All language subtitles for The Diplomat (2015)

Um, last question.

How high a price should one
pay to do good in the world?

You talking about risks?

Risk and, you know,
ultimate sacrifices.

Those people who travel
into the dangerous areas

should do so fully aware
that they're taking great risks.

But life is always risks.

The important thing
is not to be reckless.

- Up a little more.
- There you go. Right there.

To the left a little bit.
There you go.

Why did you appoint him?
Okay.

Yeah, and was it harder?

Hi. Hi, David.

- Hello, Secretary Clinton.
- Hey, who's your helper?

This is Wiley. You've
met him a couple of times.

Nice to see you again.
How are you doing?

- How are you, my dear?
- I'm well. It's nice to see you.

- Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
- A pleasure.

- Thank you for doing this.
- My pleasure.

I keep on knocking
over lights.

One, two, three, four.
You want to tape it?

You guys are ready?

We are now.

Okay, great.

This interview with you is the
last one we're doing for the film.

- Oh, my gosh. I'm so flattered.
- Isn't that crazy?

- It seems fitting, though.
- Oh, thank you.

It does seem fitting.

So sad,
but nevertheless fitting.

Top US officials
and world leaders

packed
the Kennedy Center today

to pay tribute to the late
Richard Holbrooke.

With the number of dignitaries
in attendance,

that would account for some
of this higher security

in the west end
of downtown DC.

For me, this whole film
really started

when I sat onstage with you
and President Clinton

and President Obama
and all these other luminaries

and I realized for the first
time, I think, really

that my father
was a historical figure.

I think that is a recognition

that sometimes comes
upon someone gradually.

With Richard, he filled up
so much space

and had his own
energy field.

People just assumed

that he was a unique figure
in their lives

and in the work that they
were doing with him.

But taking a step back, which is
what you're doing with this film,

you can see the broad impact
and the historic significance

of his life and work.

My father died
on December 13, 2010,

when his heart gave out.

At the time of his death, he
was President Obama's point man

for Afghanistan
and Pakistan.

But his career as a diplomat
spanned 50 years

of American
foreign policy.

By the time I came
to know Richard,

his place in history
was assured.

But when he began to talk
about the importance

of restoring America's
place in the world,

it was clear that Richard was
not comfortable on the sidelines.

He belonged in the arena.

He wanted to be a great man

so he could change history.

He was and he did.

I believe in history.

I think history
is continuous.

It doesn't begin or end
on Pearl Harbor Day

or on 9/11.

You have to learn
from the past.

Everything everybody said
about him here is true.

But in the end what matters
is there are a lot of people

walking around on the face
of the Earth today

or their children
or their grandchildren

because of the way he lived
his life.

- What are you gonna call it?
- "The Diplomat."

- That's great.
- Seems right, right?

Yeah, it does.

My father's life
was a public one.

So when he died, I received
an overwhelming number

of condolence letters
and emails.

One of those notes came from
journalist Christiane Amanpour,

who sent me this photo
and wrote,

"This is Sarajevo."

New Year's not long ago.

Bright, shining, at peace, and
with a future for her children.

"Thank you, Richard."

I had never been
to Sarajevo,

the capital of Bosnia and the site
of my father's greatest achievement.

I realized that while I read
about his many accomplishments,

there was much about
his storied career

I didn't understand.

My father's life
as a diplomat

constantly pulled him away
from our family.

And when we did manage
to get together,

he rarely wanted
to talk about his work.

Life with Pops,
as I called him,

provided a remarkable
vantage point.

But he could be an intense
and complicated man,

often making our relationship
challenging.

As I dealt
with this sudden loss,

I decided the only way
for me to grieve

was to get to know him
better in death

than I did in life.

So I set out
into his world.

- Oh, my God.
- No kidding, huh?

Thanks for doing this.
Appreciate it.

You're the first
interview we've done.

You know that I want to.

If there's one word
to describe my father?

I would say the diplomatic
hope for my generation.

