Roy Marcus Cohn (February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) was an American lawyer who came to prominence during the investigations by Senator Joseph McCarthy into Communism in the government and especially during the Army-McCarthy Hearings. While widely unpopular during his lifetime, he nonetheless wielded tremendous political power at times. Cohn was a member of the Democratic Party but was widely considered a "Democrat In Name Only" (DINO), as he supported most of the Republican presidents of his time and Republicans in major seats across New York.
Cohn graduated from Columbia Law School at the age of 20, and began working for the office of United States Attorney Irving Saypol in Manhattan.
As Saypol's assistant at the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan, Cohn helped to win a number of high-profile 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), for the prosecution of eleven Communist Party leaders for sedition under the Smith Act, and for his work in the Alger Hiss case. But Cohn was most famous for his prominent role in the 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Cohn's cross examination of Ethel's brother produced the testimony (later found to be perjured) that was mostly responsible for the Rosenbergs' conviction and execution.
The Rosenberg trial brought the 24-year-old Cohn to the attention of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who recommended him to McCarthy. He soon became McCarthy's chief counsel — chosen over Robert Kennedy — and gained power nearly equal to McCarthy's in the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, becoming known for his aggressive questioning of suspected Communists.
After leaving McCarthy, Cohn built a 30-year career as a high-powered attorney in New York City. His clients included Donald Trump, Mafia figures Tony Salerno and John Gotti, Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, and the Archdiocese of New York. He was known for his active social life, charitable giving, and combative personality. He maintained close ties with conservative politics, serving as an informal advisor to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Cohn's homosexuality was an open secret during most of his career. His public response to all questions on this subject was sometimes evasive and sometimes a flat denial; he encouraged rumors of a relationship with his longtime friend Barbara Walters, who publicly stated that she thought he was heterosexual. Though his closeted sexuality was far from unusual at the time, it was arguably in tension with his public life in right-wing politics. Cohn and McCarthy targeted many government officials and cultural figures not only for suspected Communist sympathies but for homosexual tendencies, sometimes using sexual secrets as a blackmail tool to gain informants.
In 1984, he was diagnosed with AIDS, and attempted to keep his condition secret while receiving aggressive drug treatment. He insisted to his dying day that his disease was liver cancer. Cohn never spoke publicly about AIDS but, according to his friends, he claimed to have used his political influence to increase the government's investment in AIDS research.
He died on August 2, 1986, of complications from AIDS at the age of 59.
