Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

DATE September 16, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Madeleine Albright on her new book "Madam Secretary"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

When Madeleine Albright was the US ambassador to the UN, spending much of her
time at Security Council meetings, she used to kid that if she ever wrote her
memoirs, she would call the book "Fourteen Suits and a Skirt." She's followed
through on writing the book, but she's given it a different title, "Madam
Secretary," which reflects the position she held after the UN when President
Bill Clinton appointed her secretary of State. She is the first and only
woman to have held the position. Some of the issues and crises she contended
with during the Clinton years include the war in the Balkans, the genocide in
Rwanda, the terrorist bombings of the US embassies in Africa, the suspension
of weapons inspections in Iraq, Middle East peace talks and the start of the
second intifada and the impeachment trial of President Clinton. Her memoir
talks about these issues as well as the ups and downs of her personal life.

Albright also has an article in the current edition of Foreign Affairs in
which she wrote, `I never thought the day would come when the US would be
feared by those it has neither the intention nor the cause to harm.' I asked
her if she thinks the war in Iraq has negatively affected our stature in the
world.

Former Secretary MADELEINE ALBRIGHT (State Department): I think there's no
question that the war in Iraq has harmed us. I think it has made people
wonder about what the purpose of American power is. I think it's important
that our adversaries fear us, but I think that when our friends and allies and
others are afraid of us, that is not the kind of power that I wanted America
to have. I want us to be respected. I think it's a luxury to be loved, but I
think respected is what is the appropriate way for countries to feel about us.

GROSS: You say that although the war was justifiable, it wasn't essential in
the short term to protect US security. A policy of containment would have
been sufficient. Do you think that there are harmful effects of the war in
Iraq that we need to try to contain? And if so, what are they?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, I think the most troubling problem is that we have been
afraid generally when a particular country becomes a gathering ground for
terrorists. That is what happened in Afghanistan. And while I never believed
that there was a direct link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, what I think
has happened now is that in fact Iraq has become that kind of a gathering
ground, a magnet. And President Bush in his speech last Sunday basically said
that the major fight against terrorism is taking place in Iraq, that that is
the center of it, which it may well be, but I have two concerns.

One is that it is, in fact, now a gathering ground. And two, that even if we
win, which I very much hope we will, that it is not the end of the war
fighting against terrorism, because it has tentacles in a variety of different
places. So those are my concerns, and I think that the war in Iraq has, in
fact, exacerbated a lot of the problems that we have.

GROSS: As a former UN ambassador, what kind of shape do you think the United
Nations is in now after the United States went into Iraq without Security
Council approval?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, I think it's taken a certain amount of battering and
questioning about its role. On the other hand, there is the positive
development which is a sense that we need the United Nations now. And the
meetings that have taken place in Geneva that Secretary-General Annan
organized in order to try to get a United Nations resolution, I think, has
elevated the importance of the UN again. Of course, we have to see how that
all gets carried out. I've always believed that we are the UN, not just we,
but the nation states, and that we are stronger if an organization such as the
United Nations exists. And I hope very much that the US will understand the
importance of strong support for the United Nations.

GROSS: Colin Powell is Secretary of State, the position you had under
President Clinton. Do you often think what must be going through his mind
now, because after all, the Powell doctrine said, `Don't get involved
militarily in any part of the world where you can't be very confident you're
going to have a victory and probably a quick victory at that, and you should
avoid, at all costs, a quagmire? And quagmire's a word we've been hearing a
lot lately, rightly or wrongly, in terms of Iraq. Do you often wonder what's
going through Colin Powell's mind now?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, I obviously do, but I think that he must have similar
feelings to what I think I had. You don't win every one of the internal
battles in any administration, and they exist, because you have people with
different perspectives, recognizing different points within an administration,
different agencies. But I found that even at times where things hadn't gone
exactly my way, you want success. You don't want your country to fail. And
so I'm sure he's trying to figure out how to be as supportive as possible of
what the Bush administration policy is, which is what he did in his trip to
Baghdad. So I think he is looking for points of success.