- We're gathered to honor.
- Ambassador Dick Holbrooke,

who brought peace to Bosnia.

If you could describe
in 25 words or less

your theory of diplomatic
persuasion.

You start out by defining
your national interest.

You then look at the parties
and see what they want

and you find out how
you can put it together.

He's admired for his
intelligence

and his political savvy,

but "Newsweek" mocked
his personal ambition.

I don't understand
the ambition issue.

I've never met any successful
person in Washington,

or for that matter in television,
who didn't have ambition.

Look at that.
"New York Times Magazine."

That's crazy.

He had two
different covers?

- Two different covers.
- Holy Christ.

- Oh, this is about Diane.
- This was his old girlfriend.

Did you have these or did
you get them just recently?

I found these just as I was
going through his stuff.

It's weird, you know, he's
always kept these papers.

He always had such a sense
of his own history.

This file cabinet
as well behind you?

- All of these. Yeah.
- All these file cabinets are my father's papers.

This is his...

letters.

These are letters from
your father to your mother.

Wow.

"Darling Litty."
Weird.

"I left Saigon
by beach this morning"

arriving in Soc Trang
0830 with a member of USOM.

It is quite a place
to be right now.

Rumor follows rumor,

and now they are
sometimes right.

"Incidentally, we really do not know
just what is going on in this country."

He left for Vietnam
and we corresponded.

He said instead of writing
a diary or a journal,

he would write his experiences
in letters to me

and I would keep
the letters.

"October 25, 1963."

He had a journalist's
instinct.

"The tension in Saigon
is amazing.

I've never experienced
anything quite like it."

There's a lot of reporting,

of recording what
the scene is like.

"The country is so sad
and I feel it more and more.

I really don't know
how I will react to war,

"but it sounds like war
there really will be."

You have to remember,
this is before

Vietnam is Vietnam.

The beginning was very
different from the end.

There are 5,500 Americans
in Vietnam.

More than Kennedy
wants to be there,

but he sees no alternative.

- Four-star general.
- Paul Harkins says

we shall have almost all
the American military

phased out of Vietnam
by 1965.

We are winning this war.

My father's experience
in Vietnam

taught him that what mattered most
was having a view from the ground...

...and knowing
the right people.

We changed beers.

It's not as good,
but it's cold.

In May of 1963,

he and Vlad Lehovich
landed in Vietnam

as young Foreign Service
officers.

When we arrived,
there was a pretty small

American military
commitment.

A lot of them
were senior people

who weren't that
enthusiastic to come here.

The younger folks were.

We thought it was the most
exciting place in the world.

"Some things about Vietnam.

I enjoy the drama
of the helicopters,

with the air being slapped
at by the rotor blades

and driving hard
against you.

These scenes,
so common to me now,

are still
thrilling moments,

"although I would not dare
admit it to anyone here."

We formed a little clique.

Your dad was the youngest.

This was to be our war

and the beginning
of our careers.

Your father wanted to contribute
to the American war effort,

which at the time
he believed in.

"September 15, 1963.

As you can see, there's
something different about the delta.

I'm fast deciding
that's perhaps

"the most supremely unlivable
place I've ever seen."

My father was sent
to Soc Trang,

a dangerous province
in the Mekong Delta

where he was the only American
civilian working in the region.

And he thrived.

He was assigned
to the pacification program,

an American civilian
initiative

to help win the war.

My 22-year-old father worked
with the local villagers

building schools
and developing agriculture.

Your father very quickly
understood

that if you couldn't
pacify the country,

in other words, politically
mobilize the population,

break it away from
the Vietnamese Communists,

produce an economic
solution,

no number of soldiers were
going to solve the problem.

The Mekong Delta

was the perfect place
for him to begin his career.

Rather than being
stuck in an embassy

in some junior role that
would have driven him crazy,

he was right where
the war was happening.

And he saw very early that
the senior people in Washington

and maybe in Saigon
weren't getting the truth.

He would go out
on a helicopter

and see the results of
last night's Vietcong raid.

