Longtime State Department spokesman, diplomat Richard Boucher, dies at 73

WASHINGTON – Richard Boucher, who served for much than a decennary arsenic the spokesperson for the State Department and adjunct caput of authorities for nationalist affairs, has died astatine property 73, according to friends and family. He died connected Thursday successful a infirmary successful bluish Virginia aft a conflict with an assertive signifier of cancer, according to 2 radical adjacent to his family.

Boucher had been the look of U.S. overseas argumentation astatine the State Department podium crossed administrations passim the 1990s and aboriginal 2000s, opening successful the George H.W. Bush presidency and continuing done Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s presumption successful office. Boucher served arsenic the spokesperson for secretaries of authorities James Baker, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

In a vocation that took him from the Peace Corps though Africa and Asia arsenic good arsenic successful Washington, Boucher besides served arsenic U.S. Consul General Hong Kong during the 1997 handover of the territory from Britain to China, and aboriginal utilized the skills helium learned determination to assistance orchestrate an extremity to the U.S.-China spy level situation successful aboriginal 2001.

After leaving the spokesman’s job, Boucher became adjunct caput of authorities for authorities for South and Central Asia and was past ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Retired seasoned CBS writer Charles Wolfson, who worked with Boucher for years, lauded him arsenic an effectual State Department spokesperson but besides a valued nonrecreational workfellow and friend.

“He was a superb diplomat, an fantabulous spokesperson and an adjacent amended quality being,” Wolfson said.

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