Part One: Roy Cohn: The Man Who Made Donald Trump

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
What harassing people for their political beliefs, my Roy Cone.
This is Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards. It's
a podcast about terrible people. And I'm just gonna cut
right to the chase, as I already did. Today we're
talking about Roy motherfucking Cone. Oh my god. Joel Monique

(00:23):
is our guest. Joel, producer at I Heart Media. How
are you doing today? I'm good. I'm slightly unprofessional. I
just bit into some peanut butter. I'm so sorry. I'm
are you just doing? This is my favorite episode ever. Guys,
thank you Joel. What do you What do you know
about Roy Cone? Okay, so The Good Fight it was

(00:45):
one of my favorite TV shows of all time, had
like a very like strong leaning Roy Cone arc I
Want to Stay. Season two, there's in the past, No,
it's it's basically was an opportunity to educate people about
how Trump could go away some of the things. Okay, okay,
cool cool cool? Yes? Is that guy? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah.

(01:07):
So and then they made this song which I think
you'll really appreciate. It's called Roy Cone Loves to Party.
There's an animated segment that goes along with it. It's
peak excellence. So I know, like a two minute real
quick history Roy Cohne. I know he's an awful human
a monster. Yeah, terrible, terrible guy. So I'm excited to

(01:29):
find out how terrible today. What's funny about Roy Cone
is that if you kind of measure him objectively against
the standards of you know, a lot of the people
we talked about on this show, he doesn't seem that bad,
like he's he's a bad person, but he's not like
Stalin or Hitler, but he's he was such an unpleasant
well he may have. He was such an unpleasant human

(01:52):
being that his name has become kind of like a
bye word for a monster, like he's he's up there
just because as of what a piece of ship he
was to everyone around him. And it's kind of amazing
if you watch documentaries. Here's a great documentary um called
Where's My Roy Cone? That interviews people who knew him,
and like at least two of Like, there are multiple

(02:15):
people in that documentary who are friends of his who
describe him as evil, like just because it's like, oh, yeah,
we I hung out with Roy but he was evil
like he was He's absolutely was the the embodiment of
human evil. Wow, how could you? I wonder what you're
bringing to that friendship that they were like, well talk
about he was he was kind of a great friend. Um,

(02:37):
oh that you have like a super bitch of a friend.
But she's good to you and she's good monster. Yes
you get it. Yeah, it's the kind of friend were like, Yeah,
I know they are a monster, but also if I
ever need them, they will burn the world down for me,
my personal monster. Yeah. That's that's who Roy Cone was. Um.

(03:01):
And it's one of the we'll talk about his relationship
with Trump later. It's what Trump learned a lot from
Roy Kone. The thing he never learned from Roy Cone
was how to be loyal, because that is something Cone
was good at to his actual friends. He was very
loyal and they weren't to him, because it just turns
out when you're friends with people who can be friends
with a person who is pure, unadulterated human evil, they're
not good at being loyal to you, even if you

(03:23):
are to them. It's fun. It's a fun story. Uh.
That documentary, Where's My Roy Cone? I do recommend watching.
It gets its name from something Donald Trump said when
an attorney general Jeff Sessions recused himself during the Mueller probe.
President Donald Trump reportedly cried out, where's my Roy Cone
in a moment of panic and fear. Um, Yeah, so

(03:45):
we're gonna talk all about that today. Roy Cone was
a lawyer. It's accurate to say that, But just saying
like that's describing Roy Cone as a lawyer is such
an incomplete explanation of who he was as to be
totally inaccurate. Roy Khne was a blackmail artist, a political
fixer of the highest order, maybe the best there ever
was a man famous for being infamous, and a man

(04:08):
who weaponized sociopathy more effectively than any other political actor
in US history. He's a he's a hoot of a dude.
He created the shortcuts to help us get where we
got today. Yeah. Yeah, he He's the man who built
both Roger Stone and Donald Trump. Like he's he's a

(04:31):
remarkable piece of ship. Um, you'd love to see it.
Yeah so. Roy Marcus Cohne was born on February n
seven in the Bronx, New York City. He was the
only child of a wealthy Jewish couple, Dora and Albert.
His father, Albert, was a Judge and a major figure

(04:52):
in the local Democratic Party. As a result, Roy grew
up with politicians of all stripes dropping by his home
for dinners and cocktail parties. So he's he's he's born
into the political upper crust, you know, from from the
snobby rich kid evolving like he learned. He was one
of those kids who spoke like an adult way too early,

(05:12):
like hows yes, yes, absolutely, his parents let him drink
at the cocktail parties. He thought he was an adult
when he was just an obnoxious trash child. Yeah, he
was definitely drinking at the adult table from a young age,
a table for him. No, no, no. And obviously, like

(05:33):
he he came from money. Uh. And not just like
Judge money, but his family has like wealth on all
sides of it. His great uncle was the founder of
the Lionel Corporation, which makes they make toy trains uh
and work for a while the largest toy manufacturer on
the planet. Roy's maternal uncle, Bernard Marcus, was the President
of the Bank of the United States. Um. So again

(05:55):
a ton of money in this family. Uh. And obviously
the fact that Bernard was the president of the Bank
of the United States added to the families gravitas and
importance until October twenty nine of nineteen twenty nine, when
the stock Marcus crashed in the Great Depression got going
because the Bank of the United States was one of
the main things that caused like its collapsed caused the

(06:16):
Great Depression. Now, Roy was too young to remember much
of what happened at the time, the stress and the panic.
It would have been passed onto him though by the
adults around him, especially because his uncle's bank was blamed
for star sparking the stock market crash. This wasn't entirely
fair because a lot of people in a lot of
banks were to blame for the Great Depression, but Bernard

(06:36):
Marcus was the head of the bank that was most implicated,
and he was also a Jew, so um, he got blamed.
He became like the scapegoat of the financial crashgoat, we
can't we can't held responsible, but we can't blame Yeah,
So Bernard Marcus is Jewish. The Bank of the US
is heavily frequented by Jewish immigrants, and everybody's angry at

(06:57):
Jewish people when the economy collapses because sis um uh so, yeah,
Bernard Marcus actually becomes the only banker to go to
prison for the financial crisis, for the Great Depression, Like
they pick one and it's the Jewish guy. Lord Jesus,
that's awful. Which is not to say that he didn't
do anything, because he definitely did, but it was he

(07:20):
did not He should certainly shouldn't have been the only
banker to go to prison. He didn't row that boat alone.
He did single handedly tank our economy. Come on now,
yeah yeah, um and yeah, so he This is like
a huge fact of shame for the Cone family. And
to this day Cones survived. Roy Cone surviving relatives consider
the case to have been a matter of scapegoating um

(07:43):
because again, he was the only banker to go to
jail um. And this really left an impact on Roy
because he visited his uncle in prison when he was
a small child. Some of Roy's earliest memories were seeing
his uncle Bernard and sing sing. One of his cousins
later wrote quote that left Cone determined to beat the establishment.

