pus hasly which was a semiprecious stone from afghanistan used to make a brilliant blue, and that blue often was used on the garb of the virgin mary to symbolize her importance. ..

>> sometimes they would be more than one of them, working on the book, an apprentice could do the last and the master would do the most important miniature.

depending on the size of the book, over 100 animal skins could be used for the pages alone. so the process was very intensive and could take quite a long time. >> interviews from beaumont, texas, are being featured all weekend long on booktv. for more information visit c-span.org/localcontent. >> eleven for of american diplomat richard holbrooke, who passed away in december 2010. this is about an hour. >> good evening everybody. thank you so much for being here tonight. i am one of the owners of politics and prose, and on behalf of my husband and co-owner, brad, who's over there, and our incredible step for booksellers, we welcome all of you to this evenings event

which by the way for those of you who are not regular sears, is about 475 author events that we do every year. it is part of our mission not only to bring great books to our community but also to promote civic discourse, which is becoming it seems in greater scarcity in our society. so we'd love to have these events where you can listen to offers and also ask them questions. so thank you for joining us. there are a couple of quick housekeeping things before we get started. our guests will speak for about half an hour, 20 months or half an hour. after that they'll be happy to take questions. if you have a question from if you could go to the microphone here, please do so. please state your name at the outset. we just ask you to do that as security for people are answering a question know who you are. and then at the end of the program, if you could fool the purchase and put into the side of the room that would be very helpful to our staff.

and it will be a line forming here from this site going in this direction or a book signing at the end. so with that, the last thing i ask is if you just please turn off your cell phones before we get started, that would be greatly appreciated. it is really delightful and a great pleasure for me and brad and for the store to have strobe talbott and kati marton here to talk about the unquiet american, richard holbrooke in the world. there really are no two people better suited to talk about this extraordinary larger than life force of nature man, richard holbrooke. and i'm so glad that you are here to talk about him and to talk about the book. by the way, neither of them are strangers to the store. they're both about their own regions are in the past but i think stroke as multiple, multiple, multiple. i was joking you might hold the record. and, of course, richard holbrooke was here for his book at the end, that he wrote after

the piece called the end of were. there are also people who may pop in a simple you're not going to speak tonight but who i would like to at least mention, and if they do show up we will introduce them. the two editors of the book, derek chollet and samantha power. samantha power as many of you know has been one of president obama's chief foreign policy adviser. she's a senior director of the national security council on multilateral affairs and human rights, and she also has a very touching essay in this book about being mentors by richard holbrooke. erika was a colleague of mine, and i hope he does come. is one of my favorite people. is a wonderful person to work but. he and i had offices at the opposite end of a very short hallway at the office of policy planning at the state department for the first couple years of the obama administration. and i believe it was derek who insisted it was time for me to finally turn over a draft, a very unpolished draft i might add, of a speech that i'd written for secretary clinton before a nato defense dealing

with afghanistan and pakistan. i was a very experienced speechwriter, had worked in the clinton administration for many years and i knew richard. i've been in meetings with him and i'd worked with him kind of on the fringes of some of what he had done but i've never actually had to deliver a written work to him for judgment. so knowing that he was widely referred to as the bulldozer, i approach this task with a fair amount of trepidation, and the kind of steel myself and gave him the draft. and, of course, i was prepared for the antics and fireworks and all my god, this is the worst thing i've ever written. but what i quickly discovered was that there was no better person in the world to read a speech. and i really started realizing richard holbrooke things in speeches. and he was my favorite person to read the speech there after and those very, very fortunate to be able to work with him, not just on that particular speech but on several subsequent ones while i was in the state department yo.