He saw the bodies.

He saw the houses destroyed.

Good to see you again.

Meanwhile, a week later,

Robert McNamara
comes on a big tour

and he can see McNamara
asking the wrong questions,

getting wishful answers...

...and not wanting to know

what was really happening.

"The information written
by one person

in this crazy situation
cannot be properly used

by someone 12,000 miles away
to arrive at decisions.

Reports lie, ma vieille,
they lie.

This was a big part
of who he was.

Don't make those
kinds of policy decisions

that are driven by lack
of connection to reality

and that are wholly
ideological.

"I do not know the solution
to our present difficulties

in South Vietnam, but I think I do
know the nature of the problem now,

and I'm constantly amazed
that so many military men

who have been here
for many months

"can so miss the facts
in front of their eyes."

Dick had absolutely
no inhibition

in talking to anybody
of any level

in a very blunt way.

Some of it was bravado,

but some of it was doing
something that he did very easily

and with remarkably
little of the kind of inhibition

that young people
usually have.

He wasn't prepared to just
be another bureaucrat.

He wanted to understand
what was going on,

to meet those
who made decisions,

and to be able to influence
those decisions.

And so he was in
the middle of the action.

He was rubbing shoulders
with generals,

figures from Washington,

the great figures who he admired
intensely from the American press.

Your father really related
to these people,

and they in turn
went back home to Washington

and said there's an awfully
bright young man out there

named Richard Holbrooke.

Starting first
with the republic.

We were in a conference
one time

and somebody
was bloviating

about the next great project
that's gonna win the war.

A large surge in the later
part of the period.

And I couldn't understand
what it meant.

I walked out and Holbrooke's
standing in the doorway

and I said,
"What does it mean?"

He says,
"It doesn't mean anything."

It wasn't often that
you could get some guy

who's supposedly on the team

to tell you that
it's a lot of hot air.

"And I remember saying to
somebody, "Keep your eye on this guy.

He's gonna be Secretary
of State one day."

You know, there's always this
thing about his ambition.

Was any of that evident
to you as a little brother?

This guy, for instance.

Was this guy ambitious?

You know, he wrote an
autobiography when he was 14.

At the end, he writes,

"Most people write
their autobiographies

after they're famous.

I'm writing mine
before I'm famous."

You know, I look at these
pictures. I love this one.

Look at him.
It's great.

He wants to make sure
he's in the picture.

- He does.
- Doesn't he?

I love that you're sitting
in your father's lap

while he holds
the cigarette.

- What was he like?
- Incredibly - nice person.

He was a doctor.

You know, he actually wanted
Dick to be a physicist,

and used to always say to him
that he expected him

to win the Nobel
in physics.

When did he start
to get sick?

Do you remember?

Well, my father
was sick with cancer

for seven years
before he died.

"Dear Dad,
I hope you're feeling fine.

I assume by now
you're about perfect again."

He died in '57?

Mm-hmm. He had just
turned 43.

He talked very little
about his father,

which I think
had to have been

the most
formative experience.

- My parents met at Brown.
- University on a blind date.

He was a good student.

I was the better student.

He was interested
in two fields...

Diplomacy
or journalism.

He went to work for
the "Brown Daily Herald."

And in 1960, he convinced
the paper to send him to Paris

to cover a peace conference
between America,

Russia, Britain,
and France.

It was shut down after
a few days

and legendary "New York Times"
man James Reston

told my disappointed
19-year-old father,

"Whether you go into journalism
or the Foreign Service,"

you will always be able
to say, 'I started my career

"at the worst diplomatic
fiasco ever held.'"

The "Times" did not
offer him a job.

And the State Department,

the Foreign Service,
did offer him a job.

So that was
an easy decision.

"October 11, 1962.

Remember, what is true
in foreign policy

is also in this case
true in love.

"Inaction, inactivity is as
much an action as action itself."

I got on a plane one day

and arrived in Vietnam.

We decided we still
loved each other.

We wanted to get married.

