Former US 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, AP reported. 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. 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. Haig ran unsuccessfully for president in 1988, when Bush won the Republican nomination. 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 President Richard M. 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 President 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 the 1976 against Democrat Jimmy Carter. 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 presidential run 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.»
