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Richard Holbrooke, a brilliant and feisty U.S.
diplomat who wrote part of the Pentagon Papers, was the architect
of the 1995 Bosnia peace plan and served as President Barack
Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, died Monday, the
State Department said. He was 69.


      Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called him one of America's
"fiercest champions and most dedicated public servants."


      "Richard Holbrooke served the country he loved for nearly half
a century, representing the United States in far-flung war zones
and high-level peace talks, always with distinctive brilliance and
unmatched determination," Clinton said in a statement. "He was
one of a kind - a true statesman - and that makes his passing all
the more painful."


      Holbrooke, whose forceful style earned him nicknames such as
"The Bulldozer" and "Raging Bull," was admitted to the hospital
on Friday after becoming ill at the State Department. The former
U.S. ambassador to the U.N. had surgery Saturday to repair a tear
in his aorta, the body's principal artery.


      Earlier Monday, Obama praised Holbrooke for making America
safer.


      "He is simply one of the giants of American foreign policy,"
Obama said during a holiday reception at the State Department.
Obama met briefly with Holbrooke's family before his remarks.


      Holbrooke served under every Democratic president from John F.
Kennedy to Obama in a lengthy career that began with a foreign
service posting in Vietnam in 1962 after graduating from Brown
University, and included time as a member of the U.S. delegation to
the Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam.


      His sizable ego, tenacity and willingness to push hard for
diplomatic results won him both admiration and animosity.


      "If Richard calls you and asks you for something, just say
yes," former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said. "If
you say no, you'll eventually get to yes, but the journey will be
very painful."


      He learned to become extremely informed about whatever country
he was in, push for an exit strategy and look for ways to get those
who live in a country to take increasing responsibility for their
own security.


      "He's a bulldog for the globe," Tim Wirth, president of the
United Nations Foundation, once said.


      The bearish Holbrooke said he has no qualms about "negotiating
with people who do immoral things."


      "If you can prevent the deaths of people still alive, you're
not doing a disservice to those already killed by trying to do
so," he said in 1999.


      Born in New York City on April 24, 1941, Richard Charles Albert
Holbrooke had an interest in public service from his early years.
He was good friends in high school with a son of Dean Rusk and he
grew close to the family of the man who would become a secretary of
state for presidents Kennedy and Johnson.


      Holbrooke was a young provincial representative for the U.S.
Agency for International Development in South Vietnam and then an
aide to two U.S. ambassadors in Saigon. At the Johnson White House,
he wrote one volume of the Pentagon Papers, an internal government
study of U.S. involvement in Vietnam that was completed in 1967.


      The study, leaked in 1971 by a former Defense Department aide,
had many damaging revelations, including a memo that stated the
reason for fighting in Vietnam was based far more on preserving
U.S. prestige than preventing communism or helping the Vietnamese.


      After stints in and out of government - including as Peace Corps
director in Morocco, editing positions at Foreign Policy and
Newsweek magazines and adviser to Jimmy Carter's presidential
campaign - Holbrooke became assistant secretary of state for Asian
affairs from 1977-81. He then shifted back to private life - and
the financial world, at Lehman Brothers.


      A lifelong Democrat, he returned to public service when Bill
Clinton took the White House in 1993. Holbrooke was U.S. ambassador
to Germany from 1993 to 1994 and then assistant secretary of state
for European affairs.


      One of his signature achievements was brokering the Dayton Peace
Accords that ended the war in Bosnia. He detailed the experience of
negotiating the deal at an Air Force base near the Ohio city in his
1998 memoir, "To End a War."


      James Dobbins, former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan who worked
closely with Holbrooke early in their careers, called him a
brilliant diplomat and said his success at the Dayton peace talks
"was the turning point in the Clinton administration's foreign
policy."


      Holbrooke's efforts surrounding Dayton would later lead to
controversy when wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic told
a war crimes tribunal in 2009 that Holbrooke had promised him
immunity in return for leaving politics. Holbrooke denied the
claim.


      Holbrooke left the State Department in 1996 to take a Wall
Street job with Credit Suisse First Boston, but was never far from
the international diplomatic fray, serving as a private citizen as
a special envoy to Cyprus and then the Balkans.


      In 1998, he negotiated an agreement with Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw Yugoslav forces from Kosovo where
they were accused of conducting an ethnic cleansing campaign and
allow international observers into the province.


