high profile status and never left the public eye. In addition, he established a network of friends that included FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Ronald Reagan, and William F. Buckley. By the 1980s, Cohn had become the quintessential celebrity lawyer.

Cohn published four books, including his 1988 work, The Autobiography of Roy Cohn. During his last years he repeatedly denied rumors that he was gay and pointed out that he was against gay rights. This denial continued when he said he was suffering from liver cancer. However, when he died on August 6, 1986, the death certificate revealed that he had died of AIDS. Just prior to his death Cohn had been disbarred by New York for a variety of ethical violations.