My parents were married
in Saigon

in a civil ceremony,

but lived there for less than a year
before my mother moved to Bangkok.

They decided to evacuate
all the American dependents.

That's in February of '65,

by which time
I was pregnant with you.

So funny to see him
doing fatherly things.

Actually feeding me.
And that just seems weird.

"Darling Litty, I'm afraid
you may not be getting"

such a good deal
as you think.

It might be a life
with a guy

who just can't be home on time
for dinner every night

and who does sort of
unexpected things,

and who sometimes won't
pay attention when he should,

and other times gets all
tangled up in some point

which is not
of any interest to you.

"And sometimes is just
inconsiderate."

In the summer of 1966,

a young family moved
to Washington, DC,

and my father went to work
in the White House

focusing once again
on pacification.

And your father
passionately believed

that pacification
was A, necessary,

and B, being done
absolutely the wrong way.

"November 1966,
returned to Vietnam

after an absence
of five months.

I was first struck by how
little things have changed."

"All emphasized
the glacial pace

at which real events
happen in Vietnam

"as opposed to the wild fluctuations
in mood that grip the US government."

I mean,
that's vintage Holbrooke.

- Yeah.
- It's just so trenchant.

It's well-written.
It's saying things

that Foreign Service officers
are not supposed to say.

He's taking a dig
at the entire US government

at the age of 25.

And this is going
to the White House.

A question still hangs over
us, never quite answered.

What did it all mean?

Behind the continued debate

about whether the war
could have been won,

a debate that will never
be resolved,

lies another question
of even greater importance...

What are the lessons
of Vietnam?

I'll endeavor to offer a brief
personal answer to my own question.

As they say, the following
does not necessarily

represent the views
of the US government.

There was nothing wrong
with our cause in Vietnam.

Those of us who signed up
or were sent there

did not question our goal,

but sometimes even
the world's greatest power

can't achieve its goal.

When we send
our young men and women

overseas to fight
for their country,

we must be sure
they're really fighting

for our vital national
security interests.

And so we failed
the first test.

Our beloved nation
sent into battle

soldiers without a clear determination
of what they could accomplish

and they misjudged
the stakes.

Success was not achievable.

He learned the need
to establish some relationship

between our military objectives
and our political objectives.

He wasn't opposed to the use
of military force,

but he was opposed
to the use of military force

to which you couldn't assign
a political purpose.

So he became convinced

that the war
had to be ended.

When President Johnson
decided to try to end the war

by negotiating with
the North Vietnamese,

my father secured a spot
on the American delegation

and my family moved again.

In Paris, the politicians

have been talking about ending
a war, the Vietnam War.

He was sitting there

as the president was sending
negotiating instructions

to our team of negotiators

including the most famous
Americans of his age,

living and working
side by side with these people

who had a real sense
of history.

But there was always a
restlessness about your father,

no one thing
trapped his mind

and kept it focused.

The truth of the matter is,

the Paris peace talks
have achieved nothing.

The delegates still turn up,

make accusatory speeches,
and leave.

Is this really what he wants
to do all his life?

And in the meantime,
the war goes on

and the casualty lists mount.

The conventional career ladder
wasn't for him.

In 1969, he got
a fellowship at Princeton

and my brother
Anthony was born.

A year later, he was named head
of the Peace Corps in Morocco.

He's always described
as supremely ambitious.

Was that clear throughout
your marriage to him?

- Yes.
- What was he like as a husband?

Absent a lot.

He changed, I think, after
he divorced your mother.

In what way?

I think he got
more and more

self-absorbed.

I went to his first
TV interview.

It was in Washington
for a local station.

Some woman came up to him
after we walked out

and asked him
for his autograph.

And I remember distinctly
he looked so happy

and so pleased
with himself.

You got a sense
of a mind recognizing

that there were bigger
things ahead.

I met him during impeachment
summer of 1974.

Your dad was, like, legendary
to me at that point.

He was Holbrooke.

Wait, he's 33 years old.