derek and samantha, with a lot of input and i think this is really a collaborative conception of this book between them. and it came to be because after richard passed away last december, there was this outpouring about him, and everybody was trading stories. as i said he was a force of nature so there are many stories to go around, and they conceived of putting together a collection of essays written by people who knew them well. there are 12 essays in the book, as well some of his writings for many decades. those are fascinating to read. when you go back and see what richard holbrooke was thinking at the time about vietnam, for example, and subsequent foreign policy things, it's quite extraordinary to look at in retrospect, and really, really well worth reading. let me move on to the people you really want to hear from which are strope and kati. strobe of course is the present of brookings institution it is a

former deputy secretary of state. he was very highly regarded journalist at "time" magazine. i was thinking about this today at both you and richard have managed to fuse your journalistic skills and sensibilities with her diplomatic skills and sensibilities to really extraordinary of fact, kind of amazingly to see these two guys who bring all of these things together in the way that they go about their lives and their work. he was of course a friend and intellectual sparring partner of richard holbrooke's. i hope maybe he will tell the trampoline story, but in case he doesn't, it's in the book. you might want to live up for the book and then you have to buy the book and read the story. but thank you so much for being here, stroke. and kati of course as a journalist, exceptional journalist in her own right. its energy and. her parents were both reporters in their native country of hungary. they were jailed, falsely accused in jail right before the

revolution. right after the revolution they came to this country. she went on to become a reporter at npr and abc news. she also has been the head of the committee to protect journalists. and i think it's fair to say that kati has been a major force behind her husband's accomplishments. they were married in 1995 at the really, though worst part of the balkan war. one of the things i read in this book is that during the dayton peace accord meetings, she was assigned to sit between slobodan milosevic and his bosnian counterpart, enter orders from holbrooke were make them talk to each other. and i gather that derek's wife was also given a similar mandate at a different dinner. i'm sorry, what did i say? i'm sorry, stroke, sir. they did not change wise. [laughter] as far as i know. you know, in washington you never know.

[laughter] sorry about that. that brooks was assigned. and also you may not know that richard also went to hillary clinton a little before this to get her ears so she could draw attention to bosnia during her husband administration. so i just want to say that it did occur to me when richard wanted to get things done, he knew who to turn to, the women. [laughter] anyway, she he has, kati has provided a marvelous introduction to the book. in her words that's wonderful. and i just want to end and introduce them with one quote from the last line of the preface to the book which is written by derek and samantha, and they say holbrooke may never have been a quiet man, but he was the first to say that in love, he was a very lucky man. and with that please join me in welcoming strobe talbott and kati marton. [applause]

>> thank you so much, lissa. and it's a pleasure to be back at my favorite bookstore. i think this is my fifth event here. i've written seven books, and fifth, at five of those have been launched here. so i am just delighted that politics and prose has just gone on to greater heights, greater strengths under these wonderful new owners. and thank you all for coming out this evening to your strobe and i talk about our beloved richard. i think between the two of us, we cover the personal and the professional holbrooke, but it would take more than two of us to really penetrate every corner of this voracious mind, and this devouring personality who has left all of us changed.

shortly after richard passed away, and it would be unbelievably a year in three weeks, i reflected on an interview that i had made with lady bird johnson for my book on presidential marriages, in which she said linda and stretched me. and that's absolutely what richard did for me. he stretched me, he left me quite transform. and in some ways, i didn't realize that until he left. penetrating our souls, and i know i'm not the only one who feels that way. he was the most opinionated person i have ever met, the most, probably the most

argumentative, the most forceful personality. and i, in his 17 years that i was with richard, i never heard him spout a cliché or pass on conventional wisdom, or say anything by not. and for that i am so grateful because i feel as if i have a ph.d in richard holbrooke -- [laughter] -- and it is the richest legacy anyone could be left with. bereft as i am, i feel that he's prepared me for whatever comes next in an unbelievable way, as he did for so many of us. i think part of the reason that there has been this outpouring of love. and i can't think of another word other than love, is because he did penetrate many of us,