(08:04):
You gotta think about it this way. He grows up
thinking like, yeah, we're Jewish, but like we're part of
the ruling class, the wealthy class, and we're all It
doesn't matter if you're Jewish or Christian or whatever, as
long as you're in that upper crust. And then when
a crisis hits, it turns out that we're not all
part of the same thing because all of the other
rich people blame the jew right, Like that's the way
it goes. Yeah, I didn't expect to have any sort

(08:25):
of empathy in this episode at all, but as somebody
who understands the realization of racism, like, oh, me a
fragment of empathy for baby roy Colon before he becomes
the evil we know him to be today. Yeah, this
has an impact on the evil because he realizes, like, oh,
money won't protect me even like from like the fact

(08:47):
that I'm different actually does matter. We're not all the
same even though we're rich, and so I just like
I am now, I like I'm not a part of
the establishment, so I must be at war with it.
That's that's the idea that Roy Cone, Baby Roy Coe
that lord, yeah, it's super fun. So a family friend

(09:08):
who was around at the time claimed quote the family
had been absolutely shamed when Bernard Marcus went to prison.
Roy kept a scrap book as a little boy of
all the pictures of his uncle Bernie Marcus. He would
show them to his babysitters. Once his mother saw him
doing this, and she yelled and took the scrap book away.
Because he loved his uncle. He was proud of his uncle.
He had like a scrap book of his uncle who
was like a big figure in his life, and his

(09:29):
mom wanted to like pretend he didn't exist. After Rich,
there was a child psychologes here to like break down,
a child purposely uncovering what the family has tried to
hide and shame to be like, no, this guy is
good there just like no hide that and what does
that do to your psych psyche that says if you
make a mistake, also, we will just remove you from

(09:52):
our Yea. The scrap book thing is like, I like
my I don't have a scrap book and one of
my relatives. It's just so weird. Yeah, it's it's I mean,
you know, it's it's sweet. He clearly cared about his
uncle um, and his mom is telling him no, no, no,
he made a mistake, so we don't celebrate his existence anymore. Which, yeah,

(10:12):
you're right, Joel. That has to that transmits a message
to a growing little boy. Yeah, and it's not a
good one. Don't suck up. Okay, you can be disappears
his mother, Elizabeth, that's my question, I mean emotionally yes,
so fair enough. Despite the family shame, Roy's father remained

(10:33):
a judge and a connected person in Democratic Party politics.
When Roy was ten, his father introduced him to his
first president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So again, aged ten is
when this kid starts hobnobbing with the president, not just
the president of President of the United States, but like
the President of the United States, because no president's ever
had more power than fucking fdr Um. So yeah, that's

(10:54):
who Roy's hanging out with at age ten. Uh. He
started giving speeches at political rallies the year before when
he was nine, and he was so comfortable talking shop
that as soon as he met FDR he told the
President he agreed with his plan to pack the Supreme Court.
So that's like this ten year old boy and the
first thing he's like is like, yeah, you got to
increase the number of people in the Supreme Court so

(11:15):
that you can rule unchallenged. You. Yeah, that's that's where
his head is. So the Cone, the Cone family, as
you might have guessed, was not what we would call healthy.
In fact, Roy's parents marriage is generally described as a
loveless I found, yeah, well, what did you did you expect?
There were a lot of love in that relationship. I

(11:37):
always shocked when I hear about loveless marriages. I'm like,
how did you survive? But also I understand, um, the era,
you know, the marriages of convenience and or this is
a financial person, my Brackett, who won't steal from me,
So yeah, this is a political marriage. Yeah, so uh yeah.
I found a fun article in the Rap by David Marcus,

(12:00):
who is the son of Roy's first cousin, and by
the way, his dad, David's dad refused to talk to
Roy Cone for decades. Now, David grew up to be
a journalist and obviously like, as a journalist with Roy
Cone as an uncle, you're going to interview him. And
he did interview Roy several times. In two thousand nineteen,
he wrote an article titled five things you may not

(12:21):
know about my vile, malicious cousin Roy Cone just quite alistical?
Can we talk about the three sixty of like Roy
trying to show photos of his like imprisoned uncle to
then his nephew sharing with the world via a paper
the horribleness of his uncle. There's something very balanced about

(12:41):
an unhip. It's a fun family. Uh so, yeah, he wrote,
he writes this about Roy Cone's mother. Quote. My relatives
couldn't stand Roy's overbearing mother, Dora Marcus Cone. She was
the original helicopter parent, long before anybody knew that term,
fussing over her own lee's son's grades, appearance, and relationships.

(13:02):
When Roy went to sleepaway camp, Dora rented a room
down the road. He lived with his mother until she
died when he was forty. So some Norman Bates vibes
coming off this boy. Oh no, man, listen, kids, we're
not talking about you. We understand financial straits and everything.

(13:22):
But if you could love for it to not live
with you, if you are a wealthy lawyer, especially in
an era where that people used to clown on people
so hard for still living with their parents, you know,
that's that's what we call an unhealthy relationship. Yeah, he's
not like living with his mom because like he's got
to take care of her, or because like he's living

(13:44):
with his mom because he can't imagine what to do
without her. For until he's forty. Um, yeah, you get
the feeling. It wasn't there was some Yeah, there was.
There was absolutely some weird ship going on there. So
by the nineteen forties, the family fortunes had recovered, and
the Cones were again the center of a deeply influential
network of New York socialites and politicos. As soon as

(14:05):
Roy was a teenager, his parents pushed him to attend
their parties. According to one of those guests, Roy took
naturally to politics, socializing, and schmoozing like an old veteran.
One attendee later recalled it was extraordinary to see tin
grown up couples and then sitting next to a fifteen
year old. Roy was always on the scene. He fit
right in. One of his friends later told an interviewer

(14:25):
when he was sixteen, he was forty. Yeah, those kids
are not okay. This is they're not an excuse we
hear about like when we see very very young girls
with older and they're like, oh, well they seem so
mature that person needs help. Yeah, it's not okay. Or
genius does not make you mature, And where does it

(14:46):
give you the years of experience that you need to
navigate situations with actual adults. Well, and it's a bit
different in Roy's case because like he's not in a
relationship with these people, but they're the ones he's socializing with,
and they lead him to I don't think Roy ever
had a childhood, and I'm not sure. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
that's the sad like it was stolen from him because

(15:08):
he never had the opportunity be treated like a child,
you know, and then then you don't know the joys
of childhood, which makes you a very weird, bitter old adult. Yeah,
which he absolutely is a weird, bitter old adult. So
as a rich kid, Roy's peers were from similarly august backgrounds.
His buddy, Generoso Pope Junior grew up to be the
owner of the National Inquirer. You wonder why that magazine

(15:29):
is so close to Donald Trump. His friend became the publisher.
What that was really quick to go over? Yeah, just
like let us think in Yeah, Roy's best buddy grew
up to we owned the National inquire His other best
friend became the publisher, and then Roy became Donald Trump's
good friend. And Donald Trump has had a lifelong positive

(15:51):
relationship with the National Inquirer. Yes, I just want yeah,
just so much. And one little son to Roy Khone's friend,
Richard Berlin, became the chairman of Condie Nast and his
friend Bill Fugazi grew up to be the owner of
a massive traveling limousine company. So these are Roy Khne's
childhood buddies, like the act, the only kids he spends

(16:12):
his time around, grow up to be those people. And
they're inheriting a lot of what they get, right, Like,
they're not founding that ship, you know, and if they are,
they're inheriting a bunch of money to found that ship.
So from an early age, Cone showed a strong inclination
towards what would become his life's work. He ran what
his biographer calls the Roy Cone Barter and Swap Exchange

(16:33):
while he was in junior high school. This was an
influence and information pedaling racket. Roy wrote a gossip column
for his local newspaper, and he would trade stories and
manipulate the stories he published in exchange for favors from
popular kids. Yeah, okay, so many things of just having

(16:54):
in my head for sure, there's a lot going on there.
I had no idea Roy Collen was actually Dan humph,
you from gossip actually makes so much sense. Uh. And
then the idea of like a twelve or thirteen year
old like again having the foresight and knowledge to understand
how an operation like that could work. It seems just

(17:15):
like the most batship thing I've ever heard, Like I'll
lie for you. Yeah, spread that lie and you know
you kick me back. The favors do we know what
kind of favors he was getting in exchange? They were
like he got jobs and stuff as a kid over
this stuff, and you have to assume he got like
invites to parties and whatnot, Like it was you know,
it was it was not the kind of favors he

(17:35):
would be getting later. But he's experiment because later his
favors would be stuff like getting people in or out
of prison. Um. But he's he's he's starting to learn
how if you have control of a media organ you
can get things from people by either planting stories about
them or refusing to plant stories about them. Um. Like
that's what he's trading gossip for favors. Um. And he's

(17:58):
learning how to do that again as a teenager, and
he's learning to do that within the context of a
high school. But he's also spending all of his time
talking to adult politicians, and you can he's putting this
stuff together like he knows what he's going to be.
Roy Cone knew what he wanted to be from a
very young age, and it was always a shady political fixure.
He's You look at what Rudy Giuliani is doing these days,

(18:20):
and he's bad at it. Rudy Giuliani is terrible, terrible, terrible,
can even file a lawsuit correctly, sir, please put the door.
Roy Cone is good version of that, and not good
in amoral sense, but good in Roy was good at
this um. He knew how to do it. And you
can see the reason Donald Trump keeps having Giuliani do
all this ship is because he's desperately wants to have

(18:41):
a Roy Cone, but he doesn't because there was only one.
But I really feel like he's got to be somebody
more capable, you know, not not who's also capable of
the same kind of loyalty. That's the thing. Giuliani's loyal
to the president, at least so far, but incompetent. Roy
is loyal and competent, and that that's what Trump wants.