      "I make no apologies for negotiating with Milosevic and even
worse people, provided one doesn't lose one's point of view," he
said later.


      When the deal fell apart, Holbrooke went to Belgrade to deliver
the final ultimatum to Milosevic to leave Kosovo or face NATO
airstrikes, which ultimately rained down on the capital.


      "This isn't fun," he said of his Kosovo experience. "This
isn't bridge or tennis. This is tough slogging."


      Holbrooke returned to public service in 1999, when he became
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after a lengthy confirmation
battle, stalled at first by ethics investigations into his business
dealings and then unrelated Republican objections.


      At the U.N., Holbrooke tried to broker peace in wartorn African
nations. He led efforts to help refugees and fight AIDS in Africa.
He also confronted U.N. anger over unpaid U.S. dues to the world
body and persuaded 188 countries to overhaul the United Nations'
financing and reduce U.S. payments.


      "What's the point of being in the government if you don't try
to make things better, which means trying to change things,"
Holbrooke told The Associated Press in a 2001 interview, reflecting
on his time at the United Nations.


      Holbrooke, with his long-standing ties to Bill Clinton and
Hillary Rodham Clinton, was a strong supporter of her 2008 bid for
the White House. He had been considered a favorite to become
secretary of state if she had won. When she dropped out, he began
reaching out to the campaign of Obama.


      Reflecting on his role as Obama's special envoy, Holbrooke wrote
in The Washington Post in March 2008 that "the conflict in
Afghanistan will be far more costly and much, much longer than
Americans realize. This war, already in its seventh year, will
eventually become the longest in American history, surpassing even
Vietnam."


      Holbrooke's relationship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai was
strained after their heated meeting in 2009 over the fraud-tainted
Afghan presidential election. Karzai brushed it off, saying he had
"no problem at all with Mr. Holbrooke." But the U.S. military
commanders in Afghanistan, not Holbrooke, were the ones who ended
up developed the closest relations with the mercurial Afghan
leader. The State Department said Sunday that Karzai and Pakistani
President Asif Ali Zardari were among those calling to wish
Holbrooke well.


      With his decades of service and long list of accomplishments in
U.S. diplomacy, Holbrooke missed out on a tour as America's top
diplomat, a job he was known to covet. As U.N. ambassador, he was a
member of the Clinton Cabinet but his sometimes brash and combative
style contrasted with that of then-Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright.


      At a ceremony to mark the fifth anniversary of the Dayton Peace
Accords, Holbrooke bristled when was asked by a reporter if his
views on the future of Kosovo - that it would eventually become
independent - matched those of his boss.


      "You mean, Madeleine?" he replied with a derisive snort,
referring to Albright, who with others in the administration were
publicly neutral on the question.


      Holbrooke rejected direct comparisons between Afghanistan and
Vietnam, but acknowledged similarities and repeatedly pressed the
administration to do more to win the hearts and minds of both the
Afghan and Pakistani people.


      At the State Department ceremony in January 2009 when he was
introduced as the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan,
Holbrooke spotted an old friend in the audience, John Negroponte,
his one-time roommate in Saigon (the former South Vietnamese
capital now called Ho Chi Minh City) who later was the first
director of national intelligence and a former U.S. ambassador to
Iraq.


      "We remember those days well, and I hope we will produce a
better outcome this time," Holbrooke said.


      A torn aorta is a rip in the inner wall of the body's largest
artery, allowing blood to enter the vessel wall and weaken it. The
result is serious internal bleeding, a loss of normal blood flow
and possible complications in organs affected by the resulting lack
of blood, according to medical experts. Without surgery it
generally leads to rapid death.


      "True to form, Richard was a fighter to the end," said
Clinton. "His doctors marveled at his strength and his willpower,
but to his friends, that was just Richard being Richard."


      Holbrooke is survived by his wife, author Kati Marton, and two
sons from an earlier marriage, David Holbrooke and Anthony
Holbrooke.
      
      

Gallery

Politics and Government News

Richard Holbrooke, a brilliant and feisty U.S.
diplomat who wrote part of the Pentagon Papers, was the architect
of the 1995 Bosnia peace plan and served as President Barack
Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, died Monday, the
State Department said. He was 69.


US diplomat Richard Holbrooke dies

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