Dept. of Defense,
1996-2001, 5 GB (16 CD-ROM disks) and 11 bound volumes.

In 1996, Cohen announced that he would not run for another term in the Senate and intended to go into business in the private sector.  Later that year, President Clinton nominated Cohen for Secretary of Defense after Secretary Perry’s announcement that he would retire from the position in 1996 because Clinton perceived the need for bipartisan support for the men and women serving in the military. Cohen was sworn in as the nation's 20th Secretary of Defense on January 24, 1997. He served as Secretary of Defense until January 2001 when Donald Rumsfeld was sworn in to serve with the George W. Bush administration. 

Records created by the Office of the Secretary of Defense are government records archived under the responsibility of the National Archives and Records Administration. The material in this collection consists of unclassified documents culled from reference copies kept in Secretary Cohen's office. When Secretary Cohen was leaving office in 2001, DOD staff included photographs, public statements, news, trip files, and selected official correspondence on CD-ROM disks using Acrobat Reader. The documents include correspondence with Congress and heads of state, reports, memos, speeches, press releases, and travel itineraries. The photographs are JPEG images of official events including award ceremonies, meetings with dignitaries, and travel. The news files are primarily the research gathered on behalf of OSD staff for daily information on world events.

On each disk, the Main Menu is connected by hyperlink to content lists, which link to the individual document, scanned from paper originals. Many of the documents are annotated with handwritten notes. Use Search function of Acrobat Reader to find documents with key words and phrases. Each subseries has a notebook with a hard copy "Main Menu" along with content lists for each CD in the series. These notebooks and lists are inventories for the records.

The records in the Department of Defense record group are divided into five series: Official Correspondence, Trips, Public Statements, Conferences/Hearings/Special Events, Photographs, and News.

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