(19:03):
But sadly we'll talk about why Roy Conan around no
more so. Roy went to the kind of elementary and
high schools that rich kids get to attend, the ones
that cost as much as a small house for a
year of tuition. He went to Columbia Law School, and
he graduated at age twenty with both a bachelor's degree
and a law degree. So like, very very smart kid. Um. Yeah,

(19:24):
so age twenty, he's out of college. He's a he's a.
He's a he's an it admitted to the bar, lawyer,
and he is ready to make his mark on the world.
Using his father's connections, he gets a job at the U. S.
Attorney's Office for the Southern District, and he got the
gig the same day that he was formally admitted to
the bar. In case you're wondering what kind of impact
is judge Dad had on all that the day he

(19:44):
becomes a lawyer, he's working for the U. S. Attorney's Office,
Like it's very convenient. Yeah, it helps. Now. For reasons
that are not exactly clear to me, Roy became fascinated
with what was seen as the looming threat of Soviet
influence on the United States. His entry drew him in
nineteen fifty one to the job of prosecuting Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg for espionage. Now do you know much about

(20:06):
the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case. I feel pretty educated
on it, yes, but I definitely need to hear more. Yeah,
it's the Rosenbergs were committed communists, and Julius was an
electrical engineer with connections to all manner of science folks.
He spent years in the Army's Signal Signal Corps, and
he fed the USSR information about a bunch of different

(20:28):
U S weapons technologies, at one point even smuggling his
handler a complete proximity fuse. So Julius is absolutely a
spy for the Soviet Union um and and giving them
a lot of stuff. Uh. He was eventually fired from
the Army when it was revealed that he had been
a member of the Communist Party in the thirties, but
he remained good at meeting science folks who were involved
in the Defense Department, and one of the folks that

(20:49):
he met after getting fired from the Army was working
on the Manhattan Project. Now, there's a lot of debate
over exactly how helpful the nuclear secrets that he stole
were and I think the the consensus is that the
USSR would have developed a bomb and more or less
the same time frame without Julius Rosenberg. But he did
give them information on the A bomb, and the Pentagon was,

(21:11):
you know, the Soviet Union in the late forties comes
out with an A bomb of their own, and the
Pentagon is really surprised because they had thought it would
take the Soviets a lot longer to make an A bomb,
and they assumed that the only way they could have
possibly built it as if a spy had given them
all of the information. And again, the Soviets had really
good scientists, in part because they stole scientists from the
Nazis too, and partly because they just had good scientists

(21:32):
like they didn't need. It's probable that they would not
have needed what Julius provided them with two have built
the A bomb, but he had. He had provided them
with some secrets, and when he was eventually found out,
the Defense establishment uses him as a scapegoat for the
entire fact that a nuclear arms race started. Right. They
need someone to blame for the fact that the Soviets
have a bomb, and they blame Julius Rosenberg. They also

(21:56):
blame his wife, Ethel Rosenberg. Now, Ethel had been an actress,
and the remains debate as to the exact extent of
her involvement. She was charged with being a full party
to her husband's espionage, so she was charged with being
just as much of a spy as her husband. UM. Now,
a lot of information has come out since the fall
of the Soviet Union. UM, and it suggests that while

(22:18):
she was aware of and approved of her husband's activity,
she was probably not playing an active role in spreading
atomic secrets. And there was evidence at the time that
she was not playing an active role in spreading atomic secrets. Um.
They didn't have any evidence that she was. But Roy
Cohne wanted both Rosenberg's convicted and executed. He didn't just
want Julius executed, he wanted Ethel executed as well. UM.

(22:40):
And yeah, I'm gonna quote from a right up in
the magazine forward quote the case that made him The
espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was a prime
example of Khne's law skirting tactics and the demons that
propelled his career. Cone saw the case as an opportunity
to make his name as a ruthless prosecutor and recoup
the status his family had lost. He had a score

(23:02):
to settle, said one person. When Cone was vicious and
pushing for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg's execution illegally communicating with
Judge Irving Kaufman, who ironically called Cone from a phone
booth outside the Park Avenue Synagogue, he may have been
trying to lift the stigma a family shame. He was responding,
his relatives suggest, not just to anti communist animus, but
to its inevitable link to Jews like him. He was

(23:23):
the definition of a self hating Jew. Cone's cousin David Marcus,
says in the film, he wanted to show the world
that he wasn't Jewish. So Khn's family are Jewish people
scapegoated for the Great Depression. And then when Jewish people,
when he has a chance to scapegoat another Jewish couple
as responsible for the Russians getting the bomb, he does

(23:45):
that in part to kind of wipe the shame away
from his family. Improved. We're loyal Americans like this Jewish family,
like is our traders, but like the people prosecuting him
and the judge, we're loyal Jews. Like, that's kind of
the thing that went on in Cone's head, some real
house slave ship. Yeah, that's just me honest about it.

(24:06):
Like this idea that you could cleanse your family by
destroying another is uh, I mean it explains a lot
about him and his ideology. Yeah, it's pretty dark. Um. Now.
Roy's defining moment in the trial came during his cross
examination of David green Grass, Ethel Rosenberg's brother. The prosecution
had initially relied upon getting Ethel to testify against her

(24:28):
husband in exchange for clemency, but she refused to talk.
This piste off Roy, but it also left the state
in a bind because there was no hard evidence that
Ethel Rosenberg had done anything. So Cone went to David,
who had helped with the espionage, and promised him that
if he lied about his sister's role in the conspiracy,
David and his wife would get lesser sentences. Green Grass

(24:49):
later admitted to lying on the stand at Cone's direction,
but it didn't matter. Ethel was convicted. So Cone goes
to this guy says, like, I'll make sure you and
your wife don't get exit. You get lesser sentence. Is
if you say that Ethel was a part of the espionage,
and David gets up in court and he lies about
Ethel Rosenberg's complicity in the espionage, and so she gets convicted,

(25:11):
um along with Julius, who you know, for whatever you
want to say about how fair or unfair the penalty was,
Julius was guilty of espionage. He did the crime, but
the crime. It's wild to me that, like it seems,
especially in this era, like well, no, not a lot
of women prisons, not a lot of females behind bars,
certainly not a lot being executed. It's kind of intense that,

(25:34):
like how much his own self hate was far like
if that is in truth what senmed a lot of
these decision making Like the idea of like no, we
got to fry them all is like just intense and horrifying. Yeah. Now, um,
here's the thing that's fun about America in this period
of time. Is no American at this point in time

(25:57):
when Julius and Ethel Rosenberger being tried, no one eric
and had ever been executed for treason or espionage outside
of war, outside of a war, So that hasn't happened.
So people are talking about like most people who are like, well, yeah,
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are probably guilty, they need to
be punished. Don't want them A lot of people don't
want them to be executed because we don't do that