GROSS: You write in your memoir, `Of all the headaches inherited by the
Clinton administration, Saddam Hussein was the most persistent. We would
spend eight full years grappling with issues left unresolved at the end of the
'92 Persian Gulf War.' And you'd been in office less than three months when
authorities in Kuwait thwarted an assassination attempt against former
President George Bush during his visit to Kuwait to commemorate the second
anniversary of the Gulf War. Then the FBI told you that the Iraqi
intelligence agents were responsible. You were the one who had to call the
Iraqis to say that you were about to retaliate with cruise missiles. What is
the protocol...

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, it was...

GROSS: ...for calling--yeah, go ahead.

Ms. ALBRIGHT: I have to tell you, that was a genuinely strange meeting.
First of all, we did occasionally meet with the Iraqis to do what in
diplomatic parlance is called a demarche. In other words, tell them off. And
we would often go, a group of us, the permanent members of the Security
Council, in order to deliver a message. But that message was usually
delivered somewhere in the confines of the United Nations in the Secretariat
Building. What happened was that I was supposed to deliver this message on a
weekend, and the United Nations buildings were closed, and I was sure that the
ambassador, Ambassador Hamdoon at that time, was not going to come to the US
mission for me to deliver that kind of a message. So I had to go to his
place, and he lived in a house on the Upper East Side of New York, and a very
nice-looking town house.

And I got there, and I asked my security people to stay outside, and then I
walked in with one of my political officers just to be escorted into a
beautiful wood panel living room and told to sit down on a sofa right under a
huge portrait of Saddam Hussein. And then the ambassador came in, and he
thought that I had come--he didn't know why I'd come. And so he offered me
some tea. And then I said, you know, `I am here because your president tried
to assassinate my president, and we are currently involved in a bombing raid
on your capital in Baghdad. And of course, then there was no tea, but I also
wondered, you know, whether I'd really get out of there, which I obviously
did. And then the next day, went to the Security Council to offer all the
proof that we had which showed pictures of the various kinds of mechanisms
they'd used in this attempt to assassinate former President Bush.

GROSS: Who do you ask about what the protocol was for a visit like this? How
do you find out how to handle it?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, I mean, you use your common sense. But, you know, I
talked to Washington, and we decided whether it was appropriate for me to go
there. It's a little hard to deliver a message like that without actually
going there. So you kind of work out the protocol as you go, because this is
not a situation that is likely to repeat itself, so you try to use your
common sense. I never was invited back, nor would I have gone.

GROSS: Did you ask yourself what would have happened, what the repercussions
would have been had that assassination attempt on former President Bush
succeeded?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, I think that it would have been horrendous, and I think
that we would have clearly had to have declared, you know, military action at
that time. You can't have a president assassinated and have that kind of
thing go unrecognized. We actually spent most of our time trying to figure
out how to determine who actually tried the assassination attempt and put all
the facts together. And I was not in meetings where we speculated about what
to do had it succeeded, but I am sure that we would have retaliated very
strongly.

GROSS: My guest is former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Her new
autobiography is called "Madam Secretary." We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Madeleine Albright. She has a new memoir called "Madam
Secretary." She was secretary of State in the Clinton administration when the
US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in August, 1998, killing 224
people and injuring more than 5,400. Osama bin Laden was suspected of
masterminding and financing the bombings and was placed on the FBI's 10 most
wanted list.

