[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 101 (Wednesday, July 10, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7511-S7513]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




THANKS TO DAVID O. COOKE AT THE PENTAGON FOR HIS CONTINUING SERVICE TO 
                               OUR NATION

  Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, several months ago, I participated in a 
ceremony at the Pentagon to open an exhibit honoring the office of the 
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This was a significant 
moment in recognizing the remarkable success of the Goldwater--Nichols 
legislation, which reorganized the Department of Defense. However, this 
moment would not have been possible without the help of the pentagon's 
Director of Administration and Management, David O. (Doc)

[[Page S7512]]

Cooke. Today, I would like to extend my personal appreciation to Doc 
Cooke for his help in establishing this exhibit but primarily I want to 
thank him for his long and continuing career in public service.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an article on Doc Cooke 
that was published in Government Executive be reprinted in the Record 
at the conclusion of my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, Doc Cooke's association with our Nation's 
armed services began in World War II, when he served as an officer 
aboard the battleship U.S.S. Pennsylvania. In 1947, he became a 
civilian employee with the Navy in Washington, DC. He completed his law 
degree from George Washington University in 1950 and, shortly 
thereafter, was recalled to active duty during the Korean war as an 
instructor at the School of Naval Justice. Since that time, Doc Cooke 
has rendered outstanding service to 14 different Secretaries of 
Defense. In 1958, he became a member of a task force on Department of 
Defense reorganization that was led by Secretary of Defense, Neil 
McElroy. Under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, he served on a 
briefing team that advised the Secretary on issues related to 
organization and management. In his dual role as the Director of 
Administration and Management and Director of Washington Headquarters 
Services, Doc Cooke has oversight responsibilities for more than 1,800 
employees throughout an impressive array of offices at the Pentagon, 
including the Directorate for Organizational and Management Planning, 
Defense Privacy Office, OSD Historical Office, Quality Management 
Office, Directorate for Budget and Finance, Directorate for Real Estate 
and Facilities, Directorate for Correspondence and Directives, 
Directorate for Personnel and Security, Directorate for Information 
Operations and Reports, Directorate for Federal Voting Assistance 
Program, and the Office of General Counsel. The high level of energy 
and competence that Doc Cooke brings to his job has earned him the 
title of ``Mayor of the Pentagon'' from his friends and colleagues.
  Doc Cooke has always recognized that people are the driving force 
behind any organization's successes and shortcomings. His determination 
to never lose sight of the human factor in dealing with organizational 
and administrative issues has been a key contributing factor to the 
success that he has enjoyed throughout his career. Doc's ability and 
success in communicating with others is evident not only in his 
profession, but also in his involvement in community service. In 1992, 
he helped launch a program in Washington, DC, to encourage high school 
students to pursue careers in public service. This led to the 
establishment of a Public Service Academy. The Public Service Academy 
works closely with Federal agencies in planning the school's 
curriculum, establishing internship opportunities for students, and 
providing counseling for both students and their families. Last year 
there were 28 seniors at the Academy. Of that total, 25 were accepted 
into college and 3 found employment. This type of success is a shining 
example of the integrity and compassion with which Doc Cooke approaches 
both his profession and his community.
  Last year, Doc Cooke received the Government Executive Leadership 
Award from the National Capital Area Chapter of the American Society 
for Public Administration. This award was given in recognition of his 
strong leadership throughout his outstanding career in the Federal 
Government. Mr. President, I ask that the Senate join me in thanking 
Doc Cooke for his continuing service to our Nation. I hope that he will 
continue to serve for many years to come. We wish him, his wife, 
Marion, and his entire family every success for the future.

                               Exhibit 1

            [From the Government Executive, September 1995]

                         Mayor of the Pentagon

                          (By A.L. Singleton)