(26:18):
as a country at this point, right that the idea,
that's not what we are. We don't kill people outside
of a war for engaging in this. And we're coming
hot off the Geneva Convention. Yeah, yeah, that's all pretty
with all these laws and stuffing how to conduct yourself. Wow, okay,
but Roy kone wants them dead. And as it turned out,
now normally the prosecutor is not supposed to have any

(26:39):
say in in the punishment. That's, you know, the judges
in this sort of a case, that's the judges per view.
But Cone would wind up having a strong say in
her punishment. He later claimed number one that he had
pulled strings to make sure that Kaufman was the judge
who got the case. There's no evidence that this was true,
except for the fact that Kaufman called roy Cone repeatedly

(27:00):
when he had questions about the case, which kind of
suggests that Kaufman was indebted to Roy kone and again
at this point, so the judge was calling Roy and
being like you, I'll have some questions about this case. Yeah,
most most particularly the judges calling Roy Cone and saying, hey,
should I execute? Should I have these people executed? Is

(27:23):
that fair? Like that that's the kind of ship that
like he's he's he's coming up to them with um, yeah, so,
which is pretty dark um. And and of course Roy
Cone is like, yeah, absolutely you should be you should
kill these people. Yeah. So yeah again like yeah, So

(27:49):
the judge calls Roy on the phone and it's like,
I don't know, I feel like weird about executing these people.
We've never done that before in this kind of context.
What do you think I should do? And like should I?
Should I execute Ethel as well? And Roy is like, yes,
you should execute them both, And he tells the judge
the way I see it, she being Ethel is worse
than Julius, so he's he's a whole hog, like, yes,

(28:11):
you need to have these people hung um or actually
like electrocute. They were electrocuted. But yeah, I wonder if
the silence they'll listen. I'm not a psychologist listeners, but
I'm gonna play one for a second here. I wonder
if like part of the reason he was like, she's
worse is because she was willing to not say anything.
And this idea of like possibly this couple representing his parents,

(28:34):
and the idea of their like hiding and then being
part of the downfall of America during the Great Depression.
I wonder if there are are links in his brain
to those things. Yeah, you think you get the feeling? Yeah?
Probably probably, Yeah, what a funked up guy? Yeah? Do

(28:55):
you know what time it is? Oh? Is it time
for products and service? Perhaps? You know who won't order
the executions of a probably innocent woman and her husband
during peacetime for espionage? I really hope it's our our
sponsors and the product that is. That's the only standard

(29:15):
we have for our our our our products is the
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case. We ask all of them
about it. All of them say, that happened decades before
you were born. Why are you asking us about this?
None of these companies existed at that point in time.
And we demand a response. And that's why we have
so very few advertisers. They think it's weird. A lot
of people think it's weird. Here's as we're back. Uh

(29:45):
so Judge Kaufman, having consulted with Roy Kane, sentences both
Rosenberg's to die, telling them in court, I consider your
crime worse than murder. I believe your conduct and putting
into the hands of the Russians the A bomb years
before our best scientists predicted Russia would effect the bomb
has already caused, in my opinion, the communist digression in Korea,
with the resultant casualties exceeding fifty thousand, and who knows

(30:07):
but millions more of innocent people may pay the price
for your treason. Indeed, by your betrayal, you wouldndoubtedly have
altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country.
No one can say that we do not live in
a constant state of tension. We have evidence of your
treachery all around us every day. For the civilian defense
activities throughout the nation are aimed at preparing us for
an Adam bomb attack. So he's not wrong that Russia

(30:29):
getting the bomb made everybody scared, but also not really
right in saying that the fact that Russia number one,
that the Rosenbergs were responsible for Russia getting the bomb earlier,
but also, like you know, the fact that the United
States was had been so willing to use the bomb
on Russia before they get a bomb of their own,
might be responsible for some of the paranoia and fear,

(30:51):
like the fact that you know, Truman dropped the bomb
on Japan largely to scare Russia, and the fact that
McArthur attempted to use the bomb on Korea and had
to be forced. You know, there's there's a lot going
on there anyway. Internationally, the cause of the Rosenbergs became
one of the first major anti American movements of the
post war era. And remember fucking post World War two,

(31:13):
basically everybody likes the United States, like very popular country
worldwide because you know, the Nazis and we're not the Nazis,
and a lot of refugees had come here, and like,
not to say that the horrible things the US had done,
you know, genocides of the Native Americans and slavery and
stuff hadn't happened, but like internationally pretty popular country in
nineteen forty six, Yeah, booming, Yeah, Yeah, people are pretty

(31:38):
happy with us. The fact that we condemned the Rosenbergs
to execution pisces off a lot of people and again
starts playing in one of the first international anti American movements.
A lot of people thought they were innocent, and those
who didn't feel they were innocent at least felt that
the punishment didn't fit the crime. Marxist John Paul Start
described the whole conviction as illegal lynching, which smear is

(32:00):
with blood a whole nation. By killing the Rosenbergs, you
have quite simply tried to halt the progress of science
by human sacrifice, magic, witch hunts, autos de fay sacrifices.
We are here getting to the point your country is
sick with fear. You are afraid of the shadow of
your own bomb, which is very much what's happening. We

(32:20):
invite we have been to doomsday device and assume will
be the only ones to ever have it, and then
when we have to fear it, we're like, oh god,
this is what we were doing to the rest of
the world, but we don't. Everybody else is evil. We've
never done anything. Yeah, yeah, And and it continues today,
so it's fun, stupid, it's yeah. Yeah. So the United

(32:41):
States and President Eisenhower did not listen to international outrage
the rosen and there's huge protests in the United States too.
By the way, thousands and thousands of people taking to
the streets. Um nobody in the government listened. The Rosenbergs
were executed on June nine. Julius's execution went smoothly enough,
but the first several shocks failed to kill Ethel. The
executioner was forced to repeat the process so many times

(33:04):
he nearly lit her on fire. Smoke was pouring out
from her head. It was and remains a profoundly gross story,
and a lot of people at the time knew it
was disgusting. Many of Roy Kohn's family were horrified about
his actions. He later told a reporter with Pride, I
very early in my life broke with tradition and left
my Jewish, upper class oriented life in New York and

(33:24):
became a contradiction of everything I was supposed to stand for. Yeah,
so he knows what he's doing. Yeah, it's really great
to shoot on your entire family and everything that they
stood for. Cool. Yeah. So, there were, of course, people
who deeply appreciated CON's tactics and motivations. One of them
was j Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI. The

(33:45):
two struck up a fast friendship and would actually exchange
Christmas gifts for more than twenty years, if you're looking
at the kind of guy who Roy genuinely appreciates and
vice versa. One reporter described the two as ideological soul mates.
Cone became the Yeah, you don't want to be you
don't want to be JEdgar Hoover's soul bait. No, you

(34:06):
do not h real bad person. So Cone became the
FBI's unofficial liaison to the press. And I'm gonna quote
here from The l A Times. Anything Hoover wanted to
plant about someone friend or foe, he directed to Cone.
So reliable was this gossip network that Walter Winchell's secretary,
and Walter Winchell is a very influential gossip columnist at

(34:26):
the time, dutifully awaited Cone's reputation destroying phone calls when
they wanted to stick it to somebody. Former Rep. Neil
Gallagher told Von Hoffman, Who's Roy's biographer, that was Roy's job,
oh Man. To be wealthy and be able to destroy
somebody with phone call is power. I don't think I
will ever possess that, is Roy Cone. Absolutely, that is

(34:49):
just it's it's too much power to way to win,
power to just be like I don't like you, la
times prit me something up bad about this guy who
cares about facts? Yeah, and we are what's fun about
this episode is you know that Billy Joel we didn't
start the fire song. There's like five different people who
are named in that song that are in this episode,
including Roy Cone. He's right before one pour on like yeah,

(35:12):
also Walter Winchell and Joe McCarthy, who were about to
talk about is in the song. So yeah, this is
really we're really burning through that song here. Love it.
So it was Hoover who introduced young Roy Cone to
a man who would come to define the early part
of his career, Senator Joseph McCarthy. Another get another, another

(35:34):
real hero. In short order, Roy became the senator's right
hand man as the Red Scare kicked up into high gear.
And this is where we need to peel away from
Roy Cone for just a moment to talk about the
House un American Activities Committee or who ACT. It was
established in nineteen thirty eight by a congress fuck named
Martin D's and at first it wasn't entirely a bad thing.

