As a Republican, he served in a variety of state and federal positions for three decades, most notably as Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan from January 1981 to November 1987.

He also served as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

Weinberger was awarded both the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and an honorary British knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II.

Weinberger also unsuccessfully opposed the construction of the Embarcadero Freeway, saying it would ruin the view of the Bay and damage property values.

In 1973, the Southern Poverty Law Center named Weinberger as a defendant in a case that sought restitution for the forced non-consensual sterilization and medical experimentation on three young Black American girls, Minnie Lee, Mary Alice, and Katie Relf in Montgomery, Alabama.

On a separate occasion, doctors surgically sterilized Minnie Lee and Mary Alice who were twelve and fourteen years old respectively.

[11] At the time of the suit, the Office of Economic Opportunity was preparing to hand over funding and control of its associated family planning clinics to Weinberger's Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

recently began providing funding for such sterilization procedures, while top OEO personnel intentionally did not distribute a medical memo containing guidelines on obtaining patient consent for such operations.

Copies of the memo, which included age of consent laws whose criteria the Relf girls did not meet, sat undistributed in a DC warehouse.

At the time of the suit, Weinberger's most recent approved Health, Education, and Welfare budget included specific funding allotments for sterilization procedures, and thus he was named a defendant in the case.

In 1984, journalist Nicholas Lemann interviewed Weinberger and summarized the strategy of the Reagan administration to roll back the Soviet Union: Their society is economically weak, and it lacks the wealth, education, and technology to enter the information age.

Although not widely experienced in defense matters, Weinberger had a reputation in Washington as an able administrator; his powers as a cost cutter earned him the sobriquet "Cap the Knife".

He shared Ronald Reagan's conviction that the Soviet Union posed a serious threat to the United States, and that the defense establishment needed to be modernized and strengthened.

Belying his nickname, at the Pentagon Weinberger became a vigorous advocate of Reagan's plan to increase the Department of Defense budget.

[15] However, this thesis was contested by a study on the causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union by two prominent economists from the World Bank – William Easterly, and Stanley Fischer from MIT: "... the study concludes that the increased Soviet defense spending provoked by Mr. Reagan's policies was not the straw that broke the back of the Evil Empire.

[16] While the Reagan Doctrine was not a key factor in causing the economic implosion of the USSR, which was driven by internal contradictions, the Reagan proxy-rollback policy of the 1980s (which replaced Détente that Nixon and Carter generally pursued during the 1970s) was the key factor[17] in preventing expansion of the Soviet economic empire, and sustenance of their declining domestic economy from external sources.

British journalist Bernard Levin wrote in 1977: I do not believe it possible that the thirst for freedom and decency in the countries of the Soviet Empire can remain much longer unslaked, and that any attempt ... to satisfy it by real reforms, will be cataclysmically destructive of the eroded foundations of the entire State system.

Weinberger pushed for dramatic increases in the United States' nuclear funding, and was a strong advocate of the controversial SDI, an initiative which proposed a space- and ground-based missile defense shield.

[21] In the wake of that terrible event, he laid out his engagement policy in a November 1984 speech on "The Uses of Military Power" at the National Press Club as the Six Tests.

Though he claimed to have been opposed to the sale on principle,[citation needed] Weinberger participated in the transfer of United States Hawk and TOW missiles to Iran at that time.

On June 17, 1992, Weinberger was indicted on five felony charges related to the Iran-contra affair, including accusations that he had lied to Congress and obstructed Government investigations.

On December 11, 1992, Judge Thomas F. Hogan threw out this indictment because it violated the five-year statute of limitations and improperly broadened the original charges.

[28][33] Weinberger had been Secretary of Defense for six years and ten months, longer than anyone except for Robert McNamara and more recently Donald Rumsfeld.

His extensive career in public service, his support for the men and women in uniform and his central role in helping to win the Cold War leave a lasting legacy ...