Former US National Security Adviser Scowcroft Is Dead at 95

General Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor, waits for US President Barack Obama to announce Ashton Carter as his nominee for Secretary of Defense in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, on Dec. 5, 2014. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

WASHINGTON—Brent Scowcroft, a pragmatic three-star general who served as national security adviser to Republican U.S. Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush and later criticized President George W. Bush’s Iraq war policies, died on Thursday. He was 95.

Scowcroft, a member of the presidential commission that investigated the biggest scandal of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and an architect of the 1991 Gulf War under the elder Bush, died of natural causes, according to a statement on Friday from a spokesman for the Bush family.