"All That's Left" - Tribute to Richard Holbrooke

This tribute is excerpted from The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World, eds. Derek Chollet and Samantha Power (Public Affairs, 2011). 

Richard Holbrooke will not go away. 

And he might approve of that opening. “Every book chapter and article should begin with either a summary of what follows or a provocation,” he told me one morning in the kitchen of his New York apartment. It was 7:30 on a Thursday morning in 2007, his wife Kati was reading the newspaper at the kitchen counter, and he sat next to her, holding a draft book chapter of mine that looked more like a U.S. government document declassified through a Freedom of Information Act request—bearing more of his black marker than my computer’s black font. He was barefoot, wearing an untucked pink oxford shirt and khaki shorts. He peeled tangerines, and looked back and forth between my mangled chapter and Morning Joe, which he muted during the commercials. “At the start of every chapter, the first sentence should make the reader want more.” He read out loud the sentence that led my chapter and laughed giddily. “Wordy, wordy, wordy, too many words,” he said. “Anyway,” he continued, not at all self-conscious that he might be stating the obvious or bruising a fragile ego, “you are just lucky you have me as an editor.” 

At the next commercial he made me follow him into his study. He pulled a large Clark Clifford volume off the shelf. “Now this is somebody who knew how it was done,” he said, failing to remind me that he had ghost-written the book he was praising. As I eyed the clock and reminded him of his 9 a.m. meeting in mid-town, he told me he would not leave until I too knew what I was doing. With that, he patiently read every first sentence of every one of the 35 chapters in the 736-page book. And he paused for me to marvel each time. “I get it, I get it,” I said, wanting the tutorial to end. “If there were any evidence you got it,” he said firmly, “I would already be driving downtown to my meeting.” 

This encounter, and so many like it, rattle around in my head whenever I start an article, a government memo, or even an email. And there are dozens, if not hundreds, of people out there who have endured— and benefited from—similar schooling. The members of Holbrooke’s Afghanistan/Pakistan team at the State Department got almost as many writing and editing lessons as they got strategic policy guidance. “Cut this down by 40 percent and bring it back to me,” he would say. To supplement his own lesson plan, he printed two dozen copies of George Orwell’s splendid 1946 essay, “Politics of the English Language,” and demanded instant improvement in the clarity of their prose. “Don’t write like a bureaucrat,” he would say, “write like a real person. You can’t forget that there are real people on the other end of your memos who are going to read what you write.” 

Every one of us who ever enjoyed Richard Holbrooke’s unique “quality of attention” was incredulous when he zoomed in on us. “Why the hell is Richard Holbrooke making time for me?” we asked ourselves. After all, this was a man who had a reputation for looking over the shoulder of an American president to see if there might be someone more useful behind him. Yet, again and again, no matter his assignment, he picked up mentees in much the same way that other ambassadors picked up exotic carpets and statuettes. Holbrooke flattered, disappointed, interrupted, teased, interrogated, lectured, embraced, and above all, taught us all. The famed power seeker surrounded himself with younger people who had nothing but earnestness to offer him. It was never clear how he found the time, how he always found the time.

WHAT RICHARD HOLBROOKE TAUGHT WAS NOT ALWAYS THE SAME AS what the rest of us learned. We listened to what he said, of course. But we also watched him, which exposed some of his legendary contradictions. 

Mentoring for him was not a sign-up sheet exercise where young staff stopped by for fifteen minutes of career advice; it was a commitment that had no expiration date. His teachings aren’t the kind that the Foreign Service Institute passes along to future diplomats. But perhaps from now on they should be. 

For starters, Richard Holbrooke taught us that rank and status are bunk; knowledge is what matters. In the summer of 1995, nearly two years into my stay as a rookie reporter in the former Yugoslavia, I got a call from Holbrooke out of the blue. “This is Richard Holbrooke speaking, he said, pausing for effect. My heart stopped at the sound of a voice I had heard only on television. “I heard you are thinking about going to law school.” Although he had never before spoken to me, he had strong views about my future. “Why the hell would you do that, when you’ve been in the Balkans long enough to actually know something about something?” He demanded I come to meet him on his next visit to the region. I did as I was told, but when I arrived there was no small talk, none of the guidance counseling I hoped I might receive. “You’ve lived here a couple years,” he said, after a cursory greeting. “You know things we can’t know from Washington. What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? What should we do differently?” These were Holbrooke questions. The essence of what he was always asking was, How do we help better? Impact on the ground was everything. He could not have cared less that his source was a twenty-four-year-old freelance correspondent who had never set foot in the State Department or White House. 

