Malcolm Wallop | Former U.S. senator, 78

Malcolm Wallop, 78, a senator who became a leading conservative voice during the Reagan era in fighting for space defense and a tough anticommunist policy in Central America, died Wednesday at his home near Big Horn, Wyo.

Family friend and Cody Enterprise publisher Bruce McCormack said that Sen. Wallop had been ill for several years.

He served in the Senate from 1977 to 1995 and had an unusual resumé for a Western politician. He was part of the third generation of a Wyoming pioneer family, he graduated from Yale University, and his grandfather served in the English House of Lords.

"He was part of a remarkable Wyoming congressional delegation back in the 1980s, along with Dick Cheney and Al Simpson, the three of them were just remarkably powerful and effective," McCormack said.

Sen. Wallop gained a significant victory when President Ronald Reagan began pushing the space-based antimissile defense concept. The senator was among a group of conservatives who had espoused the plan for years before Reagan came to support it.

His 18 years in the Senate included time as the ranking Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources and Armed Services Committees.

Sen. Wallop did not seek reelection in 1994, but he remained active politically as director of the conservative Frontiers of Freedom Foundation think tank.

- AP