Army General Andrew Jackson Goodpaster, who died yesterday at 90, became the supreme commander of NATO in 1969 after having served as one of the organization’s architects in the early 1950s.

Goodpaster also served a pivotal role in the Eisenhower White House, was deputy commander of American forces in Vietnam, and came out of retirement in 1977 to serve as superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point when a cheating scandal left the institution reeling.

A founding member in 1950 of the Committee on the Present Danger, a pro-containment group, Goodpaster was quick to note when the Soviet threat had lessened, and as head of the Atlantic Council, put forward proposals for deep cuts in American troop levels in Europe in the late 1980s.

A soldier-scholar of some repute, Goodpaster was the recipient of both the Distinguished Service Cross, awarded for battlefield bravery, and a Ph.D. in international relations from Princeton University.

Goodpaster grew up in Granite City, Ill., and graduated second in his class at West Point in 1939. Commissioned a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, he initially served in Panama, then became involved with the buildup to World War II. After additional combat training, he took over as commanding officer of the 48th Engineer Combat Battalion, which he took to North Africa, and then to Italy, in September 1943. His Distinguished Service Cross was awarded for leading a reconnaissance mission through a minefield under fire. Returning to America in 1944, he went to work in the War Department, where he helped draw up Japan invasion plans.

Having already distinguished himself as one of the young generation of “army intellectuals” who would see America through the Cold War years, Goodpaster was detailed to Princeton University. After being awarded his Ph.D. in 1950, he joined the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C., as a member of the Joint Advance Study Committee. Later in 1950, Goodpaster went to Paris, where he spent several years working as assistant to General Alfred Gruenther, Eisenhower’s chief of staff in the establishment of NATO.

Eisenhower returned to America in 1952 to run for president. He organized the White House along military lines, the linchpin being the staff secretary, Brigadier General Paul Carroll, who, along with the president’s assistant, Sherman Adams, monitored virtually everything and everyone who crossed Ike’s path. After Carroll died, in 1954, Goodpaster took over for him, and he remained in the job through the end of the Eisenhower administration. So close was his relationship to Eisenhower that the press corps took to calling him the president’s alter ego. In 1957, he was promoted to brigadier general.

After Eisenhower’s retirement, Goodpaster was awarded the Medal of Freedom for his White House service.

Goodpaster worked on President Kennedy’s transition team and took a command in Europe, then returned as special assistant to General Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Through the end of the 1960s, Goodpaster took a series of assignments related to military planning and diplomacy, and he visited Vietnam several times. He was third in command in the American delegation during the 1968 Paris peace negotiations. As the deputy commander for Vietnam, he assured President Nixon in January 1969 that, with determination, America would prevail, according to the Washington Post column of Joseph Alsop.

In July 1969, Goodpaster became the supreme allied commander of NATO, a post he held until his retirement in 1974. Goodpaster was replaced by President Ford in a contentious move that put General Alexander Haig Jr., Nixon’s last chief of staff, at the head of NATO. In a rare fit of pique, Goodpaster neglected to attend Mr. Haig’s swearing in, an unusual breach of decorum.

After working for a few years on defense issues as a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Goodpaster came out of retirement to head West Point. It was the first time a retired general had been named to the Army’s most prestigious training ground. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger immediately named him to a committee attempting to figure out how to deploy the MX mobile missile.

Goodpaster served on the boards of several foundations and remained actively engaged in defense issues until the end of his life. In 2003, he urged that America undertake an updated Marshall Plan to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.

Andrew Jackson Goodpaster

Born February 12, 1915, in Granite City, Ill.; died May 16 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., of cancer; survived by his wife, Dorothy Anderson Goodpaster, and his daughters, Susan Goodpaster Sullivan and Anne Goodpaster Williams.