       David O. Cooke, this year's winner of Government 
     Executive's annual award for leadership during a career in 
     federal service, may have a tough time deciding where to 
     display his plaque. After 37 years in Defense Department 
     management, Cooke has a Pentagon office that is crammed full 
     of trophies and medallions praising his dedication to public 
     service, executive development and good government.
       Awards compete for wall space with photographs of Cooke and 
     a variety of associates from pals to presidents. There's a 
     shot of Cooke posing with radio/television personality 
     Willard Scott, each man covering his bald pate with a silly 
     wig. There's a picture of Cooke with President Clinton at the 
     White House.
       But perhaps the photograph that best represents Cooke's 
     career shows him seated and grinning broadly in front of 9 of 
     the 14 Secretaries of Defense with whom he has worked.
       Cooke is director of administration and management and 
     director of Washington Headquarters Services for DoD. This 
     means, among other things, he is in charge of the operation, 
     maintenance and protection of the Pentagon Reservation, which 
     spans 280 acres on the Virginia side of the Potomac River and 
     includes not only the Pentagon and its power plant but also 
     the Navy Annex and numerous other DoD buildings in the 
     National Capital Region. He oversees some 1,800 employees, 
     controls 20,000 parking spaces, runs a quality-management 
     unit and directs organizational and management planning for 
     the Department of Defense.
       Cooke is often called ``the mayor of the Pentagon''--a 
     nickname that reflects the power his office wields over day-
     to-day life in the Defense Department's huge headquarters 
     operations. Beyond the mundane tasks of ensuring adequate 
     cooling and equitable parking, Cooke's job requires a deep 
     understanding of the theory and practice of management in one 
     of the world's most complex enterprises. Yet most people, 
     from the workers who clean his office all the way up to the 
     Secretary of Defense, call him ``Doc.'' A man who doesn't 
     take his many impressive titles too seriously, Cooke enjoys 
     the familiarity.


                      from teaching to task forces

       The Doc Cooke story began 74 years ago in Buffalo, N.Y. His 
     parents were schoolteachers and that was what he also set out 
     to be, receiving his bachelor's and master's degrees from the 
     State University of New York. World War II took him out of 
     the classroom and onto the decks of a battleship, the USS 
     Pennsylvania, where he served as an officer throughout the 
     war. Afterward, he returned to Buffalo to teach high 
     school.
       Then, in 1947, three events changed his life. He entered 
     law school, met and married fellow law student Marion 
     McDonald and accepted an offer to become a civilian employee 
     of the Navy in Washington, D.C. Once settled in the capital, 
     he resumed law studies at night and received an LL.B. from 
     The George Washington University in 1950.
       When the Korean War began, Cooke was recalled to active 
     duty, this time as an instructor at the School of Naval 
     Justice. Thereafter followed a stint as a maritime lawyer for 
     the Navy in New York. In 1957, he was reassigned to the Judge 
     Advocate General's Washington staff and a year later joined a 
     task force on DOD reorganization spearheaded by Secretary 
     Neil McElroy. This was the start of a highly specialized 
     career in military organization and management that would 
     lead him to the top ranks of federal civil service. ``I never 
     effectively got back to the Navy,'' Cooke recalls, even 
     though he remained on active duty for nine more years.
       One of Cooke's most vividly remembered assignments of those 
     early years was to Robert McNamara's briefing team on 
     organizational and management issues, which the new Secretary 
     formed in 1961. McNamara intended to institute sweeping 
     changes in Defense organization, and he wanted a small group 
     to advise him.
       Led by Solis Horowitz, a Harvard lawyer who eventually 
     became DOD's assistant secretary for administration, the 
     group consisted of Cooke, representing the Navy, Army officer 
     John Cushman and Air Force officer Abbott Greenleaf. Cushman 
     and Greenleaf ``both retired as three-star generals,'' Cooke 
     observes, ``so two out of the three became eminently 
     successful, and I was the guy who wasn't.''


                     The Cooke School of Management

       Such self-deprecating wit is classic Cooke. ``He might make 
     fun of himself, but not someone else,'' says DOD historian 
     Alfred Goldberg. ``He has a good sense of humor and uses it 
     in dealing effectively with people.''
       Rossyln Kleeman, a distinguished executive-in-residence at 
     the George Washington University's School of Business and 
     Public Management who has served alongside Cooke in several 
     public-employee organizations, agrees. ``I've listened to a 
     lot of Doc's speeches,'' she says, ``and after an opening 
     joke or two, he will invariably have his audiences in 
     stitches.''
       Cooke readily admits to using humor as a management tool. 
     One of the keys to success, he believes, is ``taking your 
     job, but not yourself, very seriously.''
       Another, Cooke says, is a managerial style based on people. 
     ``You can think about an organization in terms of its wiring 
     diagram,'' Cooke explains, ``or its skeletal structure or the 
     task skills you need to make it function the way you want. Or 
     you can think in terms of the people involved. And to loosely 
     paraphrase the apostle Paul, the greatest of these is people.
       ``When I get complaints, and I get a lot of them, from 
     managers who say that people who work for them aren't doing 
     what they're