My memory of this incident is so vivid, but—in its way—so farfetched that I didn’t quite trust my recollection. However, the many tributes to Richard since his death confirm that this was his common practice. When Holbrooke was ambassador to the UN, Jordan Dey earned a job interview with him and traveled to New York from a tiny town in Kosovo where he was running an NGO. Expecting to be grilled on what he would do if he got the job, Dey was instead asked for a grand strategy. “What is the solution for Kosovo?” Holbrooke asked. “What should we be doing differently?” He treated job interviews as fact-finding missions. He didn’t have time for snobbery or hierarchy—he just wanted ideas and answers.

And he assumed others operated the same way, seeking out the doers, irrespective of their level in a hierarchy. Mary Ellen Glynn, his press spokesman at the U.S. Mission to the UN, said he once ordered her to pry a decision loose from the Pentagon. “Call Bill Perry and get this done!” Holbrooke shouted, forgetting that the U.S. secretary of defense might be disinclined to take a call from an unknown aide to the U.S. ambassador. 

Holbrooke placed a premium on “knowing something about something.” He prized knowledge that came from experience in the field, but equally that from books and articles, which he devoured. He knew an enormous amount about American politics and American and European history, and he loved sharing what he knew. He delighted in adventures from times past and reflexively drew connections to the present. As is widely known, he cultivated ties with journalists for what they could do for him and his agenda; but he also was drawn to them because he admired their craft, and because they had stories to tell and fresh facts to share. Because they knew something about something, he simply found them good company. 

In the rare instances when he saw that his enthusiasm alone wasn’t changing the reading habits of those around him, he would give strict instructions. “You cannot speak with such confidence on this subject and not have read this book,” he would say. He viewed facts and preparation as his lifeblood, not least because such knowledge gave him a tactical advantage in his negotiations. In pursuit of a deal in which the U.S. would pay back its overdue dues to the UN, for example, he had to convince other countries to raise their assessments while the U.S. lowered its own. Holbrooke insisted that his negotiators track down minute details on each of the other countries’ spending history in the UN. As Suzanne Nossel, a Holbrooke aide, recalled, “We knew more about what they paid than they did.” Holbrooke used this information, sealing a grand bargain for repaying U.S. dues, while slashing the U.S. share going forward—a deal most had thought could not be done. 

A second lesson Richard Holbrooke taught was, get the hell out of Washington if you want to learn, but do come back to Washington if you want to have an impact. In his own life he had inhabited both worlds. When Dean Rusk, the father of his best friend and John F. Kennedy’s future secretary of state, spoke about the U.S. Foreign Service to Holbrooke’s Scarsdale High School senior class in 1958, Holbrooke was intrigued. He graduated from Brown University in 1962, not long after President Kennedy’s summons to public service, which had motivated others in his generation to join the new Peace Corps or ride freedom buses to fight segregation in the South. His first choice was a job at the New York Times, but, turned down by Scotty Reston, he joined the Foreign Service instead. Within a year of his graduation from Brown, the young Holbrooke had completed language training and area studies and earned himself a posting to Saigon. The undersecretary of state for political affairs, U. Alexis Johnson, selected him to be part of a new program that would give a select group of foreign service officers field experience, away from embassies. Holbrooke joined a division of the U.S. foreign aid mission called the Office of Rural Affairs and was sent to the Mekong Delta, where he was responsible for distributing American funds and supplies to assist the local authorities. He developed two tastes early; first, to be at the center of the largest foreign policy crisis of his time (Bosnia and Afghanistan would follow Vietnam); and second, to get close to the people whose lives were affected by U.S. government decisions. For the rest of his life, notwithstanding his omnipresence in the halls of power, he always held the windowless Situation Room and the sterility of Washington policy discussions in less esteem than he did a trip to a refugee camp. 

