William Sebastian Cohen (born 28 August 1940) is an
author and American politician from the U.S.
state of Maine. A Republican,
Cohen served as Secretary of Defense (1997–2001) under
Democratic President Bill Clinton.
Early life and education
Cohen was born in Bangor, Maine. His father, Reuben Cohen, was a Russian-Jewish immigrant and life long baker (Bangor Rye Company). His mother, Clara, was of
Irish-Protestant ancestry.
After graduating from Bangor High School in 1958, Cohen attended Bowdoin College,
graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of
Arts degree in Latin in 1962.
While in high school and college Cohen was a basketball player, and was named to the Maine
all-state high school and college basketball team, and at Bowdoin was inducted into the New England All-Star Hall of Fame. Cohen
attended law school at the Boston
University School of Law graduating with a LL.B (law degree) cum laude in
1965.
Cohen filed for divorce from his first wife Diana Dunn, on Feb. 15, 1987.
On February 14, 1996 Cohen and Janet Langhart[1] were married. Langhart is a former model, Boston television personality, and
BET correspondent. Janet Langhart was known as the "First Lady of the
Pentagon" during Cohen's tenure as Secretary.[2]
Legal, academic, and early political career
After graduating from law school, Cohen eventually earned partnership in a Bangor
law firm. Cohen became an assistant county attorney for Penobscot County (1968–1970). In 1968, Cohen became an instructor at Husson College in Bangor, and later was an instructor in business administration at the University of
Maine (1968–1972).
Cohen served as the vice president of the Maine Trial Lawyers Association (1970–1972) and as a member of the Bangor School
Board (1971–1972). Cohen became a fellow at the John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard University in 1972, and in 1975
was named as one of the U.S. Jaycee's "ten outstanding young men."
Cohen was elected to and served on the Bangor City Council (1969–1972) and became the mayor of Bangor (1971–1972).
House of Representatives and Senate
In the 1972 election, Cohen won election to a seat in the
U.S. House of Representatives, representing Maine's 2nd congressional district, succeeding Democrat William Hathaway, who was elected to
the US Senate.
During his first term in Congress, Cohen became deeply involved in the Watergate
investigation. As a member of the House Judiciary
Committee, he was one of the first Republicans to break with his party and voted for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. During
this time, Time magazine named him one of "America's 200 Future Leaders."
After three terms in the House, Cohen ran for and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1978, defeating William Hathaway in his
first bid for reelection. Cohen went on to be reelected in 1984 and 1990, serving a total of 18 years in the Senate from 1979 to
1997.
In 1994, Cohen investigated the federal government's process for acquiring information technology, and his report, Computer
Chaos: Billions Wasted Buying Federal Computer Systems, generated much discussion. Cohen retired from the Senate in 1996;
Susan Collins, who had worked for Cohen, was elected to succeed him. (Maine's other
current senator, Olympia Snowe, had also worked for Cohen, while he was in the House.)
While in the Senate, Cohen served on both the Senate Armed
Services Committee and the Governmental Affairs Committee (1979–1997)
and was a member of the Senate Intelligence
Committee 1983–1991 and again 1995–1997. He also participated in the drafting of several notable laws related to defense
matters, including the Competition in Contracting Act (1984), the Montgomery GI Bill Act (1984), the Goldwater-Nichols Act
(1986), the Intelligence Oversight Reform Act (1991), and the Federal
Acquisition Reform Act (1996).
Secretary of Defense
Cohen as Secretary of Defense
After retiring from the Senate, Cohen was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the position of Secretary of Defense during
Clinton's second term, from 1997 to 2001. This appointment was rare because it was one of the few political appointments that crossed party lines in
recent history.
As Secretary of Defense Cohen played a large role in directing the United States military actions in Iraq and Kosovo, including the dismissal of Wesley
Clark from his post as the NATO Supreme Allied Commander. Both Operation Desert Fox in Iraq and Operation Joint Guard
in Kosovo were launched just months after al-Qaeda carried out the United States embassy bombings in Dar es
Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998.
Nomination and confirmation
On December 5, 1996, President Clinton announced his selection of Cohen as secretary of defense. Cohen, a Republican about to
retire from the United States Senate, was the "right person," Clinton said, to build on the achievements of William Perry, "to secure the bipartisan support America's armed forces must have and clearly
deserve." In responding to his nomination, Cohen said that during his congressional career he had supported a nonpartisan
national security policy and commended the president for appointing a Republican to
his cabinet.