[[Page S7513]]

     supposed to be doing, I always ask: `Have you told these 
     people? Have you explained to them what you expect?' Very 
     often I find they haven't gotten the guidance and direction 
     they should have gotten.
       ``People constitute our most important resource,'' Cooke 
     concludes, ``and so often, we treat them like dirt.''
       Cooke practices what he preaches, say three senior 
     executives who have worked at the heart of his 11-member 
     Pentagon management team.
       Doc ``is very good at getting along with people, no matter 
     who they are,'' says Arthur H. Ehlers, who recently retired 
     from his post as director of organizational and management 
     planning in Cooke's office after 25 years.
       Cooke has always maintained good relationships with members 
     of Congress and with leaders in the executive branch, says 
     Walter Freeman, another longtime top aide who is director of 
     real estate and facilities for DoD, ``and it's not because he 
     treats them differently from anyone else.''
       Leon Kniaz, another key assistant who recently retired 
     after a decade as director of personnel and security, 
     elaborates. Cooke, he says, ``has always had an open-door 
     policy and listens well to people. There isn't anybody who 
     walks into that office and talks with Doc who doesn't think 
     that he or she has become a personal friend . . . [Cooke] is 
     people-oriented, and I think that comes through.''
       Yet Cooke is no pushover. ``He doesn't just tell people 
     what they want to hear,'' says Kniaz. ``He knows how to say 
     no, and I've heard him do so in meetings where participants 
     were expecting him to say yes.''
       And when Cooke is fighting for a cause in which he 
     believes, he fights hard, his associates agree. Perhaps 
     nowhere in his career is this more evident than in the 
     stubborn campaign he waged to launch the current renovation 
     of the Pentagon.


                          A Bureaucratic Coup

       Cracks in the walls, corroded pipes and frequently 
     overloaded electrical circuits attest to 50 years of neglect 
     in the upkeep of the Pentagon by the General Services 
     Administration, the agency charged with maintaining and 
     leasing most federal buildings. (See ``Operation Renovate,'' 
     February.)
       ``For years,'' says Freeman, who joined Cooke as a tenant 
     of the Pentagon in 1983, ``Doc tried to get GSA to renovate. 
     But it was a very expensive job, and DoD was paying big rent 
     to GSA and was sort of cash cow. So GSA was reluctant.'' 
     Although the ``rent'' DoD paid GSA to look after the Pentagon 
     injected hundreds of millions of dollars into the Federal 
     Buildings Fund each year, GSA would not finance the sweeping 
     renovations needed. Cooke saw that the only way out of the 
     dispute was to stage a coup.
       ``Doc went to Congress and asked that the ownership of the 
     Pentagon be transferred to DoD,'' recalls Freeman, ``so we 
     would be, in effect, our own landlord and could do the job 
     ourselves. He set up what became known as a `Horror Board,' 
     and took it with him every time he would go up on the Hill to 
     testify.''
       The Horror Board was a flat panel to which Doc affixed 
     examples of Pentagon decay. ``There would be pieces of 
     rusting pipe, damaged wiring, pieces of asbestos and all 
     sorts of things that showed the building was falling apart,'' 
     Freeman says. ``New exhibits would appear periodically, and 
     Doc would point to these things and say: `Just look at this. 
     See how bad conditions are.' Finally Congress agreed, and one 
     Member said, `All right, Doc, but you aren't bringing that 
     thing up here again, are you?' ''
       Now, Freeman points out, the Pentagon Reservation is owned 
     by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and an orderly, 
     12-year renovation project is under way. ``I can't think of 
     anyone else who could have, or would have, done this,'' 
     Freeman says. ``There's even a special Pentagon Renovation 
     Revolving Fund established to pay for the project.'' 
     Estimates put the cost of the Pentagon overhaul at $1.2 
     billion.


