Ex-CIA Director Dies at 84; Wife Cites Havana Syndrome

R. James Woolsey's death is drawing attention not just for his résumé, but for what his wife says killed him. The CIA director under former President Clinton died Wednesday at age 84 after a stroke at his home in Washington, DC, his wife, Conchita Sarnoff Woolsey, tells the New York Times. She separately told the Washington Post he had suffered in recent years from "Havana syndrome," the still-unexplained condition reported by US personnel overseas dating back to 2016. The CIA issued a brief statement calling Woolsey "a great patriot" who served as director, undersecretary of the Navy, ambassador, and attorney.

Appointed in 1993, Woolsey led the CIA through the World Trade Center bombing, the post-Soviet transition, and the exposure of spy Aldrich Ames, but resigned in 1994 after a rocky tenure and scant backing in Washington. Former New York Times reporter James Risen said that experience "made him much more conservative over time," eventually turning him into a strong supporter of the Iraq War and a foreign-policy hawk in the Bush-Cheney orbit, notes the Hill. Woolsey later advised Donald Trump's 2016 campaign but did not land a national security post. Born in Tulsa in 1941, he studied at Stanford, was a Rhodes Scholar, earned a Yale law degree, and entered government in 1970 on the National Security Council staff.