(35:55):
There were a ton of Nazi organizers and spies in
the United States doing their best to cox slap American democracy,
and the D's Committee, which turned into Who Act, helped
to identify and punish some of these guys. So not
entirely a bad thing. If there's Nazis in your country,
probably out a deal with that, probably, Yeah, yeah, you
should probably have a committee who's responsible for being like,

(36:16):
we got to get these Nazis out of here. Huh. Unfortunately,
happy when you read a paragraph that I can tell
you were you felt good about when you wrote it. Yeah. Now,
as is always the case with the US government, the
committee's attention soon turned away from the dangerous right wing
activists to left wing activists who Act. Was at the
forefront of an unhinged and fundamentally irrational investigation into Hollywood communists.

(36:41):
So they go from like actual Nazis trying to destroy
the country, trying to destroy democracy too. And there's some
comedies in Hollywood who think people a lot to have
healthcare and ship yeah, it's very funny. Um. And the
list of people in Hollywood that who Act investigates is
just fundamentally absurd. Humphrey Bogart made the list, as did

(37:01):
Clark Gable and ten year old Shirley Temple. That Shirley
tem she's dancing with the blacks. Yeah, but she's called
me badged, didn't you know? Yeah, because she's dancing with
black people. You can't have that ship. She's hiding a
secrets in each one of her individual curls. I'm trying

(37:23):
to imagine, like jan Over listening to Shirley Temple's phone calls.
It is she talking to her grandmother. She's like animal crackers,
and it must be like, what's that code for? What
is that code for her? She's got to break come
out of the zoo's. Yeah, it's very funny because when
I was a kid, like Shirley Temple was like the

(37:44):
symbol of American innocence in the nineteen fifties, and the
reality is that it aged ten. She was interrogated by
the FBI as to the nature of her connections to
the Communist Party. Jesus word, it's so good. You have
to be like, this is unhinged if you're part of
three same people, are you kidding me? And you're like,

(38:05):
what going on? Yeah? There was. There was briefly a
tiny amount of rationality crept into things, and then like
during World War Two, and I'm gonna quote from a
rite up in the Minnesota Playlist about that World War
Two put a stop to these activities. But in nineteen
forty seven the Committee renewed their investigations. Joseph McCarthy, a
junior senator from Wisconsin, wanted to make a name for himself,

(38:27):
and along with Attorney Roy Cone and Senator later President
Richard Nixon, the Committee assared blacklisted individuals wouldn't work for
years to come. Among those first listed Humphrey Bogert, James Cagney,
Katherine Hepburn, Gayle Saunderguard, Melvin Douglas, and Frederick Marsh. Screenwriter
Dalton Trumbo was branded a communist, but continued writing under
different aliases and one oscars. In nineteen fifty six, when

(38:49):
Robert Rich's name was called for the Brave One, no
one accepted the award, causing suspicions to rise. Trumbo, under
the name Sam Jackson, wrote the screenplay for Spartacus, which
parallels the Huak hearings. Arthur Miller's play The Crucibles is
an allegory of these witch hunts. So if you ever
had to read The Crucible, you know or the play
at least by Miller. You can blame Roy Cone and

(39:11):
Joe McCarthy. Now, one particularly cowardly actor, Adolph Minju cooperated
with the Committee Who Act and named names the named people,
Yeah yeah, and the named people were interrogated publicly. Their
careers were shattered. Tin Brave actors and screenwriters protested this
and refused to name names. They included Iva Bessie Herman, Bibberman,

(39:33):
Lester Cole, Edward Dimitric Ring Larder Jr. John Howard Larson,
Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo. Who
Act punished these brave people by subpoena ng the ship
out of all of them and calling them before Congress.
They were asked the now famous question are you now
or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
All but one refused to answer the question. The House

(39:55):
of Representatives held them in contempt. The Screen Actors Guild
was forced to make its members swear oaths of loyalty
to the United States and members of the Crazy Thing
to do. A union for workers have to yea because
unions are comedy things. You gotta you gotta show that
you're loyal to the United States if you've gotta be
a union. Yeah, yeah, it was great. Members of the

(40:18):
Hollywood Ten weren't allowed to resume their careers until they
had sworn the oath and been cleared of any involvement
in the Communist Party. Many of the Hollywood Tens served
one year prison sentences. Uh, it's not cool. It's it's
a bad time that that all this happens. And this
is also, by the way, why Charlie Chaplin stops becoming
a major figure in Hollywood because he kind of leaves

(40:39):
the country and can't be in movies for a while
because he's seen as being a dirty comy. It was
of a lot of really important talent, and again very
unfairly targeted a lot of the Jewish population. That's what
Hollywood is, where the Jews hang out. Yeah. Now, Joe
McCarthy was not a member of Who Act, although Richard
Nixon was, and he was a part of all this,

(41:01):
but the committee's tactic served as the blueprint for what
would come to be known as his two history as
McCarthy is um. By nineteen fifty four, Senator McCarthy had
launched his own crusade to ferret communist agents and homosexuals
out of the US government. Roy Coe was his chief council.
Now does it seem weird to you that Codan McCarthy
would use the power of the Senate to hunt down
both gays and communists. Welcome to the lavender scare. Have

(41:24):
you heard of the lavender scare? Oh? I know all
about the last Yeah. Yeah, this is some good ship.
And by good ship, I mean terrible shit. Um, it's bad.
It started in nineteen fifty when Senator McCarthy had held
up a list during a speech in West Virginia and
claimed that the names of two hundred and five card
carrying Communists who worked in the State Department were on it.

(41:45):
A few weeks later, the Deputy under Secretary of State
had testified to the Senate Appropriations Committee that his department
did not hire communists, but that they had fired a
number of people for being security risks, including ninety one homosexuals.
This sparked mass panic within the government, and a later
Congressional Republicans ordered an investigation into the homosexual problem and

(42:05):
the infiltration of sexual perverts and government. Now it's just
so yeah, yeah, it's not great. Whenever large political parties
start talking about group X problem. You know, yeah, that
not not great. Um, So it just so happens that

(42:25):
Roy Cone was super gay, like real, real, very much,
very very much gay, and and Joe McCarthy also probably
pretty gay. Um and yeah uh and again Roy is
like Roy is famous later in his life for taking
a new lover every single day, like like young male prostitutes,

(42:46):
like every single day, like and and at this point
in time he is gay, and so is probably McCarthy
and not just that. But before like all of these
trials get going in earnest, um, Roy Cone gets together
with one of Joe McCarthy's with an aid that he
and Joe McCarthy had hired that both he and McCarthy
had a gigantic crush on. And Cone and this guy

(43:08):
travel around Europe looking for like in military bases they
have like libraries and ship looking for communist books in
libraries and like also just traveling around Europe together and yeah,
like like they're you know, they're partying in in making
love by night and banning books from like uh State
Department libraries by day for being communists. Like it's a

(43:32):
very weird honeymoon that those two have. It's like it's
I really feel like this is a reaction of like,
if we don't get these other people there, other people
will come for us. Like it's very much like, oh,
we're not gay, ha ha them over there. And the
fact that you know all of the inside scoop, like
if if you're gay, especially in this time even nowadays,

(43:55):
you like you know where the other gays are, where
to go, you know what to look for, you know
the trade secrets, you know the lingo. It is like
it is beyond immoral to like, it's incredible people. But
then these people who are already scared and afraid for
their lives, he just set them on fire. We'll talk
about this is a bit too. One of the things

(44:16):
that's also extra evil about all this is that it's
not just that Roy Cohne and probably Joe McCarthy are gay.
It's that most of their fellow congress people who are
persecuting the gay people that Conan McCarthy bring to them
in like in Congress know that Conan McCarthy are gay.
They make jokes about it, like, but they're also not

(44:36):
punishing them and punishing other people, like it's all it's
very bad because these are the games we can trust. Yeah,
these are like themselves. This is this is the Candice
Owen's problem. Yeah today when just clearly hates being black
and black people so goddamn much that she'll do anything
to make sure people know that she hates it. Yeah, ridiculous.