After the al-Qaeda attacks on the two embassies, the Clinton administration
launched 650 bomber or missile sorties lasting about 70 hours. What do you
think that accomplished?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, I think that what was very important was--I have to say,
my worst day as secretary of State was when our embassies were bombed in
August, 1998. I think that was horrendous. It was, so to speak, my people,
people that worked for the State Department, diplomats and foreign service
nationals that were there. And it was horrendous, and it was something that
we had to take action against. We showed that we would not countenance this
kind of activity. We launched 75 cruise missiles against a camp of Osama bin
Laden's, and we came very close to getting him. We also launched a bombing
against a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan that was associated with Osama bin
Laden, had been owned by him and his operatives, that we had proved had been
involved in chemical weapons production. So we took what action we had, and
had we had more intelligence at that time that would have pinpointed where
Osama bin Laden was, we would have taken further military action.

And if you remember, one of our problems was that most people thought we'd
made it up. I mean, the whole pre-9/11 mood in the United States didn't
understand that one had to retaliate when there was action by terrorists
against Americans.

GROSS: Do you have any regrets on how the Clinton administration handled
al-Qaeda?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: No, I don't, because I can tell you from everything that I was
involved in, this was daily fare for us. We every day talked in some form
about what could be done. President Clinton put out some executive orders
that would have allowed for lethal force to be used against Osama bin Laden
and al-Qaeda, and developed the whole structure of fighting terrorism, getting
the US prepared for it. And, you know, the way that now people are tracking
the money of the terrorists, that was something that President Clinton put
into place. We increased the budgets of the CIA and the FBI. And what we did
was, as I say, to consume every bit of intelligence that we had. Also there
were what I call the dogs that didn't bark. We were able to foil a whole host
of different events that never made the news, because we, in fact, made sure
they didn't happen. So I think we did everything we could. We also talked a
lot about the need to keep track of it every day. And when we briefed the new
administration about it, I think they were a little surprised about how much
work it would take to follow and track terrorists and to deal with the issue
on a daily basis.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is former Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright. She's written a new memoir which is called "Madam
Secretary."

You write in your memoir, `I am often asked whether I was condescended to by
men as I traveled around the world to Arab countries and other places with
highly traditional cultures. I replied, "No," because when I arrived
somewhere, it was in a large plane with the US of A emblazoned on the side.
Foreign officials respect that. I had more problems with some of the men in
my own government.'

What are some of the problems you had with some of the men in your own
government?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, I think that especially when I started at the United
Nations and I was a member of what is called the so-called Principals
Committee which is a small group that includes the national security adviser,
the secretary of State, the secretary of Defense, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs and the director of the CIA and the ambassador to the UN, in our case,
because every administration can change the grouping of the principals. So I
was a part of this group and I had very strong opinions, especially about
Bosnia. And I really was condescended to by the national security adviser,
who has been a very good friend of mine and kind of made me feel as if my
opinions were overly strong or, to use a word that's often used against women,
`emotional' mainly because I felt very strongly about it.

Also, the thing that I found--and this is the hardest part, is that even men
that are very good friends and very nice people and have wives and daughters
don't often understand that some way--something that they say or the
dismissiveness of their tone makes you feel that your views are not welcome.
And I think for the most part, many of them don't know they're doing it. It
just gets pretty irritating.

GROSS: Tell me if you feel like you ever had to deal with this in your career
as somebody who is very high-powered and having to fly around the world
talking with heads of state. A lot of women, particularly women who are like
in their 40s and over, feel like they were brought up to be socialized to be
liked, to please and you know, to accommodate. And, sure, there's a certain
amount of pleasing and accommodation that's a part of diplomacy but there's
also the necessity of, you know, being tough, of saying no, of holding your
ground no matter what. Do you feel like in your career you ever had to
overcome that impulse to accommodate, to be nice, to be liked?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Oh, my goodness, yes. I can't tell you how many times. First
of all, I do think that most women want to be liked and they don't want to
have face-to-face personal arguments. It was even larger in my case because
as I write in the first part of my book, having come to the United States as a
foreigner and having constantly been moving around, I really wanted to be part
of a group and I did want to be liked. I still want to be liked. So I think
that it's something that's very much a part of me and a part of women.

