CITIZEN COHEN Former defense secretary, Maine native still taking global pulse

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Six years after leaving his post as secretary of defense, William S. Cohen still strolls into the “Pentagon” each morning for intelligence briefings. NBut this Pentagon isn’t where Cohen served as President Clinton’s defense chief from 1997 to 2001. Instead, it’s a room in the downtown headquarters of The Cohen Group, a global business-consulting firm Cohen started when he left the real Pentagon.

He takes his place around a circular conference table with former generals and admirals. They exchange business intelligence on China, India and the Middle East.

“Everyone has to be aware of what’s going on,” Cohen said. “We have to be on the same page.”

In his own little Pentagon, Cohen debriefs his team of 46 mostly ex-government and military personnel. Some connect by telephone from two offices in China and one in England.

Cohen, 66, recruited the high-caliber squad from his 24 years as a Maine congressman and senator and from his four years at the Pentagon. Together, they advise Fortune 500 companies seeking contracts with the Defense Department in places such as Iraq or offer strategies for global businesses in places such as China, India and Japan.

“I’ve tried to look at the best and brightest throughout my career,” Cohen said in an interview at his office in Washington, D.C. “When they retire, I ask them to come here and serve us.”

During the past six years, Cohen has built his firm from “ground zero” into a high-priced service. He started with an unconventional business model in mind. In territory where lobbying is common, he aimed to recruit former high-level government employees with a wealth of foreign-relations knowledge. They would devise international business strategies instead of advocating for legislation that benefits their clients’ industries.

“He trusts people to do their jobs without micromanaging them or second-guessing them,” said Robert Tyrer, 50, chief operating officer of The Cohen Group, who has worked under Cohen for 32 years. “It’s nice to work in an environment where you don’t have somebody who’s hectoring you every five minutes.”

Symbols of the past

Three rooms in Cohen’s office bear the

same names as three stages of his career in Washington: the Capitol, the Senate and the Pentagon. As chief executive officer of The Cohen Group, he draws from experiences gained during each stage.

In the House of Representatives, Cohen instilled loyalty among his staffers, many of whom followed him to The Cohen Group. In the Senate, he plunged into national defense, pharmaceuticals and agriculture, industries his firm now represents. In the Pentagon, he kindled relationships with foreign leaders, military commanders and politicians, who now are some of his closest advisers or business partners.

“He picked front-row people,” said John Hamre, Cohen’s deputy defense secretary from 1997 to 1999. “They were some of the very best in the Department [of Defense].”

Throughout six years in the House and 18 in the Senate, Cohen had always aspired to found The Cohen Group. When he left the Senate in 1997, he had business cards printed and signed a lease for office space when Clinton asked him to become defense secretary. He couldn’t pass it up.

“The next four years were probably the best four years of my life,” Cohen said. “Being secretary of defense is the best job in the world.”

Cohen said he’s just as busy now as he was during his 28 years in the federal government, but he’s not fixated on past triumphs.

“Sometimes, people can be a little bit stuck in the glory days, but he’s not stuck,” Tyrer said. “People don’t pay for reminiscing.”

The business life

By the time Cohen left the Pentagon, he had incurred tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt, according to The Washington Post. Jill O’Donnell, a Cohen Group spokeswoman, declined to comment on the report.

But now, Cohen serves on the CBS board of directors and on the supervisory board of Head, a company known for its tennis rackets. Last year, after leaving the board of insurance giant American International Group, or AIG, Cohen accepted more than $100,000 in cash and stock options, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And from 2002 to 2006, his firm’s list of lobbying clients grew from four to 33, while its annual lobbying income, which Cohen said makes up only a “small fraction” of the business, swelled from $155,000 to $1.6 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The Cohen Group lobbies mainly the Defense Department and Congress on issues ranging from national defense to real estate.

According to Senate records, about 80 percent of employees listed on the firm’s Web site have registered to lobby, and many have lobbied the same government sectors they once were a part of.

Cohen, who does not lobby, recruited some of the highest ex-military commanders and former administration officials who do. They include retired Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, who served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1996 to 2000, and retired Coast Guard Adm. James Loy, former deputy secretary of homeland security under the current President Bush.

“Most people we knew in government have gone somewhere else, so it’s less useful than you might think,” Tyrer said. “But even the people that [Cohen] doesn’t know will meet with him because they regard him as a senior statesman from the U.S.”

A loyal staff

Despite Washington’s transient political work force, many employees in Cohen’s office have been with him for years.

Tyrer, a University of Maine graduate, began working as an 18-year-old volunteer for Cohen in 1975 during the first of his three terms in the House. Tyrer went on to become Cohen’s chief of staff for three terms in the Senate and again at the Pentagon, then followed him to The Cohen Group in 2001.

“If I didn’t enjoy working with him, I’d really require some serious psychiatric care,” said Tyrer, who took a year off from working with Cohen to run Susan Collins’ successful Senate bid in 1996.

Some of Cohen’s business partners also resulted from friendships he developed as a politician.

When Maine Democrat George Mitchell was appointed to the Senate in 1980, Cohen, a Republican, helped the inexperienced politician adjust.

“When I ran [for re-election], he supported my opponent. When he ran, I supported his opponent,” said Mitchell, 73. “Our relationship endured through all of that.”

It also endured into private business.

In 2003, Cohen teamed with Mitchell, chairman of global law firm DLA Piper, to offer legal advice to clients interested in the reconstruction of Iraq. In the past four years, DLA Piper has paid The Cohen Group $720,000 in lobbying fees. Both firms have done business with some of the largest military contractors, including aerospace manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

Though Mitchell and Cohen have disagreed in the past, they have been “more concerned with working together than letting our differences dominate,” Mitchell said in an interview.

Beyond the ‘Pentagon’

Cohen’s influence transcends The Cohen Group.

He displays his media savvy as an analyst on CNN, his leadership as an international spokesman for UMaine’s William S. Cohen Center and his intellectualism as an author.

“He was always a man who excelled in whatever he did,” said retired Air Force Gen. Nelson Durgin of Bangor, a member of the city’s urban renewal authority during Cohen’s 1971-72 mayoral administration.

Cohen, who now lives in Chevy Chase, Md., has penned 11 books. His most recent memoir, “Love in Black and White,” chronicles his interracial marriage with Janet Langhart Cohen. He plans to write at least one more book.

“But there’s very little time to do much of anything today other than to continue to build the business,” Cohen said. “It’s just part of my being – sleeping little, working hard and trying to do the best I can.”

The sources interviewed for this article struggled to provide personal descriptions of Cohen, a Bowdoin College and Boston University law graduate. Most said he’s a respectful, down-to-earth leader but a “complicated intellectual.”

“His favorite thing in the whole world must be going into his library and reading books,” Hamre said. “That’s unusual for a politician because politicians generally aren’t the kind to sit and read in a private room. They like to go out and shake hands.”

On the wall of Cohen’s own Pentagon, pictures of Maine’s famed Civil War hero, Joshua Chamberlain, hang near a world map speckled with dozens of dots, each denoting Cohen’s destinations as secretary of defense. He traveled 800,000 miles during his time at the Pentagon but has far exceeded that with The Cohen Group.

“No matter where I go, I’m always from Maine,” Cohen said. “Maine is always a part of me. I carry it with me wherever I go.”