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By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
      

WASHINGTON (AP) - Lawrence S. Eagleburger, the only career
foreign service officer to rise to the position of secretary of
state, died Saturday. He was 80.
     

 Eagleburger died in Charlottesville, Va., after a short illness,
according to a family friend, Christy Reap. No further details were
immediately available.


      Tributes poured in immediately, from President Barack Obama and
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to two of his one-time
bosses, former President George H.W. Bush and former Secretary of
State James A. Baker III. "As good as they come" was Baker's
description.


      A straightforward diplomat whose exuberant style masked a
hard-driving commitment to solving tangled foreign policy problems,
Eagleburger held the top post at the State Department for five
months when Baker resigned in the summer of 1992 to help Bush in an
unsuccessful bid for re-election.


      As Baker's deputy, Eagleburger he had taken on a variety of
difficult assignments, including running the department
bureaucracy. Baker often was abroad, working on Middle East
problems, German reunification and collapse of the Soviet Union,
leaving Eagleburger to tend to the home front.


      Eagleburger told The Associated Press in 1990 that he operated
"sort of by osmosis. You get a feel how he (Baker) would react to
a situation."


      He did not fit the image of the office.


      He was hugely overweight. He chain-smoked cigarettes, sometimes
with an aspirator to ease chronic asthma. He was afflicted with a
muscle disease.


      Born Aug. 1, 1930, in Milwaukee, Eagleburger graduated from the
University of Wisconsin. He grew up in a Republican family, once
telling a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal that "my father was
somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan."


      Eagleburger remained a Republican, but of a more moderate
stripe.


      Over 27 years in the foreign service, he served in the Nixon
administration as executive assistant to Secretary of State Henry
A. Kissinger, as President Jimmy Carter's ambassador to Yugoslavia,
and as an assistant secretary of state and then undersecretary of
state in the first Reagan administration.


      In subsequent years, he was available to offer advice, along
with other former senior officials, to Hillary Rodham Clinton as
she prepared for the job of secretary of state.


      Bush called Eagleburger "one of the most capable and respected
diplomats our foreign service ever produced, and I will be ever
grateful for his wise, no-nonsense counsel during those four years
of historic change in our world."


      In a statement, Bush said that "during one of the tensest
moments of the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein began attacking Israel
with Scud missiles trying cynically and cruelly to bait them into
the conflict, we sent Larry to Israel to preserve our coalition. It
was an inordinately complex and sensitive task, and his performance
was nothing short of heroic."


      Baker said Eagleburger "was a legend in the U.S. Foreign
Service, a consummate professional who served his country expertly
and with great dignity as a selfless diplomat." 


He said his former
colleague was "superb at divining trouble and heading it off.
That's why he became the first Foreign Service officer in history
to rise to deputy secretary of state and later to secretary of
state. Simply stated, Larry Eagleburger was as good as they come -
loyal, hard-working and intelligent, a trifecta for an American
diplomat."

      In what may have been his last public appearance, a clearly
frail Eagleburger regaled a crowd of State Department officials
last month, including Clinton and former Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright with stories about his early days in the foreign
service during the Kennedy administration.


      It came May 18 at an event to mark the 50th anniversary of the
State Department's Operations Center, the department's 24-hour,
seven-day-a-week nerve center. Eagleburger had many in the audience
rolling with laughter as he recalled manic confusion among
Kennedy's national security advisers during the Bay of Pigs
invasion that led then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk to order the
creation of a round-the-clock clearing house for information coming
in from around the world.


      "Larry believed in the strength of America's values, and he
fought for them around the world," Clinton said Saturday. "He was
outspoken, but always the consummate diplomat. Even in retirement,
Larry remained a staunch advocate for the causes he believed in. He
never stopped caring, contributing, and speaking out."


      Obama called Eagleburger a statesman who "devoted his life to
the security of our nation and to strengthening our ties with
allies and partners."


      Eagleburger provided his support in 2008 to a drive by a new
international group, Global Zero, to eliminate nuclear weapons over
25 years. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was among the
star-studded group of supporters.


      For five years, before joining the first Bush administration in
1989 as deputy secretary of state, Eagleburger was president of
Kissinger Associates, offering companies advice on international
politics and cashing in on his connections as did Kissinger and
Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser.