quite simply because he gave to them but i have never known a man who gave such a damn as richard holbrooke. richard had a dog, in pretty much every fight. you remember a former secretary of state who gave slobodan milosevic courage by saying we don't have a dog in the balkan fight. richard holbrooke had a dog in the balkans but he also had a dog in the battle against aids, in the battle for refugees right to return to their homeland, and in countless, countless other fights. richard holbrooke gave a damn. and he did not mind letting you know your key did not mind stepping on toes. he did a fair amount of the. i think strobe and i were both astonished, however, at the speed with which the tributes poured in. it seemed hours after richards

passing, the tributes from around the planet. it's not an exaggeration. i have now collected headlines from bhutan to zambia, about holbrooke's passage. and i don't know if i've experienced anything of the like. this is not a man who ever reached the job that he hoped to reach them as secretary of state. this is not a man who got the nobel peace prize for which he was six times nominated, and in my view deserved for ending a war. and yet he's the american with the single name, holbrooke, and he continues to represent a style of diplomacy and engagement which the world would like to see more of from our country, a sense that america has a big role to play in the

world, but not based on the force of arms. and america that is based on values, and an america that is based on certain moral principles, and an america that isn't afraid to lead and engage. that was richard, and, of course, we miss him terribly. with richard there was no separation between the personal and the professional. as result, we shared everything. for 17 years he did not miss a single day where ever he was in calling home. so this may come as a surprise to some, he was a very good husband. how he found the time to be such a caring friend to so many, literally thousands of people, and i say that now with some authority because i think i have had letters from most of them. i spent the first few weeks after richards passing reading

letters. and weeping to them. and letters of such quality. i don't think i received a single pro forma condolence note. there were letters, obvious a written as much for the sacred -- the sake of the person writing to me. people seem to want to capture that interaction with this man, with a sense that -- sorry. that he would not come again, or is like. there was -- sorry, this is still hard. this is hard but it's important, which is why i do it. you know, death, sudden death make you feel absolutely

helpless, so i decided after richard died without any warning, we were laughing on the phone an hour and half before making our christmas plans. so no warning. this was a thunderclap in the middle of life. i decided that yes, i would speak out about richard because that was something within my powers. and i also felt that has engaged as richard was in the lives of so many people, and boy, did he love to give advice your. [laughter] he was not equally open about his own emotional landscape, not at all. he was actually a very private man. he didn't like talking about himself. he liked to talk, but there was never a better talker than richard holbrooke. but he liked to talk about policy and about his dreams for his country, and about his friend. and he loved to make his friends

talk. but i want to kind of add another dimension to the holbrooke, the holbrooke that all of you saw on, regularly on the "charlie rose show," or in washington, he was, as david brooks, i love david brooks column after richard passed in which he said that richard holbrooke's death is like driving in colorado and suddenly looking up to find that the rockies were gone. isn't that a great line? so i want to add another dimension to that, which is the personal man, and because he was a very good man, quite simply, and i wanted people to know that, that there was a private holbrooke, in addition to the public one. when people say that he had a big ego, i kind of bridle at

that because his ego was not about self-promotion. it was yes, he wanted to be very much in the arena, but he wanted -- there was always purpose married to his ambition. he was not ambitious to be ambitious. he was ambitious because he wanted to get things done. and man, oh, man, did he get things done. this man did not waste any time. and i don't really believe, i don't but richard had a sense that time would be at short as it turned out to be, perhaps at some level he did. his father died in his 40s. richard didn't have a father after age 13. and so maybe he had an acute sense of how elusive and unpredictable life can be, and

so he was a man in a hurry. and left behind, as this book, which i am deeply proud to have played a small part in, this book is a wonderful reminder of how many facets this man had, and the historian, as a humanitarian, as a man who always spoke his mind, whatever the consequences, and paid for r the frankness and honesty, which are often in short supply in this beautiful city. but he didn't waste a single day, and by that i don't mean that he was just a total walk it i couldn't have been married to a total walk. he loved, he loved every aspect

