William Cohen

William Sebastian Cohen ( born August 28, 1940 in Bangor, Maine) is an American politician ( Republican), who was Minister of Defense of the United States in the Government of the Democratic U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Life

After attending the public school he graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick with a bachelor 's degree. At Boston University, he received his law degree. Before Cohen went into politics, he worked as a lawyer and law professor. He began his political career with his election to the City Council of Bangor, which he was a member from 1969 to 1972. From 1970 to 1971 he was also elected member of the Bangor School Board ( the municipal education authority ). In 1971 he became mayor of Bangor. When the Democrat William Dodd Hathaway ran for the U.S. Senate and no longer took on elections to the House of Representatives of the United States, Cohen applied successfully in 1972 to the mandate.

Policy

After three legislative sessions in the House of Representatives, he was elected in 1978 in the U.S. Senate, where he prevented William Hathaway's re-election. Cohen in 1984 and confirmed in 1990 as a senator. Both current senators from Maine, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, worked for him; Snowe during his tenure in the House and Collins while he was working in the Senate. Cohen resigned from the Senate in 1996, and Collins was elected as his successor.

Cohen worked from 1997 to 2001 in the office of Democratic President Bill Clinton as Secretary of Defense. During this time, he played an important role in the management of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Kosovo, including dismissals, Wesley Clark as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR ).

Cohen is the author of several books, including crime fiction, poetry and ( with George J. Mitchell) an analysis of the Iran - Contra affair. Michael Moore devoted an episode of his television show The Awful Truth hunting for Cohen to ask him if he was for his poetry too much of a " wimp " to direct the Department of Defense. Cohen is currently head of an international management consulting firm called Cohen Group, the Washington, DC is located. He is married to his second wife with the commentator Janet Long Hard of Black Entertainment Television.