(44:58):
It's wild because like family member who give interviews will
say that Roy would have done anything to hide his
homosexuality from the public eye. And at the same time
a lot of people knew that he was gay while
he was prosecuting other gape. It's a very strange situation.
Who was going to cross him? Though? If you're the
king gossip and you know all the things also Rocom
being gay and the king of gossip is just sir, sir,

(45:19):
I can see you. What a ridiculous man. Okay, Perez Hilton, like,
calm down. And one of the things that so there's
debate historically over how much Joe McCarthy is the driver
of the red scare and how much it's Roy Cone
manipulating Joe McCarthy because McCarthy is again not just a
drinker but like and not just an alcoholic, but like

(45:41):
an alcoholic who cut his life short by like thirty
years because of the sheer shocking quantity he drank. So
there are people who will argue that McCarthy was very
easy for Cone to manipulate, and that the Red scare
was largely orchestrated by Cone, and that he just wanted
McCarthy upfront to kind of take the hits if it
blew act on them, which is what happened. So again,

(46:02):
people will make that argument, and you can make it.
There's also people who would say that no, no, no,
McCarthy while he was drunk, was was as much a
driver of this is Roy Kane. I don't I'm not
an expert on either man, so I'm not going to
weigh in there, but you can find people who will
make either case. Um. Yeah, So the panic over gay
people and gay people being you know, communist infiltrators came

(46:23):
at a great time for Joe McCarthy because the panic
this like the Lavender scare, started when it started to
become clear that old tail Gunner Joe, which was McCarthy's nickname,
had no proof that any of the two five names
on that list that he's he held up we're actually communists.
And I'm gonna quote from a paper titled The Power
of Masculinity by Layla Tally now quote. To save face

(46:47):
with his colleagues in the American public, he changed his tactics,
calling out those he was unable to trace back to
Communism as being homosexual. This began what is now called
the Lavender Scare. According to McCarthy, homosexuals presented a huge
security risk because of the ease with which they could
be blackmailed. Therefore, they could not be trusted to hold
government jobs during a time when the threat of Communist
infiltration was so high. Although McCarthy was the man responsible

(47:09):
for making the initial allegations, he was not the party
responsible for rounding up the sexual deviance and questioning them.
Clyde Hoey was recruited to lead the investigation, and according
to the transcripts from the hearings, Roy Kohane was responsible
for the majority of the questioning. Now, obviously a lot
of this questioning happened under apps, but thankfully some of
the victims of the Lavender Scare later discussed what they experienced.

(47:30):
And I'm going to quote from a write up on
the Lavender Scare in The Feminist Review, which describes the
story of one Department of Commerce employee who was interrogated,
probably by Roy Khne. I mean this is so you
get an idea of what these interrogations were like. Like
all civil service employees working during the Eisenhower administration, Metal Intrusts,
a twenty four year old business economist at the Department

(47:51):
of Commerce in Washington, d C. Was required to pass
a security investigation as a condition for employment at her
position for only a few months. On that April day
and night, teen, Madeline was led into a room by
two male interrogators who began the interview by asking her
a few mundane questions regarding her name, where she lived,
in her date of birth mistrust. One of the interrogators
then retorted, the Commission has information that you are an

(48:14):
admitted homosexual. What comment do you wish to make regarding
this matter? Shocked, Madaline froze and refused to answer the question.
The men disclosed that they had reliable information that she
had been seen frequenting a gay bar, the Redskins Lounge,
and they named a number of her lesbian and gay
male friends. One of the men then sneered, how do
you like having sex with women? You've never had it
good until you've had it from a man tormented into silence.

(48:35):
Following the interrogation, she refused to sign a document admitting
her alleged crime, and she she quit the next day,
as any sane person would listen, if you're going it,
it shouldn't. But it does add more insult to me
that you went with the lamest, most common thing, lesbian's hero.
Like you've never had a good dick, So they don't

(48:56):
want your dick, they never wanted it, they're not interested.
Please leave them alone. It is again, and nothing that
happened in America should be shocking to me, and yet
it's still always so upsetting to hear that you can
be dragged into a room and berated within an inch
of your life simply because maybe somebody saw you walking

(49:18):
into a building. Yeah, and it's it's I I want
to be clear here. Actually that took place in nineteen
fifty eight, and Cone was out of the government at
that point because of stuff that will talk about that
happens later. But that's the kind of like number one,
he set that into motion. It continues for decades after
he leaves government. And that's what the interrogations were like,
Like you can assume that's more or less like the
ones Cone carried out, even though we don't necessarily have

(49:40):
a ton of transcripts from those. Um So, the lavender
scare was a calamity for the gay community in the
nineteen fifties, which had enough problems on its hands as
it was, like, nineteen fifties already not an easy time
to be gay. You don't need this ship. Yeah, And
it was also a calamity for a bunch of random
straight people who got falsely accused. Hundreds of people lost
their jobs, unknown but significant numbers committed suicide due to

(50:03):
the public shame. The long term fallout lasted more than
two decades, and the federal government went so far as
to calculate estimates of the total number of homosexuals in
d C. The numbers swung from five thousand to fifty thousand,
depending on who did the calculations. Layla tal Yeah, I
mean yeah, they think gay people breathe fire at this point,

(50:24):
so we shouldn't be interrational fear. I have ever heard
one of the idea that like, none of them can
keep a secret, y'all are wild, Yeah, Layla Tally writes, quote.
The Metropolitan Police were also asked to index the name, address, occupation,
and age of almost five thousand suspected sex perverts in
the area. A vice squad was created to investigate a
possible link between homosexuality and communism, but the government never

(50:46):
agreed that the two were related. The individuals let go
this time due to their sexuality were officially fired because
they were uncommonly susceptible to blackmail. About of the total
United States workforce had been investigated and interviewed in the
three year per eat between when McCarthy named gays in
the State Department and when President Eisenhower issued his order
demanding all homosexuals be terminated from the US government with

(51:07):
Executive Order ten four fifty. So, again, because of the
ship that Conan McCarthy start, twenty of the entire U
S workforce gets interrogated for their possible homosexuality. Twenty percent, yes,
truly of the nation's workforce. Yeah, I mean, if you
were in the fifties like I am, I have to

(51:31):
start stand and applaud your ability to stand in the
face of that kind of oppression. I've I've lived through
Prop eight and through Don't Ask, Don't Tell, And I
thought all of that was harrowing. I had no I
knew about the lavender scare. I had no idea that
it extended that far and affected that much of the
entire population of the United States. Harrowing stuff, man, I mean, like,

(51:55):
and this is the thing, like you talked about, Roy Cone,
He affected millions of people's lives because, like just at
this point, just because of this ship that he starts now.
During this whole period, Roy was the government's main anti
gay attack dog. He was the guy Joe McCarthy sent
in to carry out interrogations, possibly including you know, including
a lot of interrogations. And Roy was not living the

(52:15):
repressed life of a self hating gay man during this period.
In fact, it was literally the opposite. He spent his
nights out at a rotating carousel of gay bars. He
had sex with men constantly, but he denied that made
him the same as the gay men he spent his
days pass Not this fucker, Yeah, listen. Roy had sex
with other men every single day of his life, basically,

