posted 07-25-2003 05:52 PM            

Friday, July 25, 2003 · Last updated 3:54 p.m. PT

Navy secretary nominee committed suicide

By RICHARD BENKE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- The death of Colin McMillan, an oilman awaiting Senate confirmation as Navy secretary, was ruled a suicide by gunshot Friday.

McMillan, 67, was found dead Thursday at his 55,000-acre ranch in southern New Mexico, near the White Sands Missile Range.

"The cause is a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The manner is suicide," said Tim Stepetic, spokesman for the state medical investigator.

In Alamogordo, District Attorney Scot Key would not say whether McMillan left a suicide note. Key said a handgun was found with the body.

McMillan "had a recurrence of cancer," but "everybody thought he was recovered, recuperating quite well," Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said Friday on the Senate floor.

President Bush nominated McMillan in May for the Navy post, which had been vacant since Gordon England left in January to become deputy secretary of the new Homeland Security Department.

The president said he and his wife were "saddened by the death of our good friend."

"Colin was a public servant and patriot," Bush said.

McMillan served in the Marine Corps from 1957 to 1972 and was assistant defense secretary in the early 1990s, during the first Bush administration.

McMillan ran Permian Exploration Corp. in Roswell. He was a member of the New Mexico House from 1971 to 1982 and ran for U.S. Senate in 1994, losing to Democratic incumbent Jeff Bingaman in a bitter and costly campaign.

Domenici called McMillan "someone who succeeded at everything he tried and everything he did, and yet he was about as humble as anyone you will ever meet."

McMillan is survived by his wife, Kay, and their four children.