Now the other thing that I learned, and I learned it very quickly when I got
to the United Nations, is that you can't do the kind of normal woman thing
which is to wait a while to get a sense of what a meeting is like. You know,
kind of get the tenor of the room, who says what. And I was--went to my first
meeting at the Security Council and kind of thought I'd take my time and all
of a sudden it dawned on me, I couldn't take my time. I was the United
States. If I didn't speak, then the United States would not--our views would
not be heard. And so I got over that very quickly.

The part that I think is very hard, and I think I probably speak for other
women in this, is men are capable of having strong policy disagreements or
arguments about a subject and then walk out of a room and go and play golf or
have a drink or something. And I think women do take it more personally. And
I don't think we like to have face-to-face confrontations, but I sure learned
that it was essential to state my views very clearly and not care whether I
was liked or not. And it took me a while to learn it. But I think others
will testify to the fact that I did learn it.

GROSS: What is it like to fly to a country like Saudi Arabia, to practice
diplomacy knowing in that country women have to be shrouded, women can't drive
and granted they understand you're a woman from different culture, but you're
still a woman?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, first of all, you really do think about the fact that
you're going into this kind of a country where sisters have a very different
lifestyle and I find it appalling, nevertheless, I had to carry on my duties
as secretary of State. And when I arrived, I decided that--I wore a hat when
I got off the plane, but I think you might have noticed I wore a hat pretty
much every time I got off the plane because my hair looked so awful after a
night on the plane. And then I did not wear any covering on my head when I
spoke to the ministers or the king or the crown prince. So I did not take any
particular action of that kind. And in my first meeting with what's known as
the Gulf Cooperation Council--those are the ministers from all the Gulf
states--we had a very serious conversation. And at the end of it, I said to
them, `You may notice that I am not clothed exactly the way my predecessors
were and I thank you very much for your great courtesy and kindness and next
time we'll talk about women's rights.'

And they were a little surprised, on the other hand one of the foreign
ministers said, `You know, I think we, in fact, might have a foreign minister
as a woman in the period of the length of our history,' because they're
relatively new countries, `that's shorter than it took the United States to
have a woman secretary of State.' That same foreign minister then invited me
to his home and introduced me to his daughters who had American educations and
I think were probably going to end up having quite a different life from some
of the other people. But there's no question that it's a touchy issue and
that it creates a certain level of difficulty but not when you are
representing the United States. I must say that I have the greatest respect
from those leaders, especially--well, all of them. But I had a very good
relationship with the crown price of Saudi Arabia--Crown Prince Abdullah.

GROSS: Madeleine Albright served as UN ambassador and secretary of State in
the Clinton administration. Her new autobiography is called "Madam
Secretary." She'll be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

GROSS: Five years ago today, President Clinton held his first press
conference addressing Kenneth Starr's report on the president's relationship
with Monica Lewinsky. As we continue our conversation with former Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright, she'll talk about working in the Clinton
administration as the story broke.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Madeleine Albright. She
served as UN ambassador and secretary of State in the Clinton administration.
She's written her autobiography. It's "Madam Secretary."

Your first position in the Clinton administration was as UN ambassador. Your
father was a diplomat. Your father had served as UN ambassador from
Czechoslovakia. Would you just give us a brief chronology of your father's
diplomatic positions?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Yes. Well, my father had wanted to be and was a young diplomat
in the new, free Czechoslovakia in the inter-war period. And he first was
press attache in Yugoslavia, and then when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia,
he went and moved to London with all of us when the government was in exile in
London, returned after the war and was made ambassador to Yugoslavia. He then
had an assignment representing Czechoslovakia on a new commission, which had
to do with the problem of Kashmir between India and Pakistan, a problem we
live with today. And it was through that particular commission, created by
the United Nations, that we came to the United States.