(52:36):
and also never considered himself gay. Bro. First of all,
everybody's a little gay everybody. Second of all, mom my guy.
The repression and mental gymnastics to pull that off to
be like, no, I'm attracted and I'm going to sleep
with but it doesn't make me gay. So what is
your definition of gay? What are you doing? He wouldn't

(52:58):
even say that he was attracted to men. He preferred
to say that, he said he All he would say
is that he preferred to quote expend his sexual energies
on men but not women. Bros like of like, oh,
it's more masculine to take a man. I know that

(53:20):
he was a power top and it disturbing and disgusting. Yeah,
it's not cool. I mean it's not It's fine to
be a power top, but it's not cool to do
what Roy's doing. Um. And he would also tell anyone
who asked that he was no pansy. By this, he's
a he's a terrible person. Like again, his friends said
that he was the embodiment of human evil. The people

(53:40):
who liked him like said that. So yeah, quote he'd
tell anyone who asked that he was no pansy. And
by this quote he meant that even though he engaged
in sexual relations with men, he did not consider himself
to be homosexual because he was a better man than that.
During the actual Senate hearings pertaining to the higher risk
of employing homosexuals. Cone was often on descendingly an accusatory

(54:01):
in his line of questioning. McCarthy, who presided over most
of the hearings, allowed this line of questioning with no objections.
In the case of Eric L. Kohler, for example, Cone
delved into Mr. Kohler's personal life and presented personal letters
that had absolutely nothing to do with his job as evidence.
Cone also used the technique of frequently repeating Mr Kohler's
responses to him for emphasis and intimidation. By questioning Mr

(54:21):
Kohler in this manner, Cone was able to easily confuse
Kohler and made him appear to be lying. He's a
very abusive guy, like fundamentally just an abusive, bad person.
I would like a collection of essays from many people
as he slept with as possible, so that I can
understand the experience of being with somebody who hates themselves. Yeah. Sorry,

(54:46):
There's two good documentaries. One is Where's My Roy Cone?
And one is um Bully Coward Victim I think is
the name of it, which is another documentary about Roy Cone,
and that Will Will explain. Will explain why it is
that title. Well, there's there's actually a good reason behind
why that title is what it is. Um, but yeah,

(55:07):
and they talked to at least one of those has
an interview with with one or two of his his
former like sexual partners. I don't know if lovers is
the right term, because I'm not sure that that's to
me that Roy was the kind of gay who was
like well, and we saw this more in the nineties,
probably because of Roy Cohen's influence with the idea that
if you're not falling in love with the people you're
having sex with, then that's not yours, your your sexual

(55:30):
I forget how we title these things. Yeah, then that
makes you not gay, which is again bananas. It's bananas.
If you're attracted strictly to males and you do not
want to have sex with females, that is just categorically
you're gay. Yes, it's okay, and it's it's fine, that's
perfectly fine. But if you are a man who exclusively
has sex with other men every day of your life,

(55:50):
you should it's you're gay, like and it's fine. Roy,
it would have been fine if you hadn't been such
a piece of ship to everybody, you know, the gay community.
Really we love we love other gaye man. You could
have been in here getting in on this love fest
like well, not after the Lavender Scare, that before that,
you could have made a choice to be proud of
who you were and been accepted and loved. And instead,

(56:11):
you know, made choices. He made some choices. Now, obviously
the damage that Cone helped to do during the Lavender
Scare was incalculable. But you know what damage isn't incalculable, Joel, Well,
what kind the damage done by our products and services
to your wallet? A slag? Where we're back, So we're

(56:42):
talking about Roy Cone and the horrible, horrible impact of
his his his his crimes on the world. All over
the nation, Americans, particularly Americans working in the government started
spying on each other as a result of the Red
Scare that Conan McCarthy kicked up. They were spying not
just to see who might be a red, but to
see who might be gay. And in fact, some people

(57:03):
will make the case that the entire national security establishment
that we have now, the espionage state, that is, you know,
spying one way or another and all of our communications
was started by Conan McCarthy that they are the reasons
for like everything that's snowden uncovered about the n s A,
that that ball got rolling because of McCarthy and Cone. Um.

(57:24):
I don't know that that's you know, a comprehensive case
that you can make, but some people will argue it. Now, yeah,
and again it was you know, it starts this avalanche
of paranoia with an American culture. And in one particularly
absurd case, a woman accused her boss of being a
lesbian on the basis that she had peculiar lips not large,
but oddly shaped, quote, a funny feeling, the fact that

(57:45):
this one was single, and the fact that she had
spent a lot of time in China. Um. So, like,
that's the sort of like people are like. One person
is like this woman is accused of being a lesbian
and a communist because she has very little in the
way of hips. Like that's that's the kind of the
kind of shift that starts coming out at this point. Um. Yeah,

(58:07):
the whole of America goes kind of fucking bonkers. So
during this whole period of the Lavender scare, Cone was
also helping his boss carry out the Red Scare because again,
everyone with power just sort of decided that gay and
communists were synonyms. It was usually Cone's job, during, you know,
interrogations in the committee to ask the question, are you
now or have you ever been a member of the

(58:27):
Communist Party. After the nineteen fifty two elections, the Republicans
won control of both houses of Congress for the first
time in a generation. McCarthy became the chairman of the
Senate Committee on Government Operations and its Subcommittee on Investigations.
This allowed him to expand his search outside the State Department,
to other government agencies and to the broadcasting and defense industries.
He started prowling around university faculties in the United Nations.

(58:50):
Wherever McCarthy and Cohne went, their investigations shattered careers and lives.
What they didn't find we're communist sleeper agents. The whole
affair came to a disastrous lusion in nineteen fifty four,
largely as a result of Roy Cone's horny nous. G
David Shine had been one of McCarthy's aids and Roy
Cohne's big time crush, and in fact probably both men
had a big crush on David Shine, but he was

(59:11):
definitely Khne's boyfriend. This is the guy he was traveling
around Europe with, David Shine. Yeah. Now, unfortunately Shine was
drafted in nineteen fifty three, either out of genuine affection
or out of a desire to make sure that a
hot guy didn't get mangled in a war. Roy immediately
tried to intercede on Shine's behalf to the Army. He
first tried to convince them to commission his friend as

(59:32):
an officer. The Army said no, because he didn't have
any skills that would, you know, justify commissioning him. So
Cone demanded that Shine get extra leaves so he could
go home and funck Roy more often. Shockingly, the Army
did not agree to do this either. Now Joe McCarthy
was just as enraged as Cone, because again Joe was
also kind of had at the hots for this guy,

(59:54):
and rather than accept that their friend had to do
his time in the service, Conan McCarthy accused the Army
of drafting Shine in retaliation for their attempts to uncover
communists heiding in the military. The investigation they carried out
on the US Army lasted two months, and one of
the really bizarre things about it is that you get
the feeling again. Everyone involved knew that Conan McCarthy were

(01:00:14):
gay and doing this to get a lover out of
the service. Congressman joke about Roy Cone being a fairy
in like you can find video of this, like yeah,
while he is, Yeah, it's it's really something else. Um,
it's very gross. It's one of those things you almost
feel you start to feel sorry for Cone for a
second during that part of the video and you realize, like, oh,

(01:00:35):
you persecuted thousands of game Like, fuck you, Roy, I'm
not gonna feel bad for you. Did you well? And
like you made it this sham? Like you your why
this is happening? Yeah, exactly, Like before games were just
persecuted by the religious and now they have to worry
about their entire government coming down on their house. Fuck

(01:00:56):
you forever, dude. Yeah, piece of ship. Yeah, it's it's remarkable.
The Army spokesman referred to Shine and Cone snig ly
as warm personal friends, to which Roy responded, he is
one of my many good friends, sir. Yes. The courtroom
behind him laughed uneasily in response because they knew what
was being discussed. We have transcripts from the investigation, and

(01:01:19):
I want to read from them now. It starts with
one fellow, Mr Adams, being questioned by the Army about
a conversation he witnessed between Roy Cone and Senator McCarthy.
Mr Adams, I said, let's talk about shine. That started
a chain of events, an experience similar to none which
I have had in my life. Mr Cohne became extremely agitated,
became extremely abusive. He cursed me and then Senator McCarthy.

