BREAKFAST WITH SENATOR WILLIAM COHEN (R., ME)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90M00005R000400070013-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 22, 2013
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: June 3, 1988
• Content Type: MEMO

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William S. Cohen (R)
of Bangor ? Elected 1978
Born: Aug. 28, 1940, Bangor, Maine.
Education: Bowdoin College, B.A. 1962; Boston U.,
LL.B. 1965.
Occupation: Lawyer.
Family: Separated; two children.
Religion: Unitarian.
Political Career Bangor City Council, 1969-72; mayor
of Bangor, 1971-72; U.S. House, 1973-79.
Capitol Office: 322 Hart Bldg. 20510; 224-2523.
In Washington: Celebrated by the media
a dozen years ago for his agonizing in the House
over whether to vote for President Nixon's
impeachment, Cohen manages to project a per-
manent aura of soulful sincerity that includes
well-publicized questioning of politics and his
own role in it.
As a House member, he wrote a few years
ago. -I wondered why I wanted to participate in
this silliness and stupefaction." After one year
in the Senate. he published a diary in which he
complained that he and his colleagues "ca-
reened from ... speech to speech, crisis to
crisis, without the time to reflect on whether we
have simply doubled our deeds without fixing
our destinations."
But whatever one may think of all this
public soul-searching, it has not prevented Co-
hen from operating as artfully in the Senate as
others who do not seem to share his doubts.
He still attracts media attention without
much difficulty, especially when he appears to
be reliving his Watergate role by criticizing a
Republican president. As revelations about
arms sales to Iran unfolded late in 1986, Cohen
was perhaps the most outspoken Republican
critic of the way the administration ? and
particularly President Reagan himself ? had
handled the affair. The president "should have
known" what was happening. Cohen said,
warning that the controversy could be more
damaging in the long run than Watergate.
Cohen has a prominent forum for espous-
ing those views, as a member of the special
committee investigating the Iran-contra affair.
That and his role on the Intelligence Commit-
tee ? even as minority vice-chairman, he is
sure to be sought out by reporters ? should
make Cohen one of the more visible members
of the 100th Congress.
.In the long run, however, Cohen's more
significant contributions probably will be on
the Armed Services Committee, where he is a
Maine - Senior Senator
key member of a centrist group seeking alterna-
tives to Reagan's defense policies. Using a
combination of confrontation and negotiation,
he has been able to get both the White House
and the Senate to make some shifts in their
stands on nuclear weapons and arms control.
Cohen did not express much interest in
arms control during much of his first term, and
had strongly opposed the SALT II treaty. But,
early in 1983, he was the first to put forth
publicly a new concept in arms control: a
nuclear "build-down" with the Soviet Union.
Under the concept, the two superpowers would
agree to eliminate one or more existing weap-
ons for each new one deployed.
Reagan quickly expressed personal interest
in Cohen's plan, but it ran into strong resis-
tance, both from administration hard-liners
and liberal arms-control groups. Cohen had a
strong bargaining chip with which to pressure
the administration ? the tenuous congres-
sional support for the MX missile. Working
with Democratic defense expert Sam Nunn and
others, Cohen arranged a deal in which he
offered support for the controversial missile in
exchange for administration backing of the
build-down idea.
It took months of behind-the-scenes nego-
tiations and public cajoling by Cohen, but
eventually the deal went through. Even though
the "build-down" plan was rejected by the
Armed Services Committee, the administration
accepted it, in an agreement some dubbed "the
Treaty of Pennsylvania Avenue."
But the Soviets rejected the "build-down,"
and interest in it gradually faded. Instead, the
focus of the arms debate in the 99th Congress
shifted to Reagan's strategic defense initiative;
there too, Cohen had a considerable impact.
Although he expressed doubts about the
pace and direction of efforts to develop SDI,
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William S. Cohen, R-Maine
Cohen backed Reagan's early funding requests.
By 1986, he had adopted a more critical stance.
Allied again with Nunn, he offered an amend-
ment in Armed Services to cut proposed SDI
funding by 25 percent. More importantly, in
the long run, the amendment also urged that
the program be directed away from the possibly
unachievable goal of a nationwide defense sys-
tem, and toward the more limited goal of
protecting the U.S. missile force from a sur-
prise attack.
