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WASHINGTON – Richard Boucher, who served for more than a decade as the spokesman for the State Department and assistant secretary of state for public affairs, has died at age 73, according to friends and family. He died on Thursday in a hospital in northern Virginia after a battle with an aggressive form of cancer, according to two people close to his family.

Boucher had been the face of U.S. foreign policy at the State Department podium across administrations throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, beginning in the George H.W. Bush presidency and continuing through Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s terms in office. Boucher served as the spokesman for secretaries of state James Baker, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

In a career that took him from the Peace Corps though Africa and Asia as well as in Washington, Boucher also served as U.S. Consul General Hong Kong during the 1997 handover of the territory from Britain to China, and later used the skills he learned there to help orchestrate an end to the U.S.-China spy plane crisis in early 2001.

After leaving the spokesman’s job, Boucher became assistant secretary of state for state for South and Central Asia and was then ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Retired veteran CBS journalist Charles Wolfson, who worked with Boucher for years, lauded him as an effective State Department spokesman but also a valued professional colleague and friend.

“He was a superb diplomat, an excellent spokesman and an even better human being,” Wolfson said.