BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, a crewcut-wearing Indiana Democrat who was a leading foreign affairs voice during three decades in Congress and helped oversee investigations of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, died Tuesday. He was 94.
Hamilton, who also led a congressional probe of the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra affair while representing a rural southern Indiana district, died peacefully in his home in Bloomington, Indiana, said his son Doug Hamilton, who did not cite a specific cause.
Hamilton was at the forefront of congressional opposition to the 1991 Persian Gulf War waged by President George H.W. Bush and advocated continued economic sanctions against Iraq before military action over its invasion of Kuwait.
He decided against seeking reelection in 1998 and said after leaving Congress that he believed the U.S. needed to be regarded around the world as more than a leader of military coalitions.
“The United States must be — and must be seen as — an optimistic and benign power,” Hamilton said in 2003. “We must speak and act as a source of optimism, a beacon of freedom, a benign power forging a consensus approach toward a world of peace and growth and freedom. And American power must be accompanied by American generosity.”
President Barack Obama presented Hamilton with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, saying during the ceremony that Hamilton was a man “widely admired” on both sides of the aisle “for his honesty, his wisdom, and consistent commitment to bipartisanship.”
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Former Associated Press Writer Tom Davies contributed to this report.