Explicit

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

Published Dec 8, 2020, 11:00 AM

Robert is joined by Joelle Monique to discuss Roy Cohn.

FOOTNOTES:

  1. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/roy-cohn-and-the-making-of-a-winner-take-all-america
  2. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/roy-cohn-mafia-politics/599320/
  3. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-03-18-vw-1638-story.html
  4. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/eavesdropping-on-roy-cohn-and-donald-trump
  5. https://forward.com/culture/431851/how-roy-cohns-shame-made-him-and-trump-shameless/
  6. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a46616/dont-mess-with-roy-cohn/
  7. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/21/books/books-of-the-times-2-works-trace-the-turbulent-life-of-roy-cohn.html
  8. https://www.actl.com/docs/default-source/default-document-library/journal_87_summer_2018_cohn_article.pdf?sfvrsn=4
  9. https://newrepublic.com/article/155066/covering-roy-cohn
  10. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6444/
  11. https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/age-of-eisenhower/mcarthyism-red-scare
  12. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/15/ethel-rosenberg-conviction-testimony-released-atom-spy
  13. https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2016/02/04/how-red-scare-destroyed-small-town-teacher/OyzaMTrsxMsx54liP1YX9I/story.html
  14. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/15/weekinreview/nation-rosenbergs-50-years-later-yes-they-were-guilty-but-what-exactly.html
  15. https://minnesotaplaylist.com/magazine/article/2018/blacklisted
  16. https://ir.una.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=nahrd
  17. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3874391?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
  18. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a33350476/fear-city-new-york-mafia-donald-trump-tower-mob-ties-explained/

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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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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, 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? 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? 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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, 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, 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 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

Behind the Bastards

There’s a reason the History Channel has produced hundreds of documentaries about Hitler but only a  
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