Amid it all, of course, Richard Holbrooke needed Washington. The town enthralled him just as it consumed him. It picked him up as often as it ground him down. “There is simply nothing like the power of the United States of America to do good in the world,” he would tell journalists, academics, and college students, as he tried to lure them into public service. But if he ever sensed that those he mentored were taking themselves or the U.S. government too seriously, he would remind them of the absurdity of their existence, and the shortcomings of a town of migrants with lousy sports teams, insufficient culture, and a steady diet of political casualties on which to fixate. When he met colleagues for drinks after work, he grew visibly irritated if they kept their government badges on. “You know something is wrong in a place where it is considered normal for people to wear pictures of themselves around their necks,” he would say. 

The destinations most likely to meet with Holbrooke’s approval were overseas diplomatic or journalistic postings, where one could experience history firsthand, learn languages, meet people, and be changed by a new place. Short of that, he counseled, you should live in New York. 

Third, he taught us to be direct except when it was better not to be. Richard Holbrooke could be crushingly blunt. When he came over for dinner, he would take up the whole meal venting about the inanities of the bureaucracy he served, but then yawn ostentatiously when it took his dinner companions longer than a couple of sentences to get to the point. When one protested his impatience, he would say, “What do you think this is? The Council on Foreign Relations?” Sometimes, when he told me a story I had heard before, I’d complain, and he’d say, “Well, I’ve seen nothing in your actions that indicates that you have retained it, so I’m trying again.” When we sought his advice on how to manage a particular work challenge, he would often cut us off in mid-sentence with, “You know what your problem is?” and then—on a good day—he might say, “You care too much about substance,” or “You tell the truth.” (On a bad day, he could say, “You don’t know, the first thing about politics,” or “You haven’t read enough.”) One of his favorite retorts, designed to stop both journalists and junior colleagues in their tracks, was, “I have no idea what that means.” Just as Barney Rubin, a senior adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan, was preparing to speak with Secretary Clinton about the region for the first time, Holbrooke told Rubin, “I’ve noticed that you have a tendency to be somewhat arrogant and condescending when speaking to non-specialists.” Rubin assured him that he took the point but added, “Funny. I’ve heard the same thing about you.” Holbrooke quickly flashed, “See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” Chris Hill, his senior aide during the Kosovo crisis, and good friend, referred to Holbrooke as “my mentor and my tormentor.” 

A principle of natural selection undergirded his habitat. In the company of the famously thin-skinned Holbrooke, only the thick-skinned survived. And the truth is, those around him unwittingly promoted this principle of natural selection, as they often fell in love with one another and reproduced. He saw himself as responsible for five weddings in a single year while he was ambassador to the UN (“You were inspired by my relationship with Kati,” he told his staff). And as difficult as he was— and as complicated as it was to work for him—his former staff were more often than not repeat offenders, those who signed up to serve with him multiple times. Why? As Paul Jones, his deputy working on Afghanistan and Pakistan, put it: “When you were in the presence of Richard Holbrooke, you knew you were alive.” 

Fourth, Holbrooke, the famed self-promoter, sought to elevate those around him, arguably with even more enthusiasm. A young Holbrooke had sought out older statesmen—Clifford, Harriman, Kissinger—and studied their every move. By the time he had built up personal authority in the world, he instinctively sprinkled it like fairy dust on others “You have just said something truly significant,” he would say to a junior aide unexpectedly, and they would quickly rewind the tape to remember what it might have been. He was “Richard Holbrooke,” capital R., capital H. He had built that brand name from scratch, he knew it had come to mean something, and he doled out his anointings liberally, knowing the attention he could generate for others. Our ideas, books, plays, movies, government memos. He actually said things like: ‘Not since the Long Telegram have I seen a more important memo.” This complete conviction—combined with his remarkable social network (before Facebook, there was Holbrooke)—meant that a Holbrooke endorsement became a foreign policy wonk’s version of an Oprah seal of approval. When he bragged about his AfPak team, he evoked a ten-year-old running through the glories of the Yankee lineup. He conjured up excuses for his team members to meet—and preferably brief—Secretary Clinton; he hustled journalists so as to get a staff member’s name in the newspaper; he fought for them to be included in his White House meetings and, if unsuccessful, he regaled them after the fact with two-hour recaps of the personalities and atmospherics, as well as the policy outcomes; and he dramatically inflated their achievements when he introduced them around town, giving them job titles they never held and crediting them with headline-grabbing policy achievements (“Meet Rina Amiri, she wrote the Afghan Constitution”). He especially admired those with qualities he knew he did not have in abundance. 