GROSS: You say that it wasn't until you became UN ambassador that you
understood how precarious your family status here had been. Your father had
applied for political asylum for himself and for the family after the
Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, and it wasn't until you became UN
ambassador that you realized how difficult it was for him to get that. What
were the problems?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, the real problem was that this commission and his
assignment to it had been created before the Communist coup in 1948 in
Czechoslovakia. He was persuaded to keep the assignment by the British and
American ambassadors. And, in fact, he had an agreement with the British
government that he would never report to his own government because, as Philip
Knoll Baker, who had been the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom at that
time, said to him, `Your country's just had a coup. They don't have any idea
about what is happening on some commission to do with India and Pakistan. But
if you resign, they will name a Communist, and it would be important to have
an objective person on that commission. So why don't you just report to us?'
which he did.

And then he came to the United States on a diplomatic passport. And the
question was whether he should continue, even nominally, representing what was
then a Communist government. So he wanted to resign as quickly as possible,
and the question was whether he could resign and get political asylum quickly
or ultimately become a stateless person. And so he did, in fact--in the end
he was fired, and he got political asylum. So these papers that I was given
showed how all these discussions went back and forth and how he wanted to
quit, and he was basically being told, `Hang in there. Wait a while because
you have no status whatsoever.' So that was the precarious aspect.

And then he got political asylum, and the next precarious aspect was to try to
figure out how to get a job in the United States. And it was thanks to the
Rockefeller Foundation that they found a job for him at the University of
Denver in what was, basically, their International Relations Department. And
he stayed there for the rest of his life.

GROSS: How do you think that, you know, being from Czechoslovakia influenced
your feelings about Bosnia and Kosovo and your stand that there should be
military intervention?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, first of all, everybody has their baggage, and mine
clearly was Munich, an agreement made in September, 1938, by the so-called
Western powers, excluding the United States, to give away a piece of
Czechoslovakia to Hitler--in other words, to appease aggression. And that was
kind of a signal moment in the history of Czechoslovakia and something that my
parents talked about a lot; that if you don't stand up to an aggressor, that,
in fact, the aggressor will only take more.

The other parts that affected my life was that I clearly understood the
horrors of not standing up to Hitler in other ways with the Holocaust and
understanding that you could not permit ethnic cleansing to go unanswered.
During the Second World War a lot of people legitimately could say that they
had no idea what was being done in terms of ethnic cleansing. We did know
what was going on in Bosnia because of, obviously, a whole revolution in
information. I also knew about Yugoslavia from the fact that my father had
been ambassador there. And while I had only been of the ages from eight to
11, I grew up learning about the problems of Yugoslavia. So those are all the
reasons why I thought it was important to stand up to Milosevic.

GROSS: Now you married Joe Albright, who was from a very wealthy family, the
family that owned the newspaper Newsday. Did you suddenly find yourself in a
much more privileged world than the world you had traveled in? I know your
father, who had been a diplomat, probably knew a lot of very important and
powerful people. But, still, was this a different world for you?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, it was a completely different world. But the truth is
that when my father had been ambassador, you know, we lived in an embassy and
had a chauffeur and a maid and a cook and a butler and various other
accoutrements of a privileged life. But then when we came to the United
States we were, as was known at the time, displaced persons and arrived in
Denver with nothing beyond this green Ford coupe that my parents had bought.
And so people leant us furniture, and we bought some junky furniture and lived
in university rental housing. So life was quite different physically, never
different intellectually or emotionally because my parents were very clear
that our life would go on in a respect way. But when I did marry into Joe's
family, it was quite different. It is a family that had many houses and
servants and a lot of privileges.