of human experience. really, there was no place on the planet where richard holbrooke was merely a tourist, because whether we landed in molly or in zimbabwe, he would always find something about the local culture, to zero in on a problem that he could give advice on, try to -- he was a problem solver he was most engaged and most comfortable when he was i'm not being a problem that others dismissed as insoluble. is that the word? in soluble. and thus it was fitting that his final mission the most

intractable problem of them all, afghanistan and pakistan. but even there, as you will read, in "the unquiet american," he made surprising headway. and, of course, of course he left us way too soon. i would like to, stroke, recognize samantha power who had so much to do with this book from its inception to its beautiful birth. symantec, you've been an absolutely amazing friend to richard and now to me. i can see that stroke is ready to grab the mic him but before they hand off the mic, i just want to tell you, samantha's arrival has reminded me. samantha and i had the most extraordinary weekend in dayton this weekend. the city of dayton has no spot

itself as the peace city. so they named a bridge the richard holbrooke bridge, and an annual literary prize which i had the honor of presenting the first one to barbara kingsolver. so to writers who have a vision as ambitious as richard, and as engaged in the world as richard was, and it was, it was a deeply moving weekend for me. it was the first time that i was back at wright patterson base where richard helped to end the bosnian war, since those days in 1995, and it was very moving but it was equally moving to the people on the ground there. i'm happy to say i wasn't the only one with full eyes during this weekend. and all of that has been such a

bomb to me. so thank you. [applause] >> i think i should shut up and go straight to questions. >> no way josé. [laughter] >> kati has captured so much of the essence of the guy. i did was a couple of things about the context if i could. and i want to start with the context of this evening. and the store. it is a great institution, a great washington institution, a great national institution, and i must say, lissa and brad, you've obviously got perfect pitch when it comes to striking balance between change and continuity. i felt that when i walked in here tonight. i didn't see either of them but i saw barbara. and we all have reason to be

concerned about the fate of books as we move from the gutenberg era to the senator byrd era -- zetterberg air. and i know lissa and brad are working on ways to make sure that books come as things that you can pick up and read rather than just turn on instead. are not only going down on going to survive but will thrive. and there's another washington institution that has been with books and that's public affairs. and i think it's no accident that this book ended up in the most capable hands but i do want to say a word of complement to peter, who among others, i think, samantha, you'll check me on this come at least contributed the maybe even had the idea of interspersing the chapters from the friends with the writings of the guy himself.

which was absolutely brilliant. we think the chapters are very, very good, but the holbrooke stuff is even better. so, you know, if you can get to the other stuff, fine, but read richard's stuff going back i think all the way almost to the time he was an undergraduate at brown. darn near. the two points i wanted to make about richard's career i think provide an additional reason on top of those that kati has mentioned, and that are recorded elsewhere in the book for admiring this guy. and also appreciating the extent to which he was a phenomenon. use both a force of nature and also seemed to prevail over

nature in some ways. and certainly prevailed over the nature of the profession that he entered which was diplomacy. and the city that he worked out of, which is washington. here's what i mean i that. all of the opiates, including in testaments, including from some people who were not as kind to them and live as they were in death, talked about is almost unparalleled influence over a very long period of time. and there's no question about that, but what makes it even more astonishing is that he operated not from the highest force, kati referred to this, but he made whatever job he was in a powerful job. as she touched upon, he had every reason to aspire to being secretary of state, and came very close a couple .

a couple of chapters touch on that. but whatever job he got, he made it much more of the job description which he just. i'll give you just a couple of examples of that. when the clinton administration came into office in early 1993, they were quite a number of people who felt that if the clinton administration was going to be first rate foreign policy team, richard holbrooke should be very near the top of that team, and for a variety of reasons some of them having to do with the price he paid for being the bulldozer, he'd didn't look as for a while he was going to get a job. and he thought he was going to get an embassy in the part of the world he knew very well, which was to say in asia, and that embassy went somewhere else. and he, as it ended up with, merely being ambassador to the

