Madeleine Albright

As Secretary of State, she foresaw the danger of Putin's rule even as she campaigned for NATO's expansion to Russia's borders.

“My deepest regret from my years in public service is the failure of the United States and the international community to act sooner to halt those crimes,” she wrote in her memoir, “Madam Secretary.” One of my favorite memories of Albright was from her seventy-fifth-birthday party, in 2012, organized by her twin daughters, Anne and Alice. The guest list was entirely female. She wore a giant bug after the Russians were caught tapping her State Department. Her collection of brooches —amassed from dime stores, flea markets, antique dealers, and upscale designers—became so legendary that the Smithsonian exhibited them. One of Albright’s legacies is the square and statue in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, honoring her role in what came to be known as “Madeleine’s war.” Time magazine described Kosovo as “ground zero in the debate over whether America should play a new role in the world, that of the indispensable nation asserting its morality as well as its interests to assure stability, stop thugs and prevent human atrocities.” In the Clinton Administration, Albright was a dogged supporter of NATO intervention to stop Serbian attacks on Kosovars seeking independence. They did a takeoff on the rivalries in “West Side Story.” Albright played Maria; Primakov was Tony. To the tune of “America,” the two bantered back and forth: After a Cuban pilot bragged about shooting down two civilian planes carrying four exiles, in 1996, she said, “This is not cojones,” the Spanish slang for testicles. “We leave America in 2001 safer,” she told me. “We will continue erasing—without replacing—the line drawn in Europe by Stalin’s bloody boot,” she said, in 1999. As almost a million people were slaughtered in Rwanda, in 1994, she famously shouted on a phone call from the U.N. to colleagues in Washington, “Goddammit, we have to do something!” President Bill Clinton opted out, and it haunted her. In a final Op-Ed for the Times—published a month before she died, of cancer, on Wednesday, at eighty-four—the former Secretary of State recalled her initial impressions of the Russian leader. Her family first fled Adolf Hitler’s Nazis and later Joseph Stalin’s Communists as they expanded deeper into Europe. She landed in Colorado at the age of eleven and became a U.S. citizen at the age of twenty. “Only in America could a refugee from Central Europe become Secretary of State,” she told newly minted U.S. citizens, decades later, at a naturalization ceremony.

Albright was 84, and the cause of death was cancer, her family said. "She was surrounded by family and friends. We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, ...

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DENVER — Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state, died Wednesday at 84 years old. Albright died of cancer, surrounded by her ...

"She took many of the values she learned growing up here in Colorado to make history and lead our nation with determination and dignity." Coloradans, Americans, and people around the world will be indebted to her service," the governor said. Albright served as Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001. "Today, we mourn the loss of a true pioneer and history-maker with proud, deep roots in Colorado where her family moved when she was a young girl. The answer to that is: everyone," Albright once said. Sending my condolences to her loved ones and friends during this time,” Denver Mayor Michael Hancock wrote in a tweet.

WASHINGTON, DC - House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (MD) released the following statement today on the passing of former Secretary of State Madeleine ...

President Clinton did our nation a great service when he selected her as America’s chief diplomat, and I feel honored to have known and worked with her during that time and in the years since. As a member of the National Security Council, as our Ambassador to the United Nations, as the first woman to serve as U. S. Secretary of State, and as a senior stateswoman and diplomat, Secretary Albright led a life of extraordinary contribution and public service. Secretary Albright and I began our friendship and partnership when I was Chairman of the Commission Security and Cooperation in Europe, and she was a Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. Her expertise and understanding, not only of Europe and the Soviet Union, was extraordinarily helpful to me and to the Commission as we worked on issues of security, of economic development, and of human rights.

Albright, who arrived in the U.S. as an 11-year-old refugee, became the first woman to serve as secretary of state. She died on Wednesday at the age of 84.

"So I went up to him and I said, 'Can you believe that a refugee is secretary of state?' " "She turned to me as a counselor and said, 'Could you organize the State Department to talk about Islam?' " Sherman said. "It was an indication of her ability to be political." "But it had nothing to do with her getting the job." "She was happy to wield it in her own way." "Madeleine said to him, 'When your government names a woman to head the delegation, I will spend considerable time with her as well.' " Albright, at 4 feet 10 inches tall, stood out in her cherry suit and pearls in the all-male group. Albright had a long and storied career in foreign policy, serving as U. S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1993-97 before reaching the pinnacle of diplomacy: secretary of state. "This all started when ... Saddam Hussein called me a serpent," Albright told NPR in 2009. "As difficult as it might seem, I want every stage of my life to be more exciting than the last." It would never have happened, but I would have felt better about my own role in this." "She said, 'Where's Wonder Woman?' So they did a Wonder Woman comic book as well.

WASHINGTON — Madeleine Albright was the quintessential late 20th-century Jewish diplomat, haunted by the Holocaust and determined to use what tools her adopted ...

“The epitome of mensch in the best and broadest sense of the word.” That led to difficult questions: If Albright knew she was Jewish in 1993 or 1994, why did she not reveal it until 1997, when a newspaper was about to go public? “Maybe she was afraid that her stature would be diminished before her international colleagues if they knew of her Jewish roots. Maybe she felt her aspirations to become secretary of state would be jeopardized if her family history was confirmed.” Her optimism may have blinded her to how deeply embedded in Iran’s political culture was its resistance to compromise. Netanyahu planned a dramatic signal that he was ready to leave the talks. Albright, an early backer of Bill Clinton when he was a relatively unknown Arkansas governor, was his first U. N. ambassador, repayment in part for the money she helped raise for his campaign. She was behind Clinton’s decision to confront the Serbian military in 1999 as it bore down on Kosovo. Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic once told her, “Madam Secretary, you are not well informed.” Albright, whose father Josef Korbel, had served as a diplomat in Belgrade, countered, “Don’t tell me I’m uninformed — I lived here.” In 1998, at U. S.-mediated talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at Wye River, Maryland, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was resisting concessions as Bill Clinton sought to advance the Oslo Accords Netanyahu had reviled. She lobbied for airstrikes against Serbian targets, once telling Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” Powell, famous for his Vietnam-era-founded reluctance for military intervention, said the question nearly caused him an “aneurysm.” “This is cowardice.” She called State Department bureaucrats, whom she never fully trusted, “The White Boys.” Albright was adept at outmaneuvering statesmen — always men — who thought they knew much better than she did.