Return to Transcripts main page

Live From...

Interview With Madeleine Albright

Aired September 24, 2003 - 15:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently published her autobiography. "Madam Secretary: A Memoir" covers Albright's remarkable climb to her post as America's top diplomat during the Clinton presidency.
I recently spoke with Madeleine Albright about her book and her career. And I started by asking her that, given the attacks of September 2001, does she think the Clinton administration did enough in the war on terrorism?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: We did everything that it was possible to do with the intelligence that we had.

And I think that we paid a great deal of attention to terrorism. It was something that was on President Clinton's mind all the time. We went after Osama bin Laden after the embassies had been blown up in August '98. We expanded the budget of the CIA and the FBI, set up the mechanism for tracking the money of the terrorists, and basically consumed all the intelligence we had.

Believe me, we all search our minds about whether something could have been done about 9/11. But I think we did everything we could. And then, I call it the dogs that didn't bark. We foiled an awful lot of incidents, the most famous being the attempt to blow up the airport in Los Angeles over the millennium.

WOODRUFF: I want to also ask you about North Korea. You made a pretty dramatic trip to North Korea at the very end of the Clinton administration. You revealed that there was an invitation to Kim Jong Il, the leader, to come to the United States, something he never took the United States up on.

ALBRIGHT: Right.

WOODRUFF: But what I'm curious about is, do you think that, had Al Gore been elected, had essentially Clinton policies been continued, that we would currently be in this tense standoff with North Korea that the U.S. has been in?

ALBRIGHT: Well, I believe that we would be in quite a different situation.

We were in the middle of negotiating with Kim Jong Il. Now, he is not crazy. He is not uninformed. He's isolated. And he makes his decisions. And his timing is very weird. And he plays brinkmanship. But we were in the middle of negotiations. We had every indication during the transition that the cards that we had left on the table would be picked up. And I think we would be in a different position.

It doesn't mean that the North Koreans might not cheat. And that is something of great concern. But setting up a regime that would have hooked them in and had a way of calling them on the cheating I think would have been very important. And we would have, I believe, kept the nuclear programs frozen, which is what happened as a result of the agreed framework.

WOODRUFF: You've had a remarkable career. You write about it in this memoir.

The personal side, you write in a number of places in the book about what it was like being the first woman secretary of state. And what I was struck by was, you said that it wasn't the men who you thought might have had a hard time with it, but another group of men. Who were the men who had the hardest time with it, do you think?

ALBRIGHT: Well, the real question, when my name was mentioned to be secretary of state, people would say, well, you can't deal with traditional society, especially Arab men. And I said, I didn't think I'd have a problem. In the end, I didn't.

Of course, I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. But I did have more trouble with the men in our own government, not because they're not my friends or kind. It's just that they had seen me in so many different roles. I had been a Hill staffer. I had been a friend of their wives'. I had been the carpool mother. I had been a lower-level person in the White House in the Carter administration. And all of a sudden, I had the No. 1 job. And I think some of them did find it hard to take.

WOODRUFF: Like so many women with so many roles.

Do you think that, post-9/11, Madeleine Albright, it would be harder, different in any way, for a woman to be in the top foreign policy, diplomacy position?

ALBRIGHT: No, I don't think so.

And while I disagree with some of the points that Condoleezza Rice makes, I think the fact that there's a woman national security adviser now is a good follow-up. And I do think that -- I hope I showed that women can be tough. I let a lot of dictators know what I thought. I was very much in favor of bombing in Kosovo. And I think that women know how to use force, as well as concentrate an awful lot on diplomacy. So I hope that I'm not a historical accident.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Madeline Albright. The book is "Madam Secretary."

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired September 24, 2003 - 15:20   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently published her autobiography. "Madam Secretary: A Memoir" covers Albright's remarkable climb to her post as America's top diplomat during the Clinton presidency.
I recently spoke with Madeleine Albright about her book and her career. And I started by asking her that, given the attacks of September 2001, does she think the Clinton administration did enough in the war on terrorism?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: We did everything that it was possible to do with the intelligence that we had.

And I think that we paid a great deal of attention to terrorism. It was something that was on President Clinton's mind all the time. We went after Osama bin Laden after the embassies had been blown up in August '98. We expanded the budget of the CIA and the FBI, set up the mechanism for tracking the money of the terrorists, and basically consumed all the intelligence we had.

Believe me, we all search our minds about whether something could have been done about 9/11. But I think we did everything we could. And then, I call it the dogs that didn't bark. We foiled an awful lot of incidents, the most famous being the attempt to blow up the airport in Los Angeles over the millennium.

WOODRUFF: I want to also ask you about North Korea. You made a pretty dramatic trip to North Korea at the very end of the Clinton administration. You revealed that there was an invitation to Kim Jong Il, the leader, to come to the United States, something he never took the United States up on.

ALBRIGHT: Right.

WOODRUFF: But what I'm curious about is, do you think that, had Al Gore been elected, had essentially Clinton policies been continued, that we would currently be in this tense standoff with North Korea that the U.S. has been in?

ALBRIGHT: Well, I believe that we would be in quite a different situation.

We were in the middle of negotiating with Kim Jong Il. Now, he is not crazy. He is not uninformed. He's isolated. And he makes his decisions. And his timing is very weird. And he plays brinkmanship. But we were in the middle of negotiations. We had every indication during the transition that the cards that we had left on the table would be picked up. And I think we would be in a different position.

It doesn't mean that the North Koreans might not cheat. And that is something of great concern. But setting up a regime that would have hooked them in and had a way of calling them on the cheating I think would have been very important. And we would have, I believe, kept the nuclear programs frozen, which is what happened as a result of the agreed framework.

WOODRUFF: You've had a remarkable career. You write about it in this memoir.

The personal side, you write in a number of places in the book about what it was like being the first woman secretary of state. And what I was struck by was, you said that it wasn't the men who you thought might have had a hard time with it, but another group of men. Who were the men who had the hardest time with it, do you think?

ALBRIGHT: Well, the real question, when my name was mentioned to be secretary of state, people would say, well, you can't deal with traditional society, especially Arab men. And I said, I didn't think I'd have a problem. In the end, I didn't.

Of course, I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. But I did have more trouble with the men in our own government, not because they're not my friends or kind. It's just that they had seen me in so many different roles. I had been a Hill staffer. I had been a friend of their wives'. I had been the carpool mother. I had been a lower-level person in the White House in the Carter administration. And all of a sudden, I had the No. 1 job. And I think some of them did find it hard to take.

WOODRUFF: Like so many women with so many roles.

Do you think that, post-9/11, Madeleine Albright, it would be harder, different in any way, for a woman to be in the top foreign policy, diplomacy position?

ALBRIGHT: No, I don't think so.

And while I disagree with some of the points that Condoleezza Rice makes, I think the fact that there's a woman national security adviser now is a good follow-up. And I do think that -- I hope I showed that women can be tough. I let a lot of dictators know what I thought. I was very much in favor of bombing in Kosovo. And I think that women know how to use force, as well as concentrate an awful lot on diplomacy. So I hope that I'm not a historical accident.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Madeline Albright. The book is "Madam Secretary."

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com