Splitting from other Republicans on the
committee, Cohen provided the crucial vote
that allowed the amendment to carry by a 10-9
vote. Later, the full Senate endorsed the Co-
hen-Nunn position.
Cohen's other work on Armed Services has
focused on more prosaic questions. As chair-
man of the Sea Power Subcommittee during
the 99th Congress, he had a chance to promote
the cause of Maine's Bath Iron Works, where
the Navy builds many of its ships. He devel-
oped a close relationship with Gary Hart of
Colorado, some of whose military reform ideas
he shared, and joined with Hart to write a spy
thriller, "The Double Man," about a moderate
senator caught in a web of terrorist intrigue.
Combining interests related to his posts on
both Armed Services and Governmental Af-
fairs, Cohen also has sponsored a series of
proposals to place stricter controls on govern-
ment, and especially defense, contracting and
procurement. He has pushed legislation to re-
quire more competition in the awarding of
contracts, to strengthen penalties against use of
"kickbacks" by contractors seeking government
work and to toughen federal anti-fraud laws.
While those measures attracted wide sup-
port, Cohen ran into problems with his bill to
make it easier for the government to move
against people who defrauded it of relatively
small amounts of money. Noting that high legal
costs often discouraged the government from
attacking small-scale fraud, Cohen proposed
that cases involving less than $100,000 be set-
tled through a quasi-judicial administrative
process. That stirred up intense opposition
from some defense contractors, who were able
to block Cohen's bill from coming to the floor.
He finally got its provisions attached to the
1986 deficit-reduction bill, but only after some
heated floor debateVith senior Armed Services
Republican Strom Thurmond of South Caro-
lina.
At Home: If there were ever any doubts
that Cohen ranks among the most popular
politicians in Maine history, they were dis-
pelled on Election Day, 1984. Cohen won re-
election with a higher percentage of the vote
630
than any other Senate candidate in the state
since direct election of senators began in 1914;
his 404,000 votes were a Maine record.
Over his years in Maine politics, Cohen has
built a loyal following that cuts across party
lines and forms the core of one of the smooth-
est-running political organizations of its kind
anywhere. His office churns out newsletters for
almost every constituency group, and carefully
tends his relations with both the press and
home-state politicians. In his television ad-
vertising, Cohen balances his reputation as a
rising star in Washington with an image as a
family man, interested in sports and still will-
ing to help his father in his Bangor bakery. It is
a combination to which Maine voters resonate.
The results would have been less lopsided
had Cohen faced the candidate Democrats
wanted ? Gov. Joseph E. Brennan. But Bren-
nan made it clear early in 1984 that he was not
interested in trying to take on Cohen.
Into his place stepped state House Major-
ity Leader Elizabeth H. Mitchell, a trans-
planted South Carolinian who had previously
been focusing on a run for governor in 1986. In
announcing her candidacy, Mitchell laid out
the twin pillars of her effort ? she would
concentrate on the nuclear freeze, and would
accept no money from political action commit-
tees.
Mitchell's outspoken liberalism gave her a
dedicated band of volunteer supporters, but
her rejection of PAC money led much of the
state's Democratic establishment to write off
her campaign from the start as hopelessly quix-
otic. She had deliberately sacrificed any oppor-
tunity to compete with the incumbent's highly
sophisticated campaign.
Two events made Mitchell's problems
worse. At a junior high school meeting on the
effects of nuclear war, anti-nuclear activist Dr.
Helen Caldicott labeled Cohen a "corporate
prostitute," a charge that brought blasts not
only from the Cohen camp but from newspa-
pers and politicians around the state. Then
Mitchell ran advertisements linking Cohen's
votes on defense spending with contributions
from military contractors: Cohen responded by
calling the charges "slanderous."
Even if they were not serious mistakes, as
some Democrats as well as Cohen's strategists
believed, these tactics did Mitchell no good in
the end. Cohen emerged without a scratch.
Cohen all but assured himself of a state-
wide political future on the day he spoke out
for Nixon's impeachment, carving an image not
only as a Republican of conscience, but as a
man who knew how to give a good speech.
