Nixon aide and Reagan statesman Alexander Haig dies

WASHINGTON - Soldier and statesman Alexander Haig never lived down his televised response to the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. Haig, 85, died yesterday having held high posts in three Republican administrations and some of the U.S. military's top jobs.

Haig was a four-star Army general who served as a senior adviser to three presidents and had presidential ambitions of his own. He died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore of complications from an infection, his family said.

Haig's long and decorated military service launched the Washington career for which he is better known, including jobs in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations.

President Barack Obama praised Haig Saturday as a public servant who "exemplified our finest warrior-diplomat tradition of those who dedicate their lives to public service."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Haig "served his country in many capacities for many years, earning honor on the battlefield, the confidence of presidents and prime ministers, and the thanks of a grateful nation."

Many remember Haig most vividly for what he later called his "poor choice of words." Hours after Reagan was shot, then-Secretary of State Haig went before the cameras. "As of now, I am in control here in the White House, pending the return of the vice president," he said. Later he said it was meant to reassure Americans that the White House was functioning.

But some saw the comment as a power grab in the absence of Vice President George H.W. Bush, who was out of town. The ridicule that followed hastened Haig's departure.

He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in his three decades in the Army and helped lead the transition to an all-volunteer military, said Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a Democrat, called him a great public servant who "devoted his career to serving our country, both as a soldier and as a diplomat."

Alexander Meigs Haig was born Dec. 2, 1924, in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd. He secured an appointment to West Point in 1943. After seeing combat in Korea and Vietnam, he was tapped by Henry Kissinger to be his military adviser on the Nixon-era National Security Council. Nixon promoted Haig in 1972 to a four-star general.

The next year, as the Watergate scandal deepened, Nixon appointed Haig as White House chief of staff. He helped Nixon prepare his impeachment defense - and as Nixon was preoccupied with Watergate, Haig handled many of the day-to-day decisions. He was said to have had a key role in persuading Nixon to resign and Gerald Ford to pardon Nixon.