                              after hours

       Somewhere in between saving the Pentagon's buildings and 
     planning the never-ending reorganizations of Defense 
     management structures, Cooke has found time to be an active 
     member of good-government groups and a leader of community 
     service projects.
       He also has played prominent roles in government-wide 
     initiatives. He was, for example, a leader in the President's 
     Council on Management Improvement (PCMI) while that group was 
     active, and he currently chairs the Combined Federal 
     Campaign's Washington-area coordinating committee. For years 
     he's been a supporter of the Public Employee Roundtable--
     contributing a key staffer through an Intergovernmental 
     Personnel Act assignment--and he often reflects with pride on 
     the Roundtable's success in spreading the annual celebration 
     of Public Service Recognition Week to dozens of communities. 
     Today, if asked, he'll acknowledge with a chuckle the little-
     known fact that his office provides a good share of the 
     funding for Vice President Gore's National Performance 
     Review.
       Cooke has been a leader in two professional groups in the 
     field of public administration--the National Academy of 
     Public Administration (NAPA) and the American Society for 
     Public Administration (ASPA).
       Sometimes, with Cooke's encouragement, these groups combine 
     in support of a single project. This was the case with a 1992 
     initiative to reach out to students at Anacostia High School 
     in one of Washington's poorest areas. The idea was to set up 
     a Public Service Academy, with the goals of sparking 
     students' interest in public service careers--and in their 
     academic work. NAPA the National Capital Area Chapter of ASPA 
     and the PCMI were among those who offered early support. 
     ``I'm very pleased with that venture,'' Cooke says, beaming. 
     ``There's nothing else like it in the area.''
       Federal agencies lend three managers to the Academy each 
     year to work with the faculty in establishing curriculum, 
     arranging visits to and internships at government offices, 
     coordinating special events and offering counseling to 
     students and their families.
       While Anacostia High has a graduation rate of only 55 
     percent, 90 percent of the Academy's students graduate. Of 
     the 28 seniors who matriculated from the Academy this June, 
     25 were accepted by colleges, and 3 found jobs. ``I think 
     that's pretty good, by just about any standards,'' says 
     Cooke.
       Cooke also works to secure further education for government 
     workers. Anita Alpern, a distinguished adjunct professor at 
     American University's School of Public Affairs, notes that 
     Cooke has been a strong supporter of the Federal Executive 
     Institute and of American University's Key Executive Program, 
     a master's program in public administration for government 
     employees. ``And,'' she says, ``he does all this as a firm 
     believer that education should not stop after you've got a 
     job, it should continue so you can do that job better.''
       Cooke explains the volume of his extra curricular 
     commitments: ``I don't think you can do the best job if you 
     just put in your 40 hours and go home. I know that I can do 
     better here in my office because of the extra time I spend 
     networking and learning from others outside my office.''


                      They Can Keep the Gold Watch

       For now, Cooke has no plans to retire, which is good news 
     for his friends at the Pentagon. ``I don't know anyone who 
     would not shudder at the thought of Doc retiring,'' says 
     Freeman. ``And why should he? He's doing what's fun for him 
     and good for the country. Why should he turn to something 
     that's not so interesting?''
       Federal management is still Cooke's passion. ``There are 
     not many higher callings,'' he says. He's passed this belief 
     onto his three children, all of whom have federal careers.
       Cooke's response to public cynicism about government is to 
     say that, ``on balance, our [governing] system has worked 
     well. There have been enormous innovations, especially at 
     state and local levels. We do face serious problems in our 
     society today, but many of them have little to do with 
     government per se.''
       Cooke maintains an external optimism. Citing, as he often 
     does, classic philosophical literature, Cooke borrows from 
     Voltaire as he says: ``This is the best of all possible 
     worlds because it is the only possible world. We just have to 
     keep working on it.''
                                                                    ____


                          The Leadership Award

       The NCAC/Government Executive Leadership award was 
     established five years ago to recognize distinguished careers 
     in the federal service. The award is cosponsored by the 
     National Capital Area Chapter of the American Society for 
     Public Administration. The roster of winners:
       1995--David O. Cooke, director of administration and 
     management and director of Washington Headquarters Services, 
     Department of Defense
       1994--June Gibbs Brown, inspector general, Department of 
     Health and Human Services
       1993--Thomas S. McFee, assistant secretary for personnel 
     administration, Department of Health and Human Services
       1992--Paul T. Weiss, deputy assistant secretary for 
     administration, Department of Transportation
       1991--Robert L. Bombaugh, director, Office of Immigration 
     Litigation, Department of Justice

                          ____________________