WASHINGTON, April 17, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Bob Graham, a former US
senator and two-term Democratic governor of the state of Florida, has died aged 87, his
family announced Tuesday.

Graham held elected office for almost four decades, beginning as a Florida state
representative in 1966 until 2005 when he retired from the US Senate after his third term in
office.

Graham "devoted his life to the betterment of the world around him," said a statement by the
family, posted on his daughter Gwen Graham's X account.

"The memorials to that devotion are everywhere -- from the Everglades and other natural
treasure he was determined to preserve... the global understanding he helped to foster through
his work with the intelligence community, and so many more."

He served from 1979-1987 as governor of Florida, during which the southern US state
experienced a large wave of immigration from Cuba and Haiti.

As the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee after the September 11, 2001 attacks,
Graham led a joint congressional inquiry into the US government failures leading up to the
events.

He later strongly opposed then-president George W. Bush's push to invade Iraq and topple
Saddam Hussein, arguing that resources would be diverted from the fight against terrorism.

"It was with the deepest respect and sadness that I learned of the passing of Senator Bob
Graham: a patriotic American and a great Member of the United States Senate," said former
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Several years after leaving the Senate, Graham was tapped by former president Barack Obama
to co-chair an inquiry into the major Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.