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Madeleine Albright, first female secretary of state, dies of cancer at 84


According to a statement from the family of Madeleine Albright posted to her Twitter account, Albright died Wednesday at the age of 84. The statement said her death was due to cancer.

“She was surrounded by family and friends,” the family wrote in the statement. “We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend.” The video above includes clips of State Department spokesperson Ned Price and U.S. Ambassador the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield reacting to the news.

Albright is best known for making history as the first female U.S. secretary of state. She served in the role for the last four years of the Clinton administration. At the time, she was the highest-ranking woman in the history of U.S. government. However, she was not in the line of succession for the presidency because she was not born in America.

“Madeleine Albright, born Marie Jana Korbelova, was a native of Prague who came to the United States as a refugee in 1948,” the family said in the statement. It added that Albright “rose to the heights of American of policy-making, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, the nation’s highest civilian honor.”

Before she was secretary of state, Albright served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for the first four years of the Clinton administration. She played a leading role in pressing for the Clinton administration to get militarily involved in the conflict in Kosovo and toed a hard line on Cuba. She also advocated a tough policy in the case of Milosevic Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević’s treatment of Bosnia.

“What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it,” Colin Powell, then the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, recalled Albright saying. Powell, who died last year, recalled in a memoir that Albright’s comments almost made him have an “aneurysm.”

Albright remained outspoken even after her time serving after America’s top diplomat. After leaving office, she criticized former President George W. Bush for using “the shock of force” rather than diplomacy in Iraq. When asked by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2007 if she approved of Bush’s proposed “surge” in U.S. troops in Iraq, she responded: “I think we need a surge in diplomacy. We are viewed in the Middle East as a colonial power and our motives are suspect.”

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Ambassador to the United Nations: “I want to express my great sorrow at learning that former secretary of state and former U.S. U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright has passed away. Secretary Albright was a mentor. She was my boss, both as secretary of state, I worked with her in Georgetown. She was a colleague and she was a friend over several decades. She was a trailblazer and a luminary, and she was the first woman to serve as Secretary of State. She left an indelible mark on the world and on the United Nations. Our country and our United Nations are stronger for her service. I always would say she used to talk about the pins she wore. I always wore her on my shoulder. Her story, a story of fleeing Czechoslovakia as a refugee at a young age and rising in the highest levels of the U.S. government, has echoed in my mind amid the current crisis in Ukraine, and I hope to do justice for her memory today.”

Ned Price, State Department Spokesman: “I can say that the impact that Secretary Albright, Professor Albright, Dr. Albright, she’s known as many titles around here and in Washington and around the world. The impact that she has had on this building is felt every single day in just about every single corridor. A number of our most senior officials, from Secretary Blinken to Deputy Secretary Sherman to our chief of Staff Susie George, have, were lucky enough to call her a boss but I think the better word is probably mentor. And a number of us have had the great pleasure to have gotten to know Secretary Albright over the years. There are a number of people in this building who continue to to work here and to recall very fondly her tenure.”