US: Caspar Weinberger, who as Ronald Reagan's defence secretary oversaw a massive US military build-up, has died at the age of 88.
Caspar Weinberger jnr said his father had had pneumonia and a high fever for about a week. "He was just a worn-out guy," he said. Mr Weinberger's wife of 63 years, Jane, his son and his daughter, Arlin, were at his bedside when he died yesterday.
As head of the Pentagon, Mr Weinberger strongly opposed concessions to Moscow in arms control negotiations and pushed hard for increased defence spending, such as Reagan's strategic defence initiative, a programme to develop a land-and space-based missile shield commonly known as "Star Wars".
"He should be remembered as a world statesman, a great American patriot," his son said. "What he did with Reagan really brought down the Soviet Union. They stuck to their plan and simply outspent the Soviets despite all sorts of doubts here."
Mr Weinberger became entangled in the Iran-Contra scandal that bedevilled the Reagan administration. He resigned as defence secretary in 1987. Afterwards he was indicted for lying to the independent counsel investigating the administration's programme of selling missiles to Iran and giving the proceeds to the right-wing Contra forces fighting Nicaragua's socialist Sandinista government.
He was pardoned by the first President Bush in 1992, days before he was to go on trial. In 1985, Mr Weinberger had called the Iran missile plan "absurd" but supported Reagan a year later after the president decided to send missiles and spare parts to Tehran.
Mr Weinberger, who presided over an unprecedented peacetime military build-up costing more than $1 trillion, began his government career as a cost-cutter. When he took the defence post in January 1981, he soon erased the nickname of "Cap the Knife" that critics had pinned on him in his penny-pinching days as federal budget director under Nixon.