ROY COHN MAY RESIGN

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27407, 21 July 1954, Page 11

ROY COHN MAY RESIGN

“Smeared” For Work With McCarthy (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.m.) WASHINGTON, July 19. A Senate move to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy (Republican, Wisconsin) was postponed today amid reports that Mr Roy Cohn, one of his principal assistants, had submitted his resignation. The report that Mr Cohn, chief counsel to Senator McCarthy’s Permanent Investigations Sub-committee, had resigned, was printed in early editions of the New York “Daily Mirror” and the Chicago “Tribune.” The “Daily Mirror” said Mr Cohn, -who was one of the principals in the recent controversy between Senator McCarthy and the Army, had submitted his resignation at a week-end meeting with the senator. In Washington, Senator McCarthy sail he had received no resignation. Several staff members had offered to resign, but he had urged them not to and he expected them to stay on.

Mr Cohn was quoted as saying he was leaving the sub-committee because it was impossible for him to continue his work “if I am sniped from ambush.” Mr Cohn was reported to have forecast the resignations of “three or four” other sub-committee staff members shortly. He did not name them. Earlier, Senator McCarthy, who faces a showdown on demands that he dismiss certain staff members of the sub-committee, said that a number of the staff had offered their resignations. Senator McCarthy added that he had been urging the staff members not to resign, but he did not know how successful he would be. The senator did not identify the staff members, -but he said he might announce their names later. Senator McCarthy made his announcement on the eve of a showdown meeting with members of the subcommittee who have demanded a staff “housecleaning.” Those wanting the clean-out are the three Democrats and ope Republican. He blocked a staff shake-up last week by refusiftg to honour the proxy vote of Senator John McClellan (Democrat, Arkansas), who was absent, but another meeting, with the new McClellan proxies, is scheduled for tomorrow. Senator McCarthy said the staff members offered to resign not because they felt there was any merit to the “smear attacks” against them, but because of the abuse their families had been receiving, and because they felt that the “fantastic smear attacks” destroyed their usefulness. Mr Cohn is chief counsel of the subcommittee. Mr Francis Carr, who was involved in the Army-McCarthy hearings for a time, is staff director. Attention has also been focused on two other employees They have been identified unofficially as Mr Donald Suriiiie and Mr Thomas Lavenia —both of whom have been denied Defence Department security clearances. Censure Move Delayed Senator Ralph Flanders (Republican, Vermont) said today that he would delay a showdown on his motion to censure Senator McCarthy until July >3O, partly to prevent any'interference with President Eisenhower’s legislative programme.

He made the announcement shortly after the Senate Republican leader,

Senator William Knowland. said that a Senate debate on the motion would slow the adoption of Mr Eisenhower’s programme. Senator Flanders seeks Senate censure of Senator McCarthy on the ground that his activities as chairman of the Permanent Investigations subcommittee are “unbecoming for a senatqr” and are bringing the Senate into “disrepute.” Senator Flanders’s new date for the actual introduction of the censure motion would put the issue before the Senate just one day before Congress adjourns for the year if the Republican leaders succeed in achieving their July 31 adjournment. Senator McCarthy’s investigation of communism in defence plants got under way today with a stormy hearing of the sub-committee, at which a witness was forcibly ejected. The ejected witness was Charles Wojchowski, an employee of the AllisChalmers works at Boston, who said he was not ready to testify whether he had ever been a Communist Wojchowski was ejected when he began denouncing F. 8.1. informants as “stool pigeons.”