Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger Dead At Age 80 – Report 6/4/11

Yahoo News (AP) — The only career foreign service officer to rise to the position of secretary of state, Lawrence Eagleburger was a straightforward diplomat whose exuberant style masked a hard-driving commitment to solving tangled foreign policy problems.

“As good as they come,” recalled his immediate predecessor as America’s top diplomat.

Eagleburger, who died Saturday at age 80, held the job late in George H.W. Bush’s presidency, culminating a distinguished diplomatic career.

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. . . (More)