Former U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman dies suddenly at 82 after a fall

Former U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a former presidential candidate and longtime force in Connecticut politics, died Wednesday following complications from a fall, his family said.

Lieberman, 82, died in New York City as his wife, Hadassah, and other family members were with him, according to a family statement that was released by longtime aide Dan Gerstein.

“Senator Lieberman’s love of God, his family, and America endured throughout his life in the public interest,” the family said.

Lieberman’s funeral is scheduled for Friday at Congregation Agudath Sholom in his hometown of Stamford. An additional memorial service will be announced at a later date.

Lieberman’s friends and former colleagues were stunned by the news Wednesday as word spread quickly among his former staff members and associates.

Lieberman had been in good spirits recently and had spoken to The Courant in an interview lasting about 30 minutes in late November.

He talked about being in Israel on October 7 – the day that Hamas terrorists burst into Israel and started killing civilians in a surprising attack. Lieberman was visting Israel on one of his many trips to visit family and friends, and he heard the sirens blaring.

“We were there that Saturday, October 7,” Lieberman told the Courant in an interview. “Oh, man, the sirens went off. Everybody went to the shelters and the safe rooms that they have in their houses. It seemed unreal, but as the day went on, it got painfully real.”

As the attacks continued, Lieberman was far enough away in Jerusalem, which is about 50 to 60 miles from the Gaza Strip.

“A couple of times we heard some booms,” Lieberman said. “But there were no missiles or bombs that fell on Jerusalem. The booms, we were told, were probably Iron Dome batteries that are placed around Jerusalem that probably were activated to shoot down some missiles that were coming in elsewhere. It’s a society that is, unfortunately, trained for moments like this, and they all did what they have to do.”

Long career in politics

At the end of his U.S. Senate career, Lieberman sat for a long interview with The Hartford Courant in his Washington, D.C. office.

“In the long term, probably the biggest contribution I’ve been able to make to the country and my state,” Lieberman said, was “all of the post 9/11 reform and reorganization of our government to deal with this unconventional challenge to our security, represented by Islamist terrorism — the Department of Homeland Security, which I co-sponsored; the 9/11 Commission, which McCain and I introduced and created; and then all of the 9/11 legislation, which reformed and reorganized the intelligence community in the most significant reform since the beginning of the Cold War in the late 1940s, that created the director of national intelligence and national counter-terrorism.”

Lieberman explained his unusual career path by saying that “the unimaginable happened in 2000” to launch an unpredictable series of events.

“Trust me, it was beyond unimaginable that I would be considered as a Republican vice presidential candidate and perhaps have the opportunity to take a unique place in history to have run for vice president on two different party tickets — and to have lost twice,” Lieberman said. “God saved me from that — or the Republican delegates saved me from that.”

Lieberman’s evolution over the years brought him a series of new friends and supporters, including former U.S. Sen. John McCain, President George W. Bush, and Fox News commentator Sean Hannity. It also brought him a small army of political enemies who coalesced around a previously unknown anti-war candidate named Ned Lamont to defeat Lieberman in the 2006 U.S. Senate primary.

But Lieberman says he was vindicated with his greatest political victory in November 2006, made possible by a coalition largely made up of Republicans and independents. That proved to be his final campaign in a career that is now closing after 40 years in public service, including 24 years in the U.S. Senate.

In Connecticut, many liberal Democrats increasingly soured on Lieberman’s hawkish stances on defense and his support of Republican views. He was at his peak when he made history as the first Jewish American on a major party ticket, but his later views on the war in Iraq prompted many Democrats to deride him as a controversial and divisive figure.

Lieberman supporters believe that it was the Democratic Party — more than Lieberman — that changed through the years, as evidenced by the party’s blistering opposition to the Iraq war.

Lieberman himself attributed the change to “a very unusual series of events in which I had different opportunities” involving “different times and different people and different relationships that I had,” including his close friendship with McCain.

The two senators are like brothers in a bond forged by more than 50 foreign trips together to hot spots such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. A McCain victory in 2008 also would have changed Lieberman’s life once again in the same way as the vice presidential decision by Gore.

“I guarantee you if I was elected president, he would have been Secretary of State,” McCain said of Lieberman in an interview with The Courant in his spacious Washington office. “I’ll bet you if a president nominated him to be the Secretary of State, the vote would be 100 to 0.”

At the other end of the spectrum, hard-core liberals and some true-blue Democrats said they regretted voting for Lieberman in his earlier days and said they would never do so again.

This story will be updated.

Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com