Richard A. Boucher, a longtime spokesman at the State Department who was the calming, analytical voice of U.S. diplomacy during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the ensuing military response — and who went on to help frame U.S. policy in Afghanistan, which he acknowledged was a failure — died on Friday at his home in Arlington, Va. He was 73.
The cause was spindle cell carcinoma, his son, Peter Boucher, said.
Mr. Boucher (rhymes with “voucher”) served longer than anyone else as a State Department spokesman, working for six secretaries of state, from George H.W. Bush’s administration to George W. Bush’s — explaining, distilling and defending the views of Republican and Democratic presidents, in a noncombative tone and with a scrupulous lack of interjected personal opinion.
His knowledge and analysis of issues, based on his own foreign service career on multiple continents, was such that officials around the State Department paused their work to tune in to his briefings.
Speaking daily in public without rehearsal “is one of the most difficult jobs” in the foreign service, R. Nicholas Burns, a former under secretary of state for political affairs, said in an interview: “The job of Richard was to advance, explain and defend the administration’s position on any issue. He was able to distill very complex issues into understandable language for the American public.”
Mr. Boucher, who in 2008 was appointed a career ambassador, the highest rank for a diplomat, was traveling with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in Peru on 9/11.
On the emergency flight home, Mr. Boucher was updating his boss on a department to-do list, he recalled, when Secretary Powell cut him off: “You don’t understand,” he said. “This changes everything.”
Indeed it did, for Mr. Boucher as for many other Americans.
He was midway through a career that had included consular postings in China and stints as the ambassador to the island nation of Cyprus from 1993 to 1996 and consul general in Hong Kong from 1996 to 1999, both before and after the British handed Hong Kong back to China.
He rotated in and out of the job of State Department spokesman from the late 1980s through the early 2000s, for Secretaries of State James A. Baker, Warren Christopher, Madeleine K. Albright, Secretary Powell and Condoleezza Rice.
In 2006, Secretary Rice promoted him to assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, a position that included partial responsibility for policy in Afghanistan. The U.S. was ramping up huge financial support of the pro-Western government in Kabul while waging a bloody counterinsurgency against the Taliban.
“Talking about things and actually doing something about them is quite a bit different; that’s one thing you rapidly learn when you leave the podium,” Mr. Boucher later reflected.
He met frequently with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in the White House Situation Room.
In a candid 2022 interview for an archive recorded by former State Department officials, Mr. Boucher said that the U.S. aim in Afghanistan — to defeat the Taliban and establish a modern democratic nation, or what he called “Washington on the Kabul River” — was misguided and ultimately tragic, ending in the humiliating 2021 U.S. withdrawal and a Taliban takeover.
American policy, he said, did not recognize how unpopular the corrupt Kabul leadership was in the rural provinces, which fed the Taliban movement. “The fighting in Afghanistan was about the Afghan government, and we weren’t going to be able to leave until people respected the Afghan government,” he said.
That never occurred.
“I think we walk around with this idea that wars end on the deck of the battleship Iwo Jima,” he said. “We kept thinking that you could win this militarily. And part of that was because politically we were so distracted by Iraq, part of that was because those of us on the political side didn’t assert ourselves enough.”
He did not spare himself blame. As an assistant secretary, he supported building roads in rural Afghanistan to connect it to the outside world. But after Taliban fighters used a U.S.-built road to attack near Kandahar, Secretary Rice ruefully told him, “Richard, it looks like the Taliban have gotten pretty good at using these roads you built.”
Richard Alan Boucher was born on Dec. 13, 1951, in Bethesda, Md., to Melville Boucher, who became a National Security Agency officer, and Ellen (Kaufmann) Boucher, a German Jewish immigrant who was a member of the Women’s Army Corps in World War II. The couple met at Camp Ritchie, Md., while training U.S. intelligence officers.
Mr. Boucher earned a B.A. in English and French comparative literature from Tufts University in 1973 and then served in the Peace Corps in Senegal.
He joined the Foreign Service in 1977.
Besides his son, he is survived by his wife, Carolyn Brehm, whom he married in 1982; a daughter, Madeleine Brehm Boucher; a grandson; a brother, Douglas Boucher; and a sister, Anita Boucher.
For nearly two decades after Mr. Boucher stepped away from the State Department podium, his guidelines for public affairs officers, “Richard Boucher’s Words of Wisdom,” remained posted in the office. Among his advice:
“If you don’t want to see it in print, don’t say it.”
“Good guidance can explain the issue to your mother.”
“Talk about results. If you don’t have results, talk policy. If you don’t have policy, talk facts. If you don’t have facts, talk process. You’ll always have process.”
Trip Gabriel is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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