Cohen and President Clinton at
The Pentagon, September 1997.
During his confirmation hearings, Cohen said he thought on occasion he might differ with Clinton on specific national security
issues. He implicitly criticized the Clinton administration for lacking a clear strategy for leaving Bosnia and stated that he thought U.S. troops should definitely be out by mid-1998. He also
asserted that he would resist further budget cuts, retain the two regional conflicts strategy, and support spending increases for
advanced weapons, even if it necessitated further cuts in military personnel. Cohen questioned whether savings from
base closings and acquisition reform could provide enough money for
procurement of new weapons and equipment that the Joint Chiefs of Staff thought
necessary in the next few years. He supported the expansion of NATO and looked on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as the most serious problem the United States faced.
After confirmation by a unanimous Senate vote, Cohen was sworn in as the 20th
Secretary of Defense on January 24, 1997. He then settled into a schedule much fuller than he had followed in the Senate.
Routinely he arrived at the Pentagon before 7:00 a.m., received an intelligence briefing, and then met with the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The rest of the day he devoted to policy
and budget briefings, visits with foreign and other dignitaries, and to what he termed "ABC" meetings at the White House with
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and
National Security Advisor Sandy
Berger. He also traveled abroad several times during his first months in office.
Defense budget
One of Cohen's first major duties was to present to Congress the Fiscal Year
1998 Defense budget, which had been prepared under Secretary Perry. Cohen requested a budget of $250.7 billion, which represented
3 percent of the nation's estimated gross domestic product for FY 1998. Cohen stressed three top budget priorities: people
(recruiting and retaining skilled people through regular military pay raises, new construction or modernization of barracks, and
programs for child care, family support, morale, welfare, and recreation), readiness (support for force readiness, training,
exercises, maintenance, supplies, and other essential needs), and modernization (development and upgrading of weapon and
supporting systems to guarantee the combat superiority of U.S. forces). This meant increasing the funds available for procurement
of new systems, with the target set at $60 billion by FY2001.
When he presented the FY1998 budget, Cohen noted that he would involve himself with the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which would focus on the challenges to U.S. security and
the nation's military needs over the next decade or more. When the QDR became public in May 1997, it did not fundamentally alter
the budget, structure, and doctrine of the military. Some defense experts thought it gave insufficient attention to new forms of
warfare, such as terrorist attacks, electronic sabotage, and the use of chemical and biological agents. Cohen stated that the
Pentagon would retain the "two regional wars" scenario adopted after the end of the
Cold War. He decided to scale back purchases of jet
fighters, including the Air Force's F-22 Raptor and the Navy's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, as well as Navy surface ships. The review included cutting another 61,700
active duty service members — 15,000 in the Army, 26,900 in the Air Force, 18,000 in the Navy, and 1,800 in the
Marine Corps, as well as 54,000 reserve forces, mainly in the
Army National Guard, and some 80,000 civilians department-wide. Cohen also decided
to recommend two more rounds of base closings in 1999 and 2001. The Pentagon hoped to save $15 billion annually over the next few
years to make possible the purchase of new equipment and weapon systems without a substantial budget increase above the current
level of $250 billion.
International relations and situations
Cohen, General
John H. Tilelli, Jr., Commander in Chief, United Nations
Command/Combined Forces Command/U.S. Forces Korea, and a Korean officer walk down the red carpet upon arriving in Korea, January
1988.
As he settled into office, Cohen faced the question of the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which he
supported, and its relationship to Russia. At a summit meeting between President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Helsinki, Finland, in March 1997, Yeltsin acknowledged the inevitability of
broader NATO membership. Two months later he agreed, after negotiations with NATO officials, to sign an accord providing for a
new permanent council, to include Russia, the NATO secretary general, and a representative of the other NATO nations, to function
as a forum in which Russia could air a wide range of security issues that concerned that country. Formal signing of this
agreement would pave the way for a July 1997 invitation from NATO to several nations, probably including Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic,
to join the organization.
The proposed U.S. missile defense system received attention at the Helsinki summit,
where Clinton and Yeltsin agreed to an interpretation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty allowing the United States to proceed with a limited missile defense system currently under development.
