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News
March 23, 2005 People: Consulting Game After more than 40 years of serving in uniform, retired Gen. Paul Kern admits he's forgotten a few things about life outside the Army. "The first challenge is, you've got to figure out what to put on in the morning," he says. "That's always interesting, but my wife gives me good guidance and tells me when I screw that up." Kern has just started a new job as a senior counselor with the Cohen Group, a strategic consulting firm founded by former Defense Secretary William Cohen. Kern has seen a lot of changes in the Army over the years, and has covered a lot of ground as well. "I've gone from Southeast Asia to Europe to Southwest Asia, gone from a draft Army to a volunteer force, gone from an Army of 800,000 or 900,000 to an active-duty force of 500,000," he says. Kern has served three combat tours with the Army — two in Vietnam and one in Operation Desert Storm, where he was the commander of the 2nd Brigade, 24th Infantry Division. More recently, Kern was commanding general in the Army Materiel Command, where he was involved in modernizing the service's weapon systems. From 1997 to 2001, Kern was military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics, and technology. Before that, he was senior military assistant to then-Defense Secretary William Perry. Last June, Kern was appointed to direct the investigation into the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The investigative team has sent reform proposals to commanders with military jurisdiction, who will eventually decide what action needs to be taken. "I felt that the cooperation we got from the people in the field, recognizing that they had a problem that they had to fix, was very positive," Kern says. "And many of the things that we investigated — we could see just during the period of the investigation — were getting changed and fixed. So that was encouraging, despite the fact that it was a very discouraging effort to have to work." Kern, 59, grew up in West Orange, N.J., and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1967. "I decided I wanted to go to West Point, and West Point convinced me to stay in the Army," he says. "As an 18-year-old, I didn't know that I was going to spend the next 40 years wearing a uniform." --Gregg Sangillo  Top
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