Madeleine Albright, former U.S. secretary of state and feminist icon,
dies at 84
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[March 24, 2022]
By Diane Bartz
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Madeleine Albright,
who fled the Nazis as a child in her native Czechoslovakia during World
War Two then rose to become the first female U.S. secretary of state
and, in her later years, a pop culture feminist icon, died on Wednesday
at the age of 84.
Her family announced her death on Twitter and said she had died of
cancer. Leaders, diplomats and academics remembered her as a trailblazer
on the world stage.
Albright served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1993-1997
in U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration. He then nominated her
to become the first female secretary of state and she served in that
role from 1997-2001.
"Madeleine Albright was a force. She defied convention and broke
barriers again and again," U.S. President Joe Biden said. He directed
U.S. flags be flown at half-staff at the White House and government
buildings, including embassies, until March 27.
She was a tough-talking diplomat in an administration that hesitated to
involve itself in the two biggest foreign policy crises of the 1990s -
the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
She once upset a Pentagon chief by asking why the military maintained
more than 1 million men and women under arms if they never used them.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Mar/24/images/ads/current/graue_sda_042021.png)
The plain-spoken Albright took a tough line on a 1996 incident where
Cuban jet fighters downed two unarmed U.S.-based planes, saying: "This
is not cojones, this is cowardice," using a Spanish vulgarity meaning
"testicles."
While at the United Nations, where Security Council members stood in
silence on Wednesday to honor her memory, she pressed for a tougher line
against the Serbs in Bosnia after Bosnian Serb military forces laid
siege to the capital Sarajevo.
During Clinton's first term, many of his administration's top foreign
policy experts did not want to get involved because they vividly
remembered how the United States became bogged down in Vietnam.
In 1995, Bosnian Serb soldiers overran three Moslem enclaves,
Srebrenica, Gorazde and Zepa, and massacred more than 8,000 people.
The United States responded by working with NATO on airstrikes that
forced an end to the war but only after it had been going on for three
years.
Albright's experience as a refugee prompted her to push for the United
States to use its superpower clout. She wanted a "muscular
internationalism," said James O'Brien, a senior adviser to Albright
during the Bosnian war.
Early in the Clinton administration, while she unsuccessfully advocated
for a quicker, stronger response in Bosnia, Albright backed a U.N. war
crimes tribunal that eventually put the architects of that war,
including Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb leaders,
in jail, O'Brien said.
The painful lessons learned in Rwanda and Bosnia served the United
States well in Kosovo, when Washington saw the more powerful Serbs begin
a program of ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians. NATO responded with
an 11-week campaign of air strikes in 1999 that extended to Belgrade.
Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani said on Wednesday she was “deeply shocked
by the loss of Kosovo's great friend,” adding that the intervention
"gave us hope, when we did not have it."
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Mar/24/images/ads/current/charrons_bch_2022.png)
During efforts to press North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program,
which were eventually unsuccessful, Albright traveled to Pyongyang in
2000 to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, becoming the highest
ranking U.S. official to visit the secretive Communist-run country at
the time.
FEMINIST HEROINE
Once the Clinton years and the 1990s were over, Albright became an icon
to a generation of young women looking for inspiration in their quest
for opportunity and respect in the workplace. Albright was fond of
saying: "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each
other."
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![](../images/032422PIX/news_s39.jpg)
U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright reacts to a journalist's
question during a press briefing in Beijing March 2. Albright
wrapped up "tough" talks on Tuesday with no sign of movement from
either side on key issues -- human rights, trade and a potential
missile defence for Taiwan/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Mar/24/images/ads/current/2021_lda_Businessdirectory.png) Albright was a marked contrast to
her predecessors and male colleagues in uniform suits. She used
clothes and jewelry to send tart, political messages. One favorite
was a snake brooch, a reference to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
calling her an "unparalleled serpent."
She wrote a book about her signature jewelry, one
of several bestsellers, explaining that the pins were a diplomatic
tool. Balloons or flower pins would indicate she felt optimistic,
while a crab or turtle would indicate frustration.
Born Marie Jana Korbelova in Prague on May 15, 1937, her family fled
in 1939 to London when Germany occupied Czechoslovakia. She attended
school in Switzerland at age 10 and adopted the name Madeleine.
She was raised a Roman Catholic but after she became secretary of
state, the Washington Post dug up documentation showing that her
family was Jewish and relatives, including three grandparents, died
in the Holocaust. Her parents likely converted to Catholicism from
Judaism to avoid persecution as Nazism gained strength in Europe,
the paper reported.
After the war, the family left London and returned to
Czechoslovakia, then in the throes of a communist takeover.
Her father, a diplomat and academic who opposed communism, moved the
family to the United States where he taught international studies at
the University of Denver. One of his favorite students was
Condoleezza Rice, who would become the second female secretary of
state in 2005 under Republican President George W. Bush.
"It is quite remarkable that this Czech émigré professor has trained
two secretaries of state," Albright told the New York Times in 2006.
Albright attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and got a
doctorate from Columbia University. She became fluent or close to it
in six languages including Czech, French, Polish and Russian as well
as English.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Mar/24/images/ads/current/remington_sda_SFARM_2022.png)
In 1959, she married newspaper heir Joseph Medill Patterson
Albright, whom she met while working at the Denver Post, and they
had three daughters. They divorced in 1982.
She followed her father into academia but also became involved in
Democratic Party politics. Albright joined the staff of Senator
Edmund Muskie, a Maine Democrat, in 1976 and two years later became
a member of President Jimmy Carter's National Security Council
staff.
Since leaving the Clinton administration, she has written a series
of books. One, "Hell and Other Destinations," was published in April
2020. Others include her autobiography, "Madam Secretary: A Memoir"
(2003) and "Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box"
(2009).
The plain-spoken Albright made forays into popular culture. "Parks
and Recreation" star Amy Poehler's character had a picture of
Albright in her office.
In 2005, the "Gilmore Girls" television series the character Rory
dreamt that Albright, wearing a red suit and an eagle pin, was her
mother.
In 2018, she and fellow former secretaries of state Colin Powell and
Hillary Clinton briefed a fictional secretary of state in "Madam
Secretary," a TV drama where she spoke passionately about the
dangers of abusive nationalism.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Additional reporting by Fatos Bytyci in
Pristina and by Rami Ayyub and Simon Lewis in Washington; Editing by
Bill Trott, Diane Craft and Howard Goller)
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