WASHINGTON (AP) — Richard Boucher, who served for greater than a decade because the spokesman for the State Division and assistant secretary of state for public affairs, has died at age 73. He died Friday at his dwelling in northern Virginia after a battle with spindle-cell sarcoma, an aggressive type of most cancers, in line with his son.
Boucher had been the face of U.S. international coverage on the State Division podium throughout administrations all through the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, starting within the George H.W. Bush presidency and persevering with via Invoice Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s phrases in workplace. Boucher served because the spokesman for secretaries of state James Baker, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.
In a profession that took him from the Peace Corps although Africa and Asia in addition to in Washington, Boucher additionally served as U.S. Consul Basic Hong Kong throughout the 1997 handover of the territory from Britain to China, and later used the talents he realized there to assist orchestrate an finish to the U.S.-China spy airplane disaster in early 2001.
After leaving the spokesman’s job, Boucher turned assistant secretary of state for state for South and Central Asia and was then ambassador to the Group for Financial Cooperation and Improvement.
Retired veteran CBS journalist Charles Wolfson, who labored with Boucher for years, lauded him as an efficient State Division spokesman but in addition a valued skilled colleague and good friend.
“He was an outstanding diplomat, a wonderful spokesman and a good higher human being,” Wolfson stated.