The Pentagon Skipper Is Buffeted by Some Pretty Rough Seas

He’s from the inland Maine city of Bangor, not the state’s rocky coast, but these days his metaphors are leaning heavily to the maritime: He speaks of tidal waves, tsunamis and rides lashed to the ship’s mast.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen uses such terms to describe his first half-year as the Pentagon’s skipper, a time in which he has been tossed in the heavy seas of sexual issues and buffeted by debate over the armed forces’ redesign for the coming era.

With his bag barely unpacked from his Capitol Hill office, the former Republican senator also has struggled to erase an impression that he has been losing a battle with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on the nation’s Bosnia policy. And just this week, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman abruptly decided to resign, apparently out of disagreement with a pending report by Cohen that may blame Air Force officers for security lapses in a bombing in Saudi Arabia last year that left 19 servicemen dead.

In a recent interview, Cohen acknowledged that so far, he has more often reacted to developments than actually driven events.

He spoke again and again of how issues and policies “got handed to me” to untangle. And he described a leadership style founded on wide discussion and gradual consensus-building--much like the approach he used as a lawmaker.

“I think if you come in and say, ‘I’m going to turn this place upside down,’ you’re going to make headlines, but not very much headway,” he said.

His approach already has caused some critics to question his long-range effectiveness. “The risk is that he could become invisible,” said David Mason, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank in Washington.

Cohen, 56, came to his Cabinet post with a reputation for independence, an expertise in military issues and a clear intention to make an imprint on the Pentagon.

But regardless of the agenda he brought with him, Cohen could not have anticipated that he would immediately be confronted with a spate of sexual abuse cases--most involving drill instructors at a Maryland training post--and a related furor over the military’s rules for consensual sex within the ranks. On the latter issue, Cohen seemed to start out as a strong defense of the system, but then gradually moved to an acknowledgment that the rules could stand some fine-tuning.

When the Air Force came under fire for its handling of the case of 1st Lt. Kelly Flinn, the female B-52 pilot accused of a variety of charges that mostly stemmed from an adulterous affair, Cohen declared there were sound reasons the military needed to maintain a code of conduct that treats adultery as a serious offense. But when adultery allegations clouded the prospects for his top choice to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, Cohen initially seemed to take a different tack. Noting that the alleged affair occurred more than a decade before, when Ralston was separated from his wife, Cohen sought to keep Ralston in the running for the joint chiefs post.

Ralston ultimately withdrew his candidacy, amid allegations that the military had a double-standard that favored top officers. And Cohen’s stress shifted to the military’s need to review its rules on sexual conduct, tinker with them if necessary and then be clear and consistent in enforcing the edicts.

Has his view of military justice changed? Cohen declined to answer directly, but asserted he doesn’t have nearly the power over the issue that the public believes.

The Flinn case obviously could have been handled differently by her base commander or wing commander, he said. “But that decision was made. And it’s not for me to overturn, without making a precedent that every case that’s out there, I’m qualified to look in on.”

Cohen also seemed to shift his emphasis on the question of how a military designed primarily to fight the Soviets should adjust its mission for the new century.

When Cohen took office last January, reform-minded military experts read his forceful early statements to suggest that he intended to use the study the Pentagon conducts every four years of its operations--the Quadrenniel Defense Review--to begin the push for dramatic policy departures. Everything was “on the table,” Cohen said at the time.

Now the consensus is that Cohen led the study to generally cautious conclusions, including its call for cuts of only 60,000 of the military’s 1.44 million active duty troops. The critics assert that Cohen essentially decided not to buck the views of senior officers that the military needs to maintain most of its troops and equipment if the United States is to maintain its ability to shape events around the globe.

Cohen defends the study, and points out that some people did find it radical--including conservative lawmakers who believe military downsizing has already gone too far. At the same time, he is candid about his desire not to shake up the Pentagon’s powerful constituencies too much on his first major undertaking.

“I knew from the moment I came here that you have to build a consensus within the building,” he said. “I could draw up my own plan . . . and if it didn’t enjoy at least some broad-based support . . . it would virtually be a piece of paper that would go nowhere.”

As he took office talking of reform, Cohen made a ringing promise about the nation’s intentions to withdraw troops from Bosnia by next June. “We are not going to be there. This is going to end at that point,” he declared at his Senate confirmation hearing, in words he said were designed to nudge European allies to take a bigger role in maintaining the fragile peace in the Balkans.

But by May, Cohen was playing down the departure date and stressing a different point: The U.S. effort should be focused on doing all that can be achieved to patch up Bosnia.

The shift was read by outsiders as one of several signs that Cohen, in the Clinton administration’s secret counsels, was being overwhelmed by Albright, who has been much more ready to use U.S. troops to advance U.S. interests.

Cohen, who in the past has taken pride in rarely quarreling with his press reviews, angrily disputed suggestions that there is any chasm between his views and those of President Clinton or Albright on the issue. “There is no difference of opinion,” he declared. “Some people have tried to foment a difference.”

For the most part, Cohen continues to receive the benefit of the doubt as he grapples with such thorny issues. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers credit him with ably handling the Ralston case. They also note he has kept the goodwill of almost all the allies he needs in Congress and the White House.

“I haven’t heard anything but positive remarks about him,” said Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Texas), a member of the House Appropriations Committee’s powerful military construction subcommittee.

John Hillen III, a defense expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, a private research group specializing in foreign policy, said Cohen’s difficulties so far should be viewed with understanding. ‘They’ve given him this huge aircraft carrier to steer, and a tiny little rudder,” he said.