[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 141 (Thursday, October 3, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12371-S12372]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    TRIBUTE TO SENATOR WILLIAM COHEN

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, earlier today the Senate Armed Services 
Committee had a hearing. It happened to be that the Secretary of 
Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were our 
principal witnesses, and the subject was the ongoing controversy in 
Bosnia.
  Seated next to me, as he has been for these many years of joint 
service on that committee, was Senator Bill Cohen. It is hard for me to 
express in words my respect for this great American and this great U.S. 
Senator, a man who truly is a global thinker. And today he was as 
profound and as incisive as he has been for all these years that I have 
been privileged to serve with him on the Armed Services Committee.
  He has occupied, somewhere in this area of the Senate floor, the 
chair that he has selected for Maine. But Maine's chair is the chair 
for the United States of America when it comes to the matter of 
national security, foreign policy.
  We may have differed on some occasions, but more often we have been 
together. And he has been a fearless speaker, an absolutely fearless 
speaker and advocate for what he believes is best for the United States 
and, indeed, the world.
  We have taken trips together. I have seen him in the presence of 
world leaders, heads of State, heads of Government, and within moments 
after entering a room, whether it is Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, 
he is greeted and accepted and listened to as an equal.
  He is a very hard worker, diligent in his representation for his 
State, a prodigious student of history. But he always found time, Mr. 
President, he always found time to spread his great intellect on the 
written pages of books, be they novels, or, more importantly, for this 
Senator, be they poems. Lucky

[[Page S12372]]

is the Member of the Senate, or perhaps an observing staffer, who found 
at Senator Cohen's seat, more often at a committee hearing, a doodle. I 
am not much for doodling, but he is an expert, and it is not some 
scribble.
  What surprises me, having studied engineering and particularly 
engineering drawing and architecture drawing myself--I am a man who 
observes a straight line or the French curve or whatever--these are 
drawings that challenge the best of engineering drawings, very precise, 
a balance, perspective, and I defy anyone to interpret the meaning. And 
therein is the real genius.
  He is able to take these drawings and capture the meaning of the 
debate in the committee hearing. I have never seen him doodle in the 
Senate--maybe he has--not in the Chamber, but certainly as I sat next 
to him in the Armed Services Committee, the Select Committee on Aging. 
They are absolutely magnificent.
  I asked him one time, ``Are these your ideas of caricatures of other 
Senators?''
  ``No. They are caricatures of the debate that is taking place, and 
how I see that debate, where it starts, where it goes, whether it is 
conclusive or inconclusive, whether it is fair and whether it is 
objective.''

  I have one or two, and I treasure them.
  He is a meticulous researcher. Perhaps above all, that research to 
bear on legislation that he sponsored--and for a while I was not 
totally in favor of that legislation--but it was legislation that 
eventually put into law the special operating forces of the United 
States.
  Much of the work of those forces is highly classified, and therefore 
I cannot discuss it on the floor of the Senate. But the essence of his 
legislation was to enable our Nation and our Armed Forces to have a 
cadre of men and women in uniform who were able to perform the most 
difficult of military tasks, whether it is a task that challenges two 
or three or a task that challenges a company-sized group of military. 
And those challenges could come at any time, any moment, anywhere on 
the globe.
  Because of this man's foresight, we have that capability here in the 
United States. My only suspicion at the time that we used to debate it 
was whether or not it was not already present in the Armed Forces of 
the United States and whether or not the command and control should be 
under, say, the Chief of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the 
Marine Corps. And he was right; this should be a separate CINC, a 
separate four-star officer, whose sole responsibility was not to the 
other services, but to see that this cadre of service persons had the 
equipment, had the training, had the skills and the fortitude to take 
on any challenge anywhere in the world.
  So I join the others who expressed a note of sadness of his 
departure, but also a sadness of joy that he and his lovely wife have 
reclaimed--reclaimed--their lives from public service. He, with nearly 
a quarter of a century, 24 years in the Congress of the United States, 
has reclaimed it to go on and have other challenges. I do not doubt for 
a moment that he will accept the challenges which will enable him to 
enter into the global policy discussions and other forums of the world 
as it relates to foreign policy and national security, but also to 
reclaim perhaps a little more time to spread his genius upon the paper 
that all of us can share, be it fiction, be it prose, be it poetry, or 
be it a foreign policy decision. I wish him well.
  I yield the floor, Mr. President, and suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________