And his loyalty and enthusiasm did not abate when his staff moved on. When Mary Ellen Glynn, his former spokesman, got married and moved from Washington to Portland, Oregon, he volunteered to write introduction letters for the two people he knew there. These two people were the CEO of Nike and the former governor of Oregon. He also never forgot those with whom he had worked successfully. For Glynn, this meant that when he took the job of special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, he wanted her back. When she sat down with Secretary Clinton, the secretary told her, “Richard Holbrooke has been asking me about you every day." Because he believed people were the key to sound policy, his staffing choices were as important to him as the substantive content of his meetings with Afghan president Hamid Karzai. And the care he took finding, educating, and promoting the right people did not simply gratify his desire to be surrounded by the best team possible. It had its own payoff. If he lifted people up, they would be in a better position to lift up what he deemed worthy policy ambitions. 

Fifth and above all, Richard Holbrooke became a model for how to love and delight in those around him. He had lots of targets for his love—his family above all, of course—Kati, Anthony and David, Lizzie and Chris, his grandchildren, the individual members of the teams he built around him. He raved about each of them and their feats, to all who would listen. He was surprisingly sentimental, keeping in his wallet for seventeen years the small scrap of paper on which he had first written Kati’s telephone number. And he applied this same capacity for love and delight to an insightful column, a bad movie (he talked about Something About Mary like it was Citizen Kane), a briefing by an aid worker in Kandahar. When he liked something or someone, he was all in. 

And he had a deep interest in who and what other people loved as well. He imbibed gossip, and nothing interested him more than other people’s love lives—the one topic for which he had endless patience. Though it was often late at night when he did so, he frequently told staff that they should get home to their families to “avoid making the same mistakes” he had made by being away so much when he was raising his sons. To single friends and staff, he offered advice in love that was prescriptive and sometimes dogmatic, especially when he was advising ending a relationship that he believed wasn’t going anywhere. Never were his listening skills more evident—or his work schedule more accommodating—than for a broken heart. He had found in Kati a beloved partner with whom he could read, argue, explore, and laugh uproariously, and he wanted that for the rest of us. When I first started dating my husband, Cass, he was one of the first people I called to tell. Indeed, on one of our first dates, I rudely answered a call from Holbrooke and passed the phone to Cass. Holbrooke was as warm as could be in saying, “If you hurt her, Mort [Abramowitz] and I will break your kneecaps.” 

As he was rushed to the hospital—unsure of his fate, but certain things weren’t good—he said again and again, as if to reason with the gods, “But there are so many people I love, there are so many people I love.” To the very end, Richard Holbrooke thought first of those he loved. 

ON THE AWFUL NIGHT WHEN RICHARD HOLBROOKE’S HEART GAVE OUT, his friends and mentees staggered in disbelief to the lobby of George Washington University Hospital. There were colleagues from his days in Vietnam, from Wall Street, Bosnia, Kosovo, Democratic political circles, the UN, Afghanistan, and every country and obsession in between. They were the people he had taught, but also the second family he had created. And every person in that hospital lobby—no matter how high they had risen in life—seemed profoundly lost and unmoored. 

After Holbrooke’s passing, David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, spoke for many when he said, “it is like driving through Colorado and looking up and seeing the Rockies are no longer there.”

The legacy of Richard Holbrooke shows up all over the world—the American Academy in Berlin, the carefree patrons of open-air cafes in Sarajevo, the HIV-positive workers at companies that now provide treatment, the Taliban fighters who have laid down their weapons. But his greatest imprint—invisible to the naked eye—may be in the hearts and heads of those of us who have had the privilege of learning from him, laughing with him, and loving all of him.