      The job paid handsomely. He earned more than $1 million in
salary and severance payments in his final year.


      After Bush's defeat in 1992, Eagleburger took a similar job with
a law firm headed by former Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn.
Eagleburger's intimate knowledge of the issues and the key players
was a valuable commodity.


      Eagleburger chaired the International Commission on Holocaust
Era Insurance Claims, which sought to settle decades-old claims
brought by victims of Nazi brutality whose right to insurance
settlements had been violated during World War II.
      


Eagleburger served in 2006 on the Iraq Study Group, the
blue-ribbon panel headed by Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton,
D-Ind., that called for a gradual troop pullback and stepped-up
diplomacy to help extricate the U.S. from Iraq.


      "When I was asked to do this by Jim Baker, I was not at all
sure that I was going to want to do it because I had really serious
doubts as to whether bipartisanship could prevail in this sort of a
session," Eagleburger said at the time.


      In 2008, he was a prominent supporter of Arizona Sen. John
McCain's presidential candidacy. He did tell an NPR interviewer
that McCain's running-mate, Sarah Palin, wasn't up to the task of
taking over the presidency in a crisis but could become
"adequate."


      Over the years, a sense of humor served Eagleburger well.


      Asked at a Senate confirmation hearing if he had ever in public
or private pinched a woman's behind, Eagleburger replied: "Can I
divide that into two questions?"


      Asked by reporters how he planned to run the State Department
after Baker's departure, Eagleburger responded: "Badly."


      He named each of his three sons Lawrence - they used their
middle names Scott, Andrew and Jason - and had a lack of pretension
that was appreciated on Capitol Hill, and elsewhere.


      "It was ego," Eagleburger told The Washington Post about
giving his sons the same first name. "And secondly, I wanted to
screw up the Social Security system."


      Explaining Eagleburger's rapport with Congress, then-Rep.
Stephen Solarz, D-N.Y., said "he always conveys the impression
that he's speaking bluntly and candidly, and that goes a long
way."


      "He's a thoughtful, behind-the-scenes operator who allows you
to believe he's open to your advice," said Sen. John Kerry,
D-Mass., on another occasion.


      During the Persian Gulf war, Bush sent Eagleburger to Israel,
where he held in high regard, to counsel patience as Iraq landed
Scud missiles on the Jewish state. The Bush administration did not
want Israel to retaliate, fearing it would shake the coalition with
Arab nations that had joined in the fight to liberate Kuwait.


      Eagleburger surveyed bombed-out rubble, supporting himself with
a cane.


      "I knew the Israelis. ... (The missile attacks required)
someone they know cares about them," he said.


      He also made clear he would hold to the American line even if
they disagreed with it.


      When he returned to Washington and a reporter asked about his
poor health, Eagleburger retorted: "What are you writing for -
some medical magazine?"


      Eagleburger took on special missions to China and to Panama. His
greatest concentration in overseas assignments was on Yugoslavia,
where he spent seven of his 11 years abroad.


      In 1992, he likened the country's dissolution, which began a
year earlier, to a Greek tragedy and predicted "a lot of people
are going to die."


      At the same time, Eagleburger was not inclined to intervene
militarily. "There are sometimes problems for which there is no
immediate solution, and there are sometimes problems for which
there is no solution," the long-time problem-solver commented
paradoxically.


      He found fault with all ethnic groups; found none of them
particularly noble.


      Eagleburger was married to the former Marlene Ann Heinemann, who
died last year. Her family was in the bakery business in Milwaukee.
An earlier marriage ended in divorce.


      Their home was a 40-acre estate west of Charlottesville, Va.,
where Eagleburger enjoyed listening to opera and playing poker,
which he often did with reporters accompanying him and Kissinger on
long overseas flights.


      "Lawrence is not a worrier," his wife once said. "If he
thinks he can do something about a problem, he does. If he doesn't,
he can compartmentalize it and come back to it."


      Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Dina Cappiello
contributed to this report.

Gallery

Politics and Government News

Lawrence S. Eagleburger, the only career
foreign service officer to rise to the position of secretary of state, died Saturday.  He was 80. One of Eagleburger's former bosses, Former Secretary of State James Baker, said Eagleburger was "as good as they come."

Ex-Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger dies

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