Caspar Weinberger, who died yesterday at 88, held Cabinet positions under three presidents, and was secretary of defense for most of the presidency of Ronald Reagan, when he oversaw the largest peacetime buildup of the military in the nation’s history, with budgets totaling $2 trillion.

Under Weinberger’s leadership, the Pentagon undertook initiatives affecting nearly every aspect of military preparedness, including new planes like the B-1 bomber for the Air Force, new ships for the Navy, the M-X missile to deliver the nation’s nuclear payloads, and the Strategic Defense Initiative to shoot down those of its enemies. Having come to the job bearing the sobriquet “Cap the Knife,” which was based on his reputation for cutting budgets, Weinberger became known in the Pentagon as “Mr. Yes,” the man who seldom met a new weapon system he didn’t want to fund. Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, wrote that he earned the moniker “Cap the Shovel.”

He referred to the project as “the rearming of America,” and there are many who credit it with hastening the demise of the Soviet Union, the enemy it was designed to confront.

An ostentatious debater and a great admirer of Winston Churchill, whose 1930s campaign to re-arm Britain against Hitler he saw as a model for his own ambitions, Weinberger kept in a frame on his office wall a quote from his idol: “Never give in; never give in; never, never, never, never in nothing great or small, large or petty – never give in.” His Anglophilia was rewarded by the queen in 1988, when she made him a knight of the British Empire for his support during the Falklands War.

Weinberger was an accomplished bureaucratic brawler whose epic battles with Secretary of State Shultz became the stuff of Washington legend. Yet he was not quite agile enough to steer clear of the Iran-Contra Affair, despite his documented opposition to the plot to send weapons to Iran. He ended up being indicted by a special prosecutor for obstruction of justice and perjury, for failing to disclose extensive notes on the affair, and for lying to Congress. President George H.W. Bush pardoned him on Christmas Eve in 1992. The punctilious Weinberger sent Mr. Bush a card each year on that date, thanking him.

A moderate Republican who had served in the California state Assembly, he supported Rockefeller over Goldwater in 1964. Weinberger first held statewide office in 1968, as then-Governor Reagan’s director of finance. It was here that his reputation for cutting budgets began. President Nixon tapped Weinberger as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission in 1970 with a mandate to clean house. He reorganized the agency – with a surprising assist from Ralph Nader. Weinberger was by no means an anti-government conservative. Within six months, he was named deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, serving under Mr. Shultz; at the press conference announcing his appointment, Weinberger pronounced himself a “fiscal Puritan.” He succeeded Mr. Shultz as head of OMB in 1972.

Austerity was more difficult to maintain at his next assignment, as the secretary of health, education, and welfare. Nixon thought enough of Weinberger to appoint him additionally to the new office of presidential counselor on human resources, with broad responsibility for departments concerning the HEW, manpower, social services, drug abuse, native peoples, and consumer protection. This “super Cabinet” arrangement did not survive the Nixon presidency, but Weinberger did, staying on as secretary of HEW into the Ford administration. He resigned in 1975 and joined the San Francisco construction firm of Bechtel, a giant operation with many projects with governments around the world. Weinberger served as the firm’s general counsel, vice president, and director. Again, he was working alongside Mr. Shultz.

Reagan tapped him as his incoming secretary of defense in 1981.

Weinberger was raised in San Francisco, the son of a lawyer with Bohemian Jewish ancestry and an English mother. Raised an Episcopal, Weinberger was a vestryman at his local church and served as treasurer of the California diocese.

A sickly child who suffered from chronic ear infections, Weinberger was bookish and interested in politics, following in his father’s footsteps by supporting conservatives and Republicans. He claimed that even before high school he subscribed to the Congressional Record, and read each issue cover to cover. He was elected senior year president of his high school, and his graduation speech was titled, “The Honorable Profession of Politics.”

Attending Harvard on a scholarship, he distinguished himself as a student while proselytizing conservative political views as editor of the Crimson. His Anglophilia was already well developed. In a comment on an editorial approving of EdwardVIII’s abdication of the British throne in 1936, Weinberger wrote, “I hate to see this stand being taken – Mrs. Simpson is just used goods & Edward is an ill-tempered, spoiled fool.”

Weinberger attended Harvard Law School, then enlisted in the Army in 1941. He eventually won a commission and joined the staff of General MacArthur. In 1942, he married Jane Dalton, a nurse he met aboard a troop ship bound for the Pacific Theater.

Returning to San Francisco after the war, Weinberger served a clerkship with a federal appeals court judge, and went into private practice. He became involved in local politics with a group of young Republicans that called itself the Grand New Party. He won a seat in the state Assembly in 1952. In the Assembly, he guided legislation establishing a state liquor control board. A poll of newspaper correspondents voted him the most able member of the Assembly.

After failing in a bid to be elected state attorney general, Weinberger returned to private practice, but remained active in politics as chairman of the California Republican State Central Committee.

Weinberger’s specialty as a lawyer was antitrust law, but he spent at least as much time on politics as he did on law. He was on the book review staff of the San Francisco Chronicle, and also moderated a talk show on the local public television station, WQED, called “Profile: Bay Area.” Among his guests was “an extremely eloquent and persuasive Malcolm X.”

Weinberger wrote two books of memoirs of his government service, “Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon” (1990) and “In the Arena” (2001), a Teddy Roosevelt quotation that also serves as the title for memoirs by Nixon and the actor Charlton Heston.

Lawrence Korb, who served as an assistant secretary of defense under Weinberger, trashed “Seven Critical Years” for being disingenuous, self-serving “to the extreme,” and for taking “Manichaeism and hyperbole to an extreme.” But The New York Sun’s Jay Nordlinger, writing in the National Review, praised “In the Arena” for its moral clarity and said Weinberger “reminds one a lot of Reagan: a more detail-oriented Reagan without the Hollywood past.”

Weinberger also published “The Next War” (1996), which criticized America’s military preparedness under President Clinton, and in 2005 he published a political thriller, “Chain of Command.”

At the time of his death, Weinberger was chairman of Forbes magazine.

Caspar Willard Weinberger

Born August 18, 1917, in San Francisco; died March 28 at a hospital in Bangor, Maine; survived by his wife, Jane, and their children, Arlin Cerise and Caspar Willard, three grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.