His good looks, easygoing manner and
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careful questioning were perfect for television.
AF one of just six Judiciary Committee Repub-
licans favoring impeachment, he drew wide
media attention, most of it favorable. Time
magazine named him one of America's 200
future leaders, and the Jaycees called him one
of the 10 outstanding young men in the nation.
From that point on, his elevation to the
Senate was pretty much a matter of time.
If there had been no Watergate, however,
the odds are he would be in the Senate by now
anyway. His Judiciary Committee performance
merely added to the "rising star" reputation he
had carried with him from his high school and
college days on the basketball court.
He thought about becoming a Latin
,.i-hilar, but went to law school instead and
finished among the top 10 members of his class.
It WIIF less than a decade from law school to the
Bangor mayoralty.
Cohen became mayor in 1971, after three
years on the City Council. But he did not hold
thi job very long. Rep. William D. Hathaway
ss . running for the Senate the same year, and
hi- 2nd District seat was open. Cohen won it
eaxil, doing exceptionally well for a Republi-
Maine - Senior Senator
can in many Democratic areas.
After the 1974 period of Watergate celeb-
rity, Cohen began to think about the proper
timing for a Senate effort ? he spent nearly a
year considering a 1976 campaign against
Maine's senior senator, Edmund S. Muskie.
Private polls showed him close to Muskie, but
challenging the state's most durable Democrat
was no sure thing. Prudence dictated a two-
year wait and a campaign against Hathaway,
more liberal and less of an institution.
Knowing he was in trouble, Hathaway
worked hard to save himself in 1978, but Cohen
had almost no weaknesses. The personal glam-
our of 1974 had never really worn off, and state
and national media refurbished it for the cam-
paign. Cohen shifted slightly to the right, argu-
ing that Hathaway was too liberal for most of
Maine. He also worked for Democratic votes,
concentrating his efforts in such places as Port-
land's Irish-Catholic Munjoy Hill section.
Hathaway had not done anything to offend
the voters, but the challenger overwhelmed
him. He was held in a three-way contest to 34
percent, one of the lowest figures in modern
times for any Senate incumbent.
Committees
lloSect Intelligence (Vice Chairman)
Mined Services (4th of 9 Republicans)
rhotrictior Forces and Regional Defense (ranking): Conventional
races shq Alliance Defense; Strategic Forces and Nuclear De-
ur;o6ce
OisvernmentslAttairs (3rd of 6 Republicans)
O5'y;f1: of Government Management (ranking): Government
Ifrx.:*-;:j Federalism and the District of Columbia: Permanent
6koccommitiee on Investigations.
Woo Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and
Nicaraguan Opposition (4th of 5RepublicanS)
lowAli Aging (2nd of 9 Republicans)
Elections
WM General
wan- S Cohen (R) ? 404,414 (73%)
tku..her? h Mitchell (D) 142,626 (26%)
Poona( Winning Percentages: 1978 (57%) 1978' (77%)
Iry 171%; 1672' (54%)
? ...411, 000,0n5
Campaign Finance
Receipts
Receipts from PACs
Expend-
hums
$1,158,160 $421,451 ( 36%) $1,022,134
$437.517 $450 (0.1%) $428,990
Voting Studies
Year
Presidential
Support
S 0
Party
Unity
S 0
Conservative
Coalition
S 0
1988
78
22
63
33
74
25
1985
63
27
55
38
55
32
1984
62
30
42
53
53
47
1983
66
29
60
36
73
23
1982
67
31
62
36
47
52
1981
76
19
69
25
59
36
S = Support 0 = Opposition
Key Votes
Produce MX missiles (1985)
Weaken gun control laws (1985)
Reject school prayer (1985)
Limit textile imports (1985)
Amend Constitution to require balanced budget (1986)
Aid Nicaraguan contras (1986)
Block chemical weapons production (1986)
Impose sanctions on South Africa (1986)
Interest Group Ratings
Year
ADA
ACU
AFL-CIO
CCUS
1988
50
52
20
63
1985
35
55
45
68
1984
BO
45
73
28
iggo
45
30
47
33
1962
55
50
27
42
1981
35
47
33
76
631
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