federal republic of germany. this was long ago. he wasn't there all that long, but boy, did he make a lot of that. including intellectually. one of the great historians of our times, fritz, whose books have sold their over the years, and on the richard would come up with the idea of basically kidnapping fritz stern from columbia in new york and taking him to bond so you have an intellectual mentor to understand what was going on. and even though he was there rather briefly, and his german was not all that good, nonexistent -- [laughter] he still not only did the job his all, but even after going on to other things, he was the driving force in establishing the american academy in berlin,

which is an in perpetuity legacy. and gail burke is here tonight, who is one of the leaders of that venture. and, of course, you know, he'd been an assistant secretary as a very young man in the carter administration. and as he reached a more senior part of his own career, he had every reason to expect that he would return to a higher floor in the state department. assistant secretaries are on the sixth floor of the secretary, deputy secretary, under sector on the seventh for. he ended up on the first floor somewhere between the cafeteria and the men's room with a shingle on the door that said, that said best rap, not a title that he had ever, they have ever aspired to special representative for afghanistan and pakistan. and he gave it his all.

and that brings me to maybe, well, the second to last point that i will make. he was a complete realist. he was never under any illusion about how much could be accomplished, how fast in this. in fact, he knew that it was very likely to be his last mission. he certainly had every reason to hope, and it hope, that it would not be the end of his life. certainly have no idea that he would die on the job and go into his final trauma in the office of the secretary of state, talking about policy. but he certainly knew that it was about as close to being a mission impossible as there was. but it could be, there are different ways you can do a mission impossible. and you can make something worthwhile and bearable from the

national interest standpoint, even out of a mission impossible. and he did that. and a testament to that i think is that while many of the things that he advocated when he was in that position were very controversial, including internally within the u.s. government, a great deal of what has happened in the years since his death has more or less attract with what he recommended. and there's a particular irony in his last mission, when you look at it against the backdrop of his first mission, which was vietnam. there's a very good, chapter in the book, on vietnam by gordon goldstein. richard started off in his career as a public servant with trying to make something, salvage something, and succeeding at salvaging something, of a policy that had gone quite wrong.

and that's in a way what he did at the end of his career as well. and what that says, i think, is that among other things, he had absolute confidence in what he didn't like this were very much, american exceptionalism, and the degree to which american foreign policy can combine advancing values and advancing interests, and where uniquely in position to lead the world, but things can still go very wrong. and he was constantly -- if he weren't such a robustly good-humored an optimistic person i was the almost had a tragic sense. about what it means to lead the world, particularly in these changing circumstances. the last thing i would say takes us back to the business at this store is in, and all of your in because you are here asked readers. he was a reader. big time. i could never figure out how he found the time to read as much

as he did. not to mention to write as much as he did it. and i think that in some ways, kati, while his career was that of a diplomat, he always thought of himself as a wayward journalist and a way in and a historian. very much a historic. >> he had a very acute sense of history. i've never known an american, because this is more a european traits come if i may say so, if you had such a sharp sense of history and the continuum of history. that was a phrase he used a lot, the continuum of history. so those two things, the diplomacy and history to him were absolutely intertwined. and i think that's what kids his writings, going back to his

earliest efforts 30, 40 years ago. there is i think, and you will be the judge, a sense of, it's a perspective that one rarely finds in journalism. i'm a journalist and i'm a child of journalists. i have the highest regard for the profession but richard had, so i think you put it beautifully just now, he had a tragic sense of, he was certainly deeply aware of the existence of evil in the world, which most americans are not. i make him we are famously optimistic. richard had, god knows, nearly a decade in the balkans rot in face to face with evil. evil in the heart of europe, in the 20th century, murderous,

murderous genocidal warfare. but a part of him wasn't surprised. perhaps because he was just one generation removed from the holocaust. his mother was a german jew. his father was a rush inflame the timeliness, so the century catastrophes were really in his watching the energy believe that that had something to do with his deeper sense of the tragic, of the tragic component of history. but as you said and as we all know, he somehow managed to be with all that. one of the most optimistic can-do people you and i have ever met, right? he just didn't come he wasn't a sorted man, you know, to brad

