As the Soviet Union defeated an attempted military coup in August, 1991, which was attempting a restoration, and began to lose its Republics at an accelerated pace, the DoD became embued with a sense of urgency that outran the two-year program. Dick Cheney, United States Secretary of Defense, created independently a program of Bilateral Working Groups (BWG's), one per nation. A BWG would consist of senior officers in EUCOM and others from the host nation. They would agree to discuss "defense restructuring and reorganization." The BWG's began in September, 1992. In November, Cheney turned the program over to the remaining IWG.