GROSS: You write in your book that your husband divorced you in 1983. He
told you that he'd fallen in love with a woman who was a reporter, who was
considerably younger and beautiful. And you say that you hope that he was
just being noble and brave because he was really diagnosed with a brain tumor
and was just trying to spare his family the pain of watching him suffer.
Well, unfortunately, fortunately, whatever, that wasn't the case, and he was
just leaving you for another woman. You say that when he did leave you it
left you with no confidence in your looks. Did you get over that? And as a
woman who's spent her life in the limelight in front of cameras but not in a
beauty pageant, in diplomatic positions, you know, in the position of
secretary of State, did looks matter to you? How important was that?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, you know, all I have to do is look in the mirror to know
I'm no raving beauty, but it does help if you feel good about yourself. And
so I think that if you go around moping or, you know, you decide one day
you're never going to wear makeup, it doesn't work. I do think that you have
to remember that you are representing your country. And it's very
interesting--I actually don't think I wrote this in the book, but before I
went up to the UN, I met with Jeane Kirkpatrick, one of my predecessors and
obviously a woman and a professor. And when Jeane Kirkpatrick--we probably
disagree a lot on policy, but our lives are not dissimilar because we both
taught at Georgetown.

And what she did was ask me to come in and talk to her; we had lunch. And she
was very funny. She said, `Madeleine, get rid of the professor clothes and
buy yourself some good clothes because you really do need to look good for
this job.' So Jeane and I agree on those particular issues, and it does
matter how you look.

GROSS: It matters why?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Because I think not so much, I mean, if you're beautiful or
not, but if you look confident and you look put together, I think it does play
a role in how you present your case. And I tell one story in the book where
we had had all-night negotiations on a resolution to do with Haiti, and I had
done real retail diplomacy, gone around and talked to every one of the
Security Council members. And I looked exhausted, and, you know, I'd rumbled
my hair, and all the makeup was off of my face, but we were going to have time
between what I was doing and the final vote. So I went back to my apartment,
started all over, put on a blue linen dress that I thought I looked good in,
came back, looked a lot better than all my colleagues, who were unshaven, and
I think it looked as though I had confidence. We won the vote, I don't think
because of my blue dress. But I think it does help to look good.

GROSS: My guest is former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Her new
autobiography is called "Madam Secretary." We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is former Secretary of State and
former UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright. She has a new memoir called "Madam
Secretary."

Shortly after becoming secretary of State, The Washington Post reporter
Michael Dobbs came to you with information that your family was actually
Jewish, not Catholic, and that three of your grandparents were victims of the
Holocaust as well as at least one of your cousins. You write about this a
little bit in your book and about how people couldn't believe you didn't know
and that they made it seem like you had covered it up. You say, `I was made
to feel as if I were a liar and that my father was portrayed as a heartless
fraud.' You never knew about it till Michael Dobbs told you?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, no, I didn't. I mean, what happened was, I think I
explain in the first part of the book, that my parents talked a great deal
about their lives in pre-World War II Czechoslovakia and about, generally,
history and that when we returned after the war--I was eight years old--and
that my grandparents were not alive. And I was told that they died of old
age. And I had no--this is a very tragic part of everything, I have to say.
I mean, I didn't know any grandparents, so never were real people for me. So
I didn't kind of absorb that at all.

But I grew up as a practicing Catholic, actually a pretty good one, and there
were no holes in the story of my life. But what happened when I started being
in the news, I would get letters from people saying that they knew something
about my family. And they would write facts that didn't make sense. I mean,
they would have the wrong name of my mother or have them coming from the wrong
town, or somebody would say they'd gone to high school with my father at a
time when he would have been a child. And, first of all, I got a ton of mail
just generally, just so you know. But among those letters occasionally it
would say something like, you know, `You're a Jew bitch,' which I kind
of--and, `which is why you feel the way you do about the Serbs.' I chose to
discount letters like that.

But there were hints of things, but it didn't all come together until actually
in December in 1996, as I was being named to be secretary of State. I got a
letter that seemed to have all the facts together. And so when I was being
vetted by the White House lawyers, I told them that I had reason to suspect
that my family was of Jewish background. And they basically found that very
uninteresting. I've discussed with my children about all of this, and being
of Jewish background I thought really added to the already very rich tapestry
of my life. I thought it was fascinating, and I really wanted to look into it
more.

And then Michael Dobbs came up--Michael Dobbs actually called me during the
transition period and said he was going to do a profile of me. And I gave him
a bunch of addresses of people in Yugoslavia and in Czechoslovakia, and then
he's the one who came up with the fact that three of my grandparents had died
in concentration camps, which is quite different from finding out that you're
of Jewish background. And it was the horror of finding out about the horrible
death of my grandparents that truly was the great tragedy. And in addition to
the divorce chapter, this was the hardest chapter to write. And I tried to
really lay it out and try to explain why it was so difficult and how hurtful
it was to have my father, whom I adored, be accused of trying to hide the
facts when, from everything that I knew about my parents, all they ever did
was try to figure out ways to protect us.

GROSS: What do you think their motivation was not only in--I mean, I guess
the motivation for changing their religion is fairly obvious: to survive
during the Nazi era. But what do you think their motivation was to never tell
you.

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, again, it's hard to try to figure out motivation, but I
think the following thing again: that you have to put yourself back into the
period. They had gone through having to leave their country twice. They came
to the United States in 1948-'49. And then in the '50s when we were getting
our citizenship, which took longer, frankly, because of that complicated story
I told you before about the fact that for a period of time my father actually
nominally represented a Communist government while he never reported to
them--so that was confusing. And it was the period of McCarthyism. And I
think they just thought that it was safer not to tell.

By the way, I have the highest respect for Tarry Truman and think he's one of
the great American presidents. But if you read what has recently been
revealed about what he said about Jews, then I think one can understand why my
parents coming to a new country from a country where Jews have been
exterminated might have thought that it was wiser not to tell us. Why they
didn't tell me later, it's hard for me to speculate about, except that I left
home right out of high school, basically got married three days after college,
and there must have just not been a good time. But I don't know the answer.

GROSS: Did it change your stature in terms of negotiations when it was
disclosed that you were of Jewish descent? What I'm thinking is you write
that some Arab papers said that since you were Jewish, this would make Tel
Aviv rather than Washington the capital of American foreign policy. Were
there places where you felt that things actually got more difficult with the
people you were negotiating with?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: I never had that experience. I think that there were those
people who thought I would, but to the best of my knowledge, I did not have
that kind of experience. Nobody ever said, `You don't understand this
because, you know, your family was Jewish.' I never had that. I found those
kinds of initial statements, obviously, outrageous and insulting. It hadn't
hurt Henry Kissinger. So I think that I was quite appalled at that.

GROSS: If you don't mind my asking, I'm wondering if you practice any
religion now. I know you grew up Roman Catholic. At your husband's request,
when you got married you joined the Episcopal Church and then found out later
in life that your family's really of Jewish descent. So where are you now in
terms of faith?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, I have written actually that it's confusing. I mean,
it's a little hard to be 66 years old and be unclear about something like
this. I was raised a Christian, and I don't see myself not being a Christian.
I find it very difficult to assimilate all of it, and I don't know. I mean, I
go to an Episcopalian church when I go, but many of my beliefs are very
Catholic because I grew up a Catholic. And I respect Judaism, but I don't see
myself practicing it. So, you know, I have to honestly admit that it's sad in
many ways to be this old and to be unclear about something that is so basic.

GROSS: My guest is former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Her new
autobiography is called "Madam Secretary." We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

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GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Secretary Madeleine Albright,
former UN ambassador, former secretary of State. She has a new memoir called
"Madam Secretary."

Let's talk for a moment about the Middle East. The Clinton administration
worked so hard for peace in the Middle East, and things are just falling apart
now. Is there anything, in retrospect, you wish you had done that you didn't
do?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: No, actually. I mean, we worked so hard on this. I think the
most amazing part is how completely dedicated President Clinton was to this
issue, how he knew every detail of what was going on, how much time he spent
on it and how much time he wanted all of us to spend on it. We tried many,
many different kinds of venues. I traveled to the Middle East very
frequently, and I met with either whoever the Israeli prime minister was and
Chairman Arafat scores and scores of times. We were deeply involved in it.
We also had a very highly trained and educated Middle East peace team headed
by Ambassador Dennis Ross, who had come to us from the previous Bush
administration because we really did believe in continuity of foreign policy.

And Dennis was the kind of a person who--if Arafat, for instance, would say,
`Well, I didn't agree to that,' he would say, `Yes, you did. It was August
4th. We were sitting in your office. We were drinking tea, and it was hot.'
I mean, so that he would call somebody on everything. That team was
dismantled, which I consider a great tragedy. And the things that we had been
working on at the end were not followed through.

I think that, obviously, there are tactical things that we might have done
differently, especially before we went to Camp David. It might have been
useful to try to work more closely with some of the moderate Arab regimes in
order to get them to push Arafat. But as I explain in the book, that was a
little difficult because we didn't have all the bottom lines that Prime
Minister Barak was putting forward. So, you know, in retrospect, that is the
kind of thing. But I think we tried everything we possibly could and were
very dedicated to the issue, from President Clinton on down.

GROSS: You do write that you think you should have pushed Israel harder to
halt the expansion of settlements.

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, we all the time talked about the fact that settlements--I
said on a regular basis that they created problems for the negotiation. They
were obstacles--we used different words about them--and felt that they were a
problem. I think the thing we should have done, I guess just generally, is
tried to hold both sides much more accountable to the specific things they
were supposed to do. We thought we were doing it, but I think, you know, just
as in now, in the road map, there is not holding both sides accountable to the
tasks that they have to perform. But we tried very hard. Obviously there are
things we could have done differently but not for lack of trying.

GROSS: Just one question about the Monica Lewinsky affair. Was it difficult
for you, you know, to keep on message and to go about your business during the
whole Monica Lewinsky era and the impeachment crisis? Was it hard to stay
focused?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, first of all, I have said this and I said it at the time:
that, basically, in terms of foreign policy, it didn't affect us, me. I was
able to do my job. President Clinton was completely focused on the issues
that I dealt with. For instance, as you read the book, you can see that we
were at Wye River doing the talks with the Israelis and the Palestinians on
October '98, which was very much a period where Monica issues were going on.
And yet the president was completely focused on what we were doing. I had
every opportunity to see him whenever I wanted. So it did not affect me.

I think the hard part was that if I was on a show at that time or with a
reporter, that would be something that the reporter would want to have answers
to, and it would detract from the five minutes that I had on whatever TV show
there was.

GROSS: Were you angry at the president for misleading you?

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Sure, I was and very disappoint. And I think that what he did
was stupid. But I do think that in issues of policy, foreign policy, and the
respect that the world had for the United States during President Clinton's
time I think is something that needs to be remember. I was very proud to
serve President Clinton. I think he's one of the great presidents, and that
is, for me, what is most important. I'm not the one that was betrayed. And I
was angry, and I think what he did was dumb, but I think he's a great
president.

GROSS: Finally, since you've spent so much of your career traveling around
the world, any tips for jet lag? I don't know how you do it, how you can
carry on such high-level negotiations in a constant state of jet lag. But...

Ms. ALBRIGHT: Well, you know, actually there's something about it. First of
all, there is an advantage, you know, to being my age: You need to sleep
less. And then I have to admit that I would sleep on command. I'd get on the
plane, let's say, at 4:00 in Washington and know that I had to speak and be at
a meeting which would theoretically be in the middle of the night in, you
know, Germany or something, and I'd take sleeping pills. I could sleep on
command. But sometimes you move around so fast that jet lag can't catch up
with you.

GROSS: Madeleine Albright served as UN ambassador and secretary of State in
the Clinton administration. Her new autobiography is called "Madam
Secretary."

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(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
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