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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.
District Attorney Scot Key would not say whether McMillan left a suicide note. He 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. Domenici had said the Senate would have confirmed McMillan soon.
Family spokesman Bill Owen downplayed the cancer, saying McMillan had a growth removed from his mouth recently and the prognosis was for a complete recovery.
"Based on everything we know, Colin was doing well and was waiting like the rest of us for Senate confirmation (as Navy secretary)," Owen said.
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."
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.
McMillan is survived by his wife, Kay, and their four children.
A funeral was scheduled for Monday at the First United Methodist Church in Roswell.