sears talk about the fact that welcome he didn't get the nobel peace prize, he didn't get the nod for secretary of state. was this man and unfulfilled man? not in the least. >> a happy warrior. and as he could write his also a good editor which lissa takes us back to the help he gave you. samantha has just a fabulous the chapter on mentoring. and its, among other things, an anecdote to one of the stupider wraps on richard which is he was always looking over people's shoulders to see was important it is looking over your shoulder, it was because you were born and. as the person can he was slotting him into them was very likely a young up-and-coming coming eager foreign service officer who he would glom onto and to. why don't we go to questions? [applause]

>> if you could go to the microphone and give your name, that would be great. >> my name is chris neil. is this working? my name is chris neil. i'd like to ask, because he loved history, who were some of his heroes, both in diplomacy and as former presidents, secretaries of state for others? and also in journalism, who were some of his models? >> do you want to go first? george kennan, whose biography by john lewis gaddis is on sale just to the right as you come in. [laughter] unit are you employed by this establishment, strobe? >> but george tenet for sure, he had come he wrote a very, very insightful to add a member if it was a con or what, peace about jenin. he understood the complexity which comes through clearly in the book.

but what he really appreciated, first of all like richard himself, kennan was very much a history but you all know that kennan went on to write a pulitzer prize-winning histories. kennan was a writer, and he accomplished much more from a newly created middle rank position in the state department, that a director of policy and planning than many, he left a bigger and longer legacy than many secretaries of state. so he identified with kennan for short. >> in addition to kennan, dean acheson was a particular icon of his. april herriman who was his first mentor who really plugged this 25 year-old foreign service service officer and took him to paris with him for the vietnam peace negotiations, richard always called him the governor and considered him a great role

model because in his '70s, herriman took a job as assistant secretary of state because he wanted to serve, and he didn't give a damn whether he had the corner office on the seventh floor or the basement. he just wanted to serve. and god knows herriman did not need a job. [laughter] >> also, mr. neal asked about journalists. this is not an irony. it sort of a coming, for becoming of the full circle. he'd very much admired the work of george packer, right of course about, for "the new yorker" and did some superb stuff on her back and george packer is going to be doing serious biography of richard. >> of the questions? just? this is a gentleman who played a big role in richard holbrooke's

ever, rufus phillips. first of all, rufus, which he tell everybody how you know richard and the role he did play in holbrooke's career? >> well, that's very kind you'd asked me that. i was going to tell a story about him. >> go ahead. >> i was his first boss in saigon. and he had arrived as a very young foreign service officer with plenty of spirit, which is i think a trademark of his. and we very difficult province where this province chief wouldn't cooperate, and so i removed the fellow was down there and said richard down there, even though he had only been in the country for about three or four months. and he just performed magnificently. i mean, he didn't let it bother him that this province chief wasn't coordinate and so that was really part of his spear. but the sort i wanted to go was a very personal one in terms of his generosity for his friends,

for people who work for him. i remember my wife and i went up to see him when he was ambassador to the u.n., because he had written a forward for another book about vietnam, which told a story of a lot of his companions in what was called rule of affairs economy to look at it and redo it. and a day. i sat down with him and i said, dick, this is very good but it's much too laudatory about me. you really should tone it down. he looked at me and he said, you're no longer my boss. [laughter] and then he took us around and introduced us personally to everyone in his office. and that was so typical of him. so i just wanted to leave you with that picture of him, unit from which is something that i

retain. >> thank you for sharing that if you are very, very important to him. [applause] >> i'm dan freed, still with the state department and a colleague of richards for many years. his role, he's known for his role in the balkans. he's less known but should be none more known for his role in the unification of europe after the end of the cold war. he came back from germany with one big idea, several big ideas, but when a particular. it was called nato enlargement but that was really not what it was about. it was about uniting europe, and erasing the lines of the cold war. and when he arrived in washington in 94, this idea of uniting europe was unpopular, beleaguered minority, and rather tattered with the scorn of the general bureaucracy.