How in the world can he be
legendary at that point?

- What had he done?
- That's a very good question.

But he had size.

When people
talked about him

they would say, "Did you
see what Holbrooke did?

Did you see
what Holbrooke said?"

- Early on in the 1976
- election,

he joined Jimmy Carter's
campaign,

which led to a senior job
in the administration.

- He was the youngest Assistant.
- Secretary of State

in American history.

He was well known
as this kind of

dashing diplomat
in the State Department.

We met for three and a
half hours this morning.

And he was known as kind
of a loose cannon.

There was a lot of broken
china along the way.

He was impatient.
He irritated people.

And he stepped
on a lot of toes.

And he was right about
a stunning amount of stuff.

He could do a level
of analytics

around big things
and small

which no one else did.

There's nothing on Earth

like vitality.

Every time he walked
in a room,

it would be more questions,

more energy for the answers.

We would enter the room
in the middle of a dialogue

and exit in a different
dialogue.

When we would travel, he would
have friends within two minutes.

It would be the guy
who was selling the buns

on the street
would be his friend.

He would find a joke
in any language.

Was that because he wanted
to connect with these people?

Or was it innate
curiosity as well?

Maybe he was creating
families.

- No, I've felt that for myself...
- You think?

...that there was that sense
of creating a family around him

because he was always
on the go.

How angry
were you at him?

How much of your life?

Frustrated
more than anger.

But I don't think
I have that rage.

And I think I realized I had
to figure it out without him.

- And for me it was...
- Did you tell him?

Probably not.

I don't think I was
that self-aware.

I just think I was trying
to muddle through in a way.

But when I had
my own children,

when I had my kids who wanted
to see their famous grandfather,

wanted to get
a sense of that,

and he didn't have the time

or the energy
or the ability, that...

That frustrated me more.

Talking about George Bush.

President Bush.

In fact, I've been
with him in Germany.

He... George Bush, Sr.,
for example,

is going to Berlin
July 4 of this year.

What's up, Cyrus?

- Ah! Hi, buddy. How you doing?
- Good.

Yeah, this is my studio,
which I've fixed up.

- It looks great.
- This is Dad's book.

You remember, Dad had enough
copies to build the Berlin Wall.

You open the closet and
it's bricked in, the wall.

- Copies of the book.
- It was just Dad's book.

How'd he sign it?

"Ambassador Dad."

Ambassador Dad.

Ambassador Dad.

The most interesting
things I've learned

about Dad's work
were things I learned

from sitting quietly while
he talked to other people.

He never considered it
worth his time to tell me...

- Just me, just me...
- Sure.

...a story when he could tell
that story to a wider audience.

It was about him
so much of the time.

But let's be honest,
it was more interesting.

His life was often
more interesting than mine.

Who's not gonna come
meet Nelson Mandela?

Go hang out till 2:00 A.M.
with Will Ferrell?

Yeah, I'm going.

Willie Nelson's tour bus
when he did the Colbert thing?

Yeah, going into
Willie Nelson's tour bus

and do a bong hit
with Willie Nelson.

Dad goes and sings
on "The Colbert Report"

something about
ice cream.

We need some spoons,
I think.

- Spoons?
- Yeah, spoons.

All negotiators
carry their own spoons.

My father traveled to more

than 180 countries
in his lifetime.

And every few years
he'd take us with him.

In 1993, we went to a remote
region of Tibet...

Only the eighth, ninth,
and tenth Westerners to visit.

He was thrilled to share
this adventure with us,

but also had another reason
to get far away from home.

It was six months into
Bill Clinton's presidency,

yet my father still had not been
offered a role in the administration,

and the constant speculation
was enormously frustrating.

I remember going through
real anguish with him

after Clinton was elected

and your dad was kind
of shoved off to the side.

There was always
too much opposition

to him for any senior job.

It was never
that people disputed.

Dick Holbrooke's abilities.

The issue was what trouble
would he cause.

Les Gelb and I,
in our eminent wisdom,