Specifically, Clinton and Yeltsin agreed to distinguish between a national missile defense system, aimed against strategic
weapons, not allowed by the ABMT, and a theater missile defense system to guard against shorter range missile attacks. Some
critics thought that any agreement of this kind would place undesirable limits on the development of both theater and strategic
missile defenses. The Helsinki meeting also saw progress in arms control negotiations between the United States and Russia, a
matter high on Cohen's agenda. Yeltsin and Clinton agreed on the need for early Russian ratification of the Second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) and negotiation of START
III to make further significant cuts in the strategic nuclear arsenals of both nations.
The continuation, at least until mid-1998, of the existing peacekeeping mission involving U.S. forces in Bosnia and the
possibility that other such missions would arise worried Cohen, who earlier had expressed reservations about such operations.
Humanitarian efforts that did not involve peacekeeping, such as in Rwanda in the recent past,
also seemed likely. Other persistent national security problems, including tension with Iraq in the
Persian Gulf area, Libya in North Africa, and North Korea in
East Asia, could flare up again, as could conflict in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians.
In preparing future budgets, the challenge would be to find the right mix between money for operation and maintenance accounts
on the one hand and modernization procurement funds on the other, while facing the prospect of a flat DoD budget of about $250
billion annually for the next decade or so. A relatively new problem that could affect the DoD budget was vertical integration in the defense industry. It occurred on a large scale in the 1990s as mergers
of major defense contractors created a few huge dominant companies, particularly in the aerospace industry. They were called
vertical because they incorporated most of the elements of the production process, including parts and subcomponents. Cohen and
other Pentagon leaders began to worry that vertical integration could reduce competition and in the long run increase the costs
of what the Department of Defense had to buy.
Social issues
Finally, Cohen had to address social issues that engaged the widest public interest. The status and treatment of homosexuals
in the military, the role of women in combat as well as in other jobs in the services, racism, and sexual harassment were serious
problems.
Recent years
On January 5, 2006, he participated in a meeting at the
White House of former Secretaries of Defense and State to discuss United States foreign
policy with Bush administration officials.
Cohen is also the author of several books, including mysteries, poetry, and (with George
Mitchell) an analysis of the Iran-contra affair. Michael Moore spent an episode of his television show The
Awful Truth chasing after Cohen to ask him whether his poetry-writing made him too much of a "wimp" to run the
Pentagon.
Cohen is currently head of an international business consulting firm located in Washington
D.C. called the Cohen Group. He is on the
Board of Directors of insurer AIG, and is a Chairman Emeritus of the
US-Taiwan Business Council. The Washington Post recently ran an article (May
28, 2006) entitled "From Public Life to Private Business" about Cohen's abrupt transition to the business of Washington lobbying
within "weeks of leaving office." It discussed the affairs of the Cohen Group in greater detail and while alleging no specific
impropriety, took a generally negative view of the former Senator and Secretary of Defense.
On August 21, 2006, Cohen's fiction novel, Dragon
Fire, was released. The plot revolves around a secretary of defense who contends with a potential nuclear threat from a foreign country. He is also set to release a memoir with his wife, author
Janet Langhart, entitled Love in Black and White. It is a memoir about race,
religion, and the love Langhart and Cohen share over similar life circumstances and backgrounds.[3] On August 22, 2006, Cohen appeared on The Daily
Show to promote his novel.
On August 25, 2006, William Cohen appeared on
Fox & Friends First primarily to promote his new novel, but towards the end of the
broadcast declared the following while being interviewed by Brian Kilmeade: "I think
there should be a commitment to universal service. I think that only a few people are really committed to this war against
terrorism.... We ought to have a real call to national service to commit ourselves to some form of public service...to put us on
a war footing mentality."
On January 3, 2007, William Cohen appeared on
CNN to support John Shalikashvili's OpEd in support of
ending the policy known as 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' saying, "The vast majority
of service members are personally comfortable working and interacting with gays and lesbians, and there is only so long that
Congress can ignore the evidence".[4]
On February 14, 2007, William Cohen appeared on
FOX. [citation needed]
On February 20, 2007, William Cohen and his wife,
Janet Langhart, appeared on NBC's Today Show to promote their memoir, Love in Black and White.
On February 22, 2007, William Cohen and his wife,
Janet Langhart, appeared on local Washington, DC morning radio show Elliot in the Morning to promote their memoir, Love in Black and White
On March 22, Janet Langhart and Cohen appeared on ABC's The View to promote their memoir Love in Black
and White.
He appeared on The Colbert Report on April 18,
2007
On Oct. 5, 2007 Bob Woodward presented the The
2007 William S. Cohen Lecture at the University of Maine.
See also
Notes
References
External links
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