Alexander M. Haig, Jr. (born 1924), American military leader and diplomat, served as secretary of state and as adviser to two Republican presidents.

According to a TIME special story on Alexander Haig in 1984, "Few American public figures have had such tempestuous careers. Alexander M. Haig, Jr. has spent much of his life in war zones--bureaucratic and geopolitical, as well as the kind for which he prepared in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point: Viet Nam, where he served as a battalion and brigade commander; as the indispensable aide-de-camp to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger; as White House Chief of Staff during the climax of Watergate; and, after Richard Nixon's presidency fell, as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.... But it was during his tenure as Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State that Haig found himself most embattled."

Haig was born in Bala-Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, a comfortable suburb of Philadelphia, on...