within about three months, it was u.s. policy and on the road to success. and it is so successful, it's seldom remarked upon. at this year we lost richard holbrooke, and also ron, who was one of richard's protéges and one of, with richard, one of the people who made this happen. so he deserves, he deserves remembrance for not only the peace, stopping the war in the balkans, but extending a piece on a very wide, on a very wide stage. >> amen. >> thank you. [applause] >> my name is eleanor bachrach. i'm not a prominent person from

holbrooke's life, but it has occurred to me sitting here that i experienced the bulldozer effect, both at the beginning of my career and at the end, or late. in the beginning i was a shy freshman at brown, then pembroke, who thought she wanted to be a journalist. and richard was big important editor of the brown daily herald, otherwise known as the dbh, who chewed me out enormously on something i wrote. so i didn't actually become a journalist. [laughter] >> so sorry. >> at the end of the, well, and then i was working for usaid in the economic growth office in kabul when he became a strap --

became srap and implemented some new procedures. but i am sorry he wasn't able to complete that terribly important and probably hopeless task. one of the things i've been reflecting on though is that it was well known at brown that he was going into the foreign service. i think he was one of the very few who actually got to go into the foreign service right from college. and in those days, which i know because i pursued a career in public service also, but those were the unusual days. i did know it at the time, when a public service government career was considered honorable, even prestigious. and he was a real embodiment of

that. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> well, if there are no further questions, strobe -- yes? [inaudible] >> can you speak about the title? >> i'm pretty sure i'm looking at samantha over there, that, i think i would give credit to a wonderful editor at the "washington post" named autumn brewington, who was, among other things, richards editor when he was writing columns for the "washington post." and i will just do something in parenthesis here, which is to watch or experience him writing a column was itself dizzying and

terrifying in some ways. i can remember once he was i think in bangkok rushing between planes, and dictating to actually who was with him on that trip, a column. and autumn brewington gets huge marks for helping shepherd goes into print. in any event, i did a piece when richard died, and i used the phrase, something to the effective he was not an ugly american and he was not a quiet american, and she said aha, and took that and made it into the unquiet american. >> i would credit strobe with the unquiet american, and, and with a bow to graham greene because we did slip the green title in his head. yes? >> will you kill passionate will

you tell the trampling story? it would be fun. and also, do you think mr. holbrooke could have anyway have interest in turning his perspective to the economics problems that's going on and his effect on diplomacy? in he was totally un-arrested in the whole business. >> he would be glad there were other people who are more interested than he. [laughter] >> there was, as i said earlier, there was nothing that he was not interested in, and that covers economics, but i think strobe is correct. richard, richard was a humanist. his brand of diplomacy was unique because, because he believed that diplomacy had to be based one human being at a time. he was not a bureaucrat and, therefore, economics was really beyond, beyond his range of

passion. but i think that, you know, even since richard passed away, the world has changed so much that, you know, the unraveling of the world financial sector has happened so quickly. and richard was such a quick study that i think he would have immediately seen the intersection between economics and diplomacy, as he saw, for example, the connection between a health problem, aides, and international security. coming, he's the one who took aides to the u.n. security council. because he did see that intersection. and as always with richard he was told this isn't happening. we don't deal with health issu

issues. this is the security council. and for richard, that was just, that just meant you have to keep going. and ultimately he prevailed. but i think henry kissinger hasim a very backhanded compliment, a line that kissinger uses on every occasion when he has the opportunity, which is that if holbrooke calls you and ask you to do something, say yes the first time, spare yourself the agony. [laughter] >> of the repeated calls. and you know, take it any way you like, but it was, richard woods never calling to ask her anything for himself. it was always for some other purpose, some other cause. i think that was actually a good-quality. >> lissa is not going to invite me back you unless i tell the trampling story. i would've very quickly.

