Roy Marcus Cohn 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. In the late 1970s and during the 1980s, he became a prominent political fixer in New York City.
Cohn in 1964
Senator Joseph McCarthy (left) chats with Cohn at the Army–McCarthy hearings
Cohn with President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan at the White House in 1982
Joseph Raymond McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death at age 48 in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in the United States in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread communist subversion. He alleged that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere. Ultimately, he was censured for refusing to cooperate with, and abusing members of, the committee established to investigate whether or not he should be censured. The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today, the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.
McCarthy in 1954
McCarthy receiving his DFC and Air Medal from Colonel John R. Lanigan, commanding officer of Fifth Marine Reserve District, December 1952
Herbert Block, who signed his work "Herblock", coined the term "McCarthyism" in this cartoon in the March 29, 1950, Washington Post.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States