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Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, a
four-star general who served as a top adviser to three presidents
and had presidential ambitions of his own, died Saturday of
complications from an infection, his family said. He was 85.


      Haig's long and decorated military career launched the
Washington career for which he is better known, including top posts
in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. He never lived down
his televised response to the 1981 assassination attempt on
President Ronald Reagan.


Hours after the shooting, then Secretary of State Haig went
before the cameras intending, he said later, to reassure Americans
that the White House was functioning.

      "As of now, I am in control here in the White House, pending
the return of the vice president," Haig said.


      Some saw the comment as an inappropriate power grab in the
absence of Vice President Bush, who was flying back to Washington
from Texas.


      Haig died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where he was
surrounded by his family, according to two of his children,
Alexander and Barbara. A hospital spokesman, Gary Stephenson, said
Haig died at about 1:30 a.m.


      In his book, "Caveat," Haig later wrote that he had been
"guilty of a poor choice of words and optimistic if I had imagined
I would be forgiven the imprecision out of respect for the tragedy
of the occasion."


      Haig ran unsuccessfully for president in 1988.


      "I think of him as a patriot's patriot," said George P.
Shultz, who succeeded Haig as the country's top diplomat in 1982.


      "No matter how you sliced him it came out red, white and blue.
He was always willing to serve."


      Born Dec. 2, 1924, in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd,
Alexander Meigs Haig spent his boyhood days dreaming about a career
in the military. With the help of an uncle who had congressional
contacts, he secured an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at
West Point in 1943.


      After seeing combat in Korea and Vietnam, Haig - an Army colonel
at the time - was tapped by Henry Kissinger to be his military
adviser on the National Security Council under Nixon. Haig "soon
became indispensable," Kissinger later said of his protege.

      Nixon promoted Haig in 1972 from a two-star general to a
four-star rank, passing over 240 high-ranking officers with greater
seniority.


      The next year, as the Watergate scandal deepened, Nixon turned
to Haig and appointed him to succeed H.R. Haldeman as White House
chief of staff. He helped the president prepare his impeachment
defense - and as Nixon was preoccupied with Watergate, Haig handled
many of the day-to-day decisions normally made by the chief
executive.


      On Nixon's behalf, Haig also helped arrange the wiretaps of
government officials and reporters, as the president tried to plug
the sources of news leaks.


      About a year after assuming his new post as Nixon's right-hand
man, Haig was said to have played a key role in persuading the
president to resign. He also suggested to Gerald Ford that he
pardon his predecessor for any crimes committed while in office - a
pardon that is widely believed to have cost Ford the presidency in
1976.


      Years after serving as one of Nixon's closest aides, Haig would
be dogged by speculation that he was "Deep Throat" - the shadowy
source who helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl
Bernstein break the Watergate story. Haig denied it, repeatedly,
and the FBI's Mark Felt was eventually revealed as the secret
source.

      Following Nixon's resignation, Haig stayed with the new Ford
administration for about six weeks, but then returned to the
military as commander in chief of U.S. forces in Europe and supreme
allied commander of NATO forces - a post he held for more than four
years. He quit during the Carter administration over the handling
of the Iran hostage crisis.


      Haig briefly explored a run for presidency in 1979, but decided
he didn't have enough support and instead took a job as president
of United Technologies - his first job in the private sector since
high school.


      When Ronald Reagan became the 40th president of the United
States, Haig returned to public service as Reagan's secretary of
state, and declared himself the "vicar of American foreign
policy."


      His 17-month tenure was marked by turf wars with other top
administration officials - including Defense Secretary Caspar
Weinberger and national security adviser William Clark.


      Two months into the new administration, Haig was portrayed as
pounding a table in frustration when the chairmanship of a crisis
management team went to Bush. Despite the clashes, Haig received
high praise from professional diplomats for trying to achieve a
stable relationship with the Soviet Union.


      In his book, Haig said he had concluded during a 1982 trip to
Europe with the president that the "effort to write my character
out of the script was under way with a vengeance." He resigned
days later.


      Describing himself as a "dark horse," Haig sought the
Republican presidential nomination for the 1988 elections. On the
campaign trail, he told supporters about his desire to "keep the
Reagan revolution alive," but he also railed against the
administration's bulging federal deficit - calling it an
embarrassment to the GOP.


      Haig dropped out of the race just days before the New Hampshire
primary.

      During his career in public service, Haig became known for some
of his more colorful or long-winded language. When asked by a judge
to explain an 18 1/2-minute gap in one of the Nixon tapes, Haig
responded: "Perhaps some sinister force had come in."


      And later, when he criticized Reagan's "fiscal flabbiness,"
Haig asserted that the "ideological religiosity" of the
administration's economic policies were to blame for doubling the
national debt to $2 trillion in 1987.


Haig is survived by his wife of 60 years, Patricia; his children
Alexander, Brian and Barbara; eight grandchildren; and his brother,
the Rev. Francis R. Haig.

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Politics and Government News

Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, a
four-star general who served as a top adviser to three presidents
and had presidential ambitions of his own, died Saturday of
complications from an infection, his family said. He was 85.


Alexander Haig, former secretary of state, dies

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