(01:01:40):
The abuse went in waves. He would be very abusive,
and then it would kind of a bait and things
would be friendly for a few moments. Everyone would eat
a little bit more, and then it would start in again.
It just kept on. I was trying to catch a
one thirty train, but Mr Cohne was so violent by
them that I felt I had better not do it
and leave him that angry with me and that angry
with Senator McCarthy because of a remark I had made.

(01:02:01):
So I stayed and missed my one thirty train. I
thought surely I would be able to get out of
there by two thirty. The luncheon concluded, and then at
this point, someone named Mr Jenkins, who's a member of
the committee asked him, you said you were afraid to
leave Senator McCarthy alone there with him. Mr Adams, What
did he say? You said? He was very abusive, Mr Adams,
he was extremely abusive. Mr Jenkins asks, was or not
any obscene language used? Mr? Adams? Yes, Mr Jenkins, just

(01:02:25):
admit that and tell me what he did say which
constituted abuse in your opinion, Mr Adams, I have stated before, Sir,
the tone of the voice has as much to do
with abuse as the words. I do not remember the phrases.
I do not remember the sentences, but I do remember
the violence. Mr Jenkins. Do you remember the subject, Mr Adams?
The subject was Shine. The subject was the fact. The
thing that Kohen was angry about, the thing that he

(01:02:46):
was so violent about was the fact that one the
Army was not agreeing to an assignment for Shine, and
to that Senator McCarthy was not supporting his staff and
its efforts to get Shine assigned to New York. So
his abuse was directed partly to me and partly to
Senator McCarthy. As I say, it kind of came in waves.
There would be a period of extreme abuse, and then
there would be a period where it would almost get
back to normal, and ice cream would be ordered, and

(01:03:07):
then about halfway through that a little more of the same.
I missed the two thirty train. Also, this violence continued.
It was a remarkable thing. At first, Senator McCarthy seemed
to be trying to conciliate He seemed to be trying
to conciliate Cone and not to state anything contrary to
what he had stated to me in the morning. But
then he more or less lapsed into silence. So I
went down to Room one oh one. Mr Cohne was there,

(01:03:28):
and Mr Carr was there. As I remember, we lunched
together in the Senate cafeteria and everything was peaceful when
we returned to Room one oh one. Towards the later
part of the conversation, I asked Cone, I knew that
nine of all inductees ultimately face overseas duty, and I
knew that one day we were going to face that
problem with Mr Cohen as to Shine, So I thought
I would lay a little groundwork for future trouble, I guessed.
I asked him what would happen if Shine got overseas duty?

(01:03:50):
Mr Jenkins, you mean you were breaking the news gently?
Mr Adams, Mr Adams. Yes, sir, that is right. I
asked him what would happen if Shine got overseas duty?
He responded with vigor and force. Stevens is through as
secretary as the Army of the Army. I said, oh, Roy,
something to this effect. Oh, Roy, don't say that. Come on, really,
what is going to happen if if Shane receives overseas duty?

(01:04:11):
Cone responded with even more force, we will wreck the army.
Oh okay, so there's a lot there. America said, screwt
what you can't turn the same things that you used
on communists and at the army, Roy, you've lost sight
of the goal here, you've lost sight of the goal

(01:04:31):
and also have gone after the one thing that Americans
actually consider sacred, which is our army. And like, yeah,
that that's not going to end well for you, Roy, Um.
You can go after a bunch of powerless gay people
and accused communist, but if you attack the army, things
are going to end badly. But what I think is
really fascinating there is because there's again this debate over
was Joe McCarthy the driving force behind the Red Scare

(01:04:53):
or was it Cone driving him? And that transcript makes
me think that the people saying it was Roy have
a point, because that that is textbook abusive behavior. That
is absolutely the textbook of like he's screaming and he's
screaming at you, and then he's nice and he's normal,
and things get back to normal, and then he starts
screaming in yeah, and you get ice cream and like
he's he's he's doing that thing that abusive people do

(01:05:15):
to like abusive partners do. And I don't know, I
don't think he and McCarthy had any sort of romantic connection,
but I do think that emotionally they kind of had
that that sort of thing going on. And Roy is
basically vacillating between when you make me angry and the
slightest I will become so horribly abusive to you that
this guy Mr Adams, who's like an army dude, um,

(01:05:35):
is horrified by how cruel I am to you, and
then everything will be nice and normal and we'll be
friends again. And then if you say anything that's said
like yeah, and you see the chaos and confusion that
for this poor guy who's like I couldn't even tell
you what was being said that you know, I was afraid.
I was just struck by the violence. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I yeah, woff. I can't feel bad for McCarthy because

(01:05:59):
you allowed your self to be no, no, Nothy a
way to hand you And it's what a person to
hand your career over to. One of the things that
is striking about this I have to assume this guy,
Mr Adams is like a pretty normal man for his
time and position. But that's a very nuanced and like
complicated understanding of an abusive personality that he just laid

(01:06:20):
out to Congress like that's yeah. And to be able
to like, I feel like a lot of men would
have been like, oh, well, he was just yelling and yeah, guys,
get some time for him to be like, no, it
was dangerous, and so I put myself in the line
of danger. I couldn't leave McCarthy alone with him. Oh man,
that's a really big thing to do. I think. I

(01:06:42):
think the thing the thing that Adams recognizes that I'm
most impressed with is the understand that like, no, it
doesn't matter what he said, it's the way he said it.
It's the violence with which he said it that was
that was the disturbing thing. That's a really kind of
an impressive recognition for a fifties dude, you know, absolutely, yeah. Um, anyway,

(01:07:05):
that's episode one of Roy kone Wow, fun Guy, no bit. Yeah,
we're gonna talk about the conclusion of the Red Scare
and also the conclusion of Roy's life, which unfortunately happens
many decades later after a lot more fucking around. We'll
be talking about trains, We'll be talking about Reagan. It's

(01:07:26):
going to be great. It's gonna be terrible. You're gonna
be talking about trains, lots of trains, lots of trains,
toy trains. They're coming back. He comes from train money,
toy train money. Yeah. Joel, do you have any thing
you want to plug? Uh? Not really? And Jel Monique
you can find me all over the internet at Joel Monique.

(01:07:47):
That's j O E L E M O N I
q U E. If you're not following or what the fuck,
get into my Beyonce love. All right, Well that's the
end of the episode. Joel, thank you for talking with
me about Roy Cone fun guy, who's super fun. Robert,

(01:08:08):
thank you for breaking it down. Please please, I really
feel like you're going to appreciate the animated musical cartoon
they did over at H The Real Fight. Yes. Uh
and also listeners, go watch it. It's on YouTube. It's
like three minutes, but it's basically all of the goodness
Robert gave you can dens into three minutes and it
makes Roy Clun looks stupid and hilarious and that's always fun. Yeah, Robert,

(01:08:31):
anything you want to plug. No, I've never done anything
in my entire life other than this exact episode of
this podcast. It's my only my only completed work. Oh uprising, Yeah,
I've got I also did one other thing. It's a
podcast about the protests, the BLM movement and the the
fighting with right wing uh fascist paramilitaries in Portland over

(01:08:56):
the summer and uh an autumn of It's called Upright
as a guy from Portland. Check it out. It'll be
out by the time this episode drops. Yeah, we vital listening.
Check it out. I can't wait, all right? Uh that's
episode one. Yep, who wo

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Behind the Bastards News

Follow Us On

Host

Robert Evans

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season

Dateline NBC

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: Roy Cohn: The Man Who Made Donald Trump