it was in one of the period when he was in the wilderness as it were. and printing in the wilderness meant he was drawing a huge salary, working in the financial sector. and bored stiff by it and really, really eager to get back in. this was in the pre-county area -- epic he invited my wife and i to spend the weekend with him at a house that had in connecticut. we were invited over, you never met an invitation he turned down. it was for a brunch at the controls, as a matter of fact. and we went, drove over to this very nice country house. as we were headed in, it was very crowded affair, he noticed over in the corner of the lawn there was a trampoline for the kids. so he sort of did a sharp right turn, even though the host and hostess had come out to welcome

them. he may have shaken hands with you or something and then just made a beeline for the trampling. and i went along with them, and my wife kind of watched for a while. and as he was walking up to the trampling, he was taking off his shoes. and he said come on up here with me. so we, i don't know how long it was, 20 minutes, half an hour, we were on the trampoline on a summer morning going bowling, bowling, bowling. and he was talking about the balkans, of course. [laughter] and also talking about a book he had just read and one thing and another. it was, you know, it was hilarious. but the point of the story is i guess the word i would conclude on fun. this guy had fun, and he was fun to know. >> you know, you just answered a great ministry all these years i've wanted like it had never been asked to show why we are never asked over there.

been neither have i. >> do you have a question? >> my name is barbara, and i have read or heard that president karzai and richard holbrooke did not get along at all, and to the point that president karzai refused to meet with him personally. is that correct? >> know. no, that is an exaggeration. it is true that president karzai is not an easy man to have as an ally. richard used to say that it was easier with the serbs because the service, you could threaten to bomb into good behavior, but karzai is supposed to be our ally. and with allies like that, frankly, anyway -- i'm speaking here for myself.

[laughter] but there isn't a long list of american diplomats, or other officials who have had an easy time with president karzai, put it that way. richard delivered some pretty tough, pretty tough messages to karzai, who was not, who had a much easier time with the prior administration, put it that way. okay, david. >> i'm david, and my tie with richard, i had several of them but the most recent one was that he had become so obvious it either very warm place in my heart for him. he hired me, however, to send me the kabul pics i have mixed feelings. in that sense. but it was the most exciting job i ever had, and i'll always be grateful to richard for

recruiting me fo for a pic of director of to many patients in public diplomacy at the u.s. industry in kabul. and one of the holbrooke ends in embassy. richard felt that the struggle that was as much about perception as it was about bullets, and he was certainly right about that. and i was trying to use some of the money that he obtained by various means for us to try and create hope, sense of hope among as many of the afghan people as possible. just one comment on the remarks that i've heard. i think if you were here, he might argue with you about the hopelessness of the task in afghanistan/pakistan. difficult, yes. i guess what the question is, what are we trying to achieve there? if we think it's hopeless benefit our standards may be too high as to what we are trying to achieve. what i think he was trying to

achieve was what we used to go in embassy good enough afghan. the standard which was not terribly high, to be honest. it's a country that wants to survive as a nation but it's going to be a pretty rough and ready place no matter what happens. what i think he recognized was the deep importance to the united states of the outcome in afghanistan, and really in pakistan. the war in afghanistan is about pakistan. it's about, it's about the policies of some of the entities in pakistan, as much as anything else, in my opinion. and i think he felt that way, too gimmicky always said that of the two, pakistan was the much more serious issue. and in the two years that he was on this beat, i don't remember a single walk through central park without richard either making a

call to someone in pakistan or a call coming in. from pakistan. he was all over pakistan, and on first name terms with all the usual suspects. he had cultivated relationships with almost everyone of consequence consequence in pakistan, not because for a minute he had any illusions about our national interest and mayors mashing, but he just felt that they had to be given a sense that this wasn't as he once put it a one night stand, that we were in this relationship for a long game. >> and i think it's a given that the present of pakistan, like the present of the neighboring country, came to his memorial service. >> yes. >> so that speaks volume. and i'm completely agree wih