World leaders and U.S. political and foreign policy elite paid their respects Wednesday to the late Madeleine Albright, the child refugee from war-torn Europe who rose to become America’s first female secretary of state.
What You Need To Know
- World leaders and Washington's political and foreign policy elite paid their respects Wednesday to Madeleine Albright, who was America's first female secretary of stat
- Some 1,400 mourners gathered Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral, led by President Joe Biden and predecessors Barack Obama and Bill Clinton
- Biden delivered a tribute to Albright and said her name is synonymous with the idea that America is "a force for good in the world"
- Albright died of cancer last month at age 84
Led by President Joe Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, the man who picked Albright to be his top diplomat and the highest-ranking woman ever in the U.S. government at that time, some 1,400 mourners gathered to celebrate her life and accomplishments at Washington National Cathedral.
Albright died of cancer last month at age 84, prompting an outpouring of condolences from around the world that also hailed her support for democracy and human rights. Besides the current and former presidents, the service was attended by at least three of her successors as secretary of state along with other current and former Cabinet members, foreign diplomats, lawmakers and an array of others who knew her.
Biden, who delivered a tribute to Albright, said there was no greater honor to her than serving “this great experiment of freedom known as the United States of America.”
“In the 20th and 21st century, freedom had no greater champion than Madeleine Korbel Albright,” Biden said. “ ... Today we honor a truly proud American who made all of us prouder to be Americans.”
Biden said he learned of Albright’s death while flying to Europe to meet with NATO allies about the war in Ukraine.
“It was not lost on me that Madeleine was a big part of the reason NATO was still strong and galvanized as it is today,” he said.
The president added that when he mentioned Albright’s name during a speech a few days later in Warsaw, Poland, there was a “deafening cheer” from the crowd.
“They all stopped everything, started to cheer,” he said. “It was spontaneous. It was real, for her name is still synonymous with America as a force for good in the world.”
Clinton said he last spoke with Albright two weeks before her death. When he asked how she was doing, she said she had a “little problem,” “a perfectly good doctor,” and “whatever happens will be the best outcome I can get.”
Then, he said, Albright added: “Let's don't waste any time on that. The only thing that really matters is what kind of world we're going to leave to our grandchildren. I'll never forget that conversation as long as I live. It was so perfectly Madeleine.
She was concerned about threats to democracy, Clinton said.
"We love you Madeleine," he concluded. "We miss you. But I pray to God, we never stop hearing you. Just sit on our shoulder and nag us to death so we do the right thing. God bless you."
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Bill’s wife, also delivered a tribute at the service, remembering Albright as not only a tough neogiator and fearless diplomat, but a trailblazer who lifted other women up.
"When dictators dragged their feet or ambassadors filibustered Madeleine never hesitated to speak up," she said. "And just in case they didn't get the message, she would put on a snail pin to signal her impatience. A dozen times a day she would ask her team, what's next? Turning her boundless energy and intellect to yet another crucial, global challenge. She was irrepressible, wickedly funny, very stylish, and always ready for a laugh."
Clinton also remembered Albright's love of dance, saying she taught "foreign minister of Botswana the 'macarena' at a U.N. Security Council meeting," remembering she "snuck off early from an official event to do the tango in Buenos Aires" and claiming "she was even invited to compete on 'Dancing with the Stars' after she tore up the dance floor at [Chelsea Clinton's] wedding – in the arms, I would add of a much younger, very handsome man."
"She didn't just help other women, she spent her entire life counseling and cajoling, inspiring and lifting up so many of us who are here today," Clinton said. "So, the angels better be wearing their best pins and putting on their dancing shoes. Because if as Madeleine believed there's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women, they haven't seen anyone like her yet."
The current secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and former secretaries Condoleezza Rice and John Kerry were also slated to attend.
Other top current officials present included Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, CIA Director Bill Burns, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Mark Milley and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
The members of the VIP audience were masked, as Albright's family had requested.
Foreign dignitaries invited to the funeral included the presidents of Georgia and Kosovo and senior officials from Colombia, Bosnia and the Czech Republic.
Albright was born in what was then Czechoslovakia, but her family fled twice, first from the Nazis and then from Soviet rule. They ended up in the United States, where she studied at Wellesley College and rose through the ranks of Democratic Party foreign policy circles to become ambassador to the United Nations. Bill Clinton selected her as secretary of state in 1996 for his second term.
Hillary Clinton admitted in her speech that she urged Bill Clinton into nominating Albright as the nation’s top diplomat.
“Unlike much that’s said, this story is true,” Hillary Clinton said. “And I was thrilled when he agreed."
Although never in line for the presidency because of her foreign birth, Albright was near universally admired for breaking a glass ceiling, even by her political detractors.
“Madeleine understood her story was America's story,” Biden said. “She loved to speak about America as the indispensable nation. To her, the phrase was never a statement of arrogance. Was about gratitude for all this country made possible for her. Was a testament to her belief in the endless possibilities that only America could help unlock around the world.”
Biden said Albright also “made sure that young women knew they belonged at every single table having to do with national security.”
As a Czech refugee who saw the horrors of both Nazi Germany and the Iron Curtain, she was not a dove. She played a leading role in pressing for the Clinton administration to get involved militarily in the conflict in Kosovo. “My mindset is Munich,” she said frequently, referring to the German city where the Western allies abandoned her homeland to the Nazis.
As secretary of state, Albright played a key role in persuading Clinton to go to war against the Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic over his treatment of Kosovar Albanians in 1999. As U.N. ambassador, she advocated a tough U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the case of Milosevic’s treatment of Bosnia. NATO’s intervention in Kosovo was eventually dubbed “Madeleine’s War.”
She also took a hard line on Cuba, famously saying at the United Nations that the 1996 Cuban shootdown of a civilian plane was not “cojones” but rather “cowardice.”
Bill Clinton referenced the quote in his speech.
“She was being criticized,” he said. “Some people said, ‘It’s so undiplomatic, it’s unladylike.’ … And I called her and I said, ‘I'm just jealous. It's the best line delivered by anybody in this administration since I've been here.’”
In 2012, Obama awarded Albright the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, saying her life was an inspiration to all Americans.
Born Marie Jana Korbel in Prague on May 15, 1937, she was the daughter of a diplomat, Joseph Korbel. The family was Jewish and converted to Roman Catholicism when she was 5. Three of her Jewish grandparents died in concentration camps.
“Somehow in the middle of all that, we gave a distinguished Czech diplomat and his family a chance to come to America as refugees, and their daughter wound up becoming ambassador to the U.N. and secretary of state and doing lots of other good things,” Bill Clinton said.
Albright was an internationalist whose point of view was shaped in part by her background. Her family fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 as the Nazis took over their country, and she spent the war years in London.
After the war, as the Soviet Union took over vast chunks of Eastern Europe, her father brought the family to the United States. They settled in Denver, where her father taught at the University of Denver. One of Korbel’s best students was Rice, who would later succeed his daughter as secretary of state.
Albright graduated from Wellesley College in 1959. She worked as a journalist and later studied international relations at Columbia University, where she earned a master’s degree in 1968 and a Ph.D. in 1976. She then entered politics and what was at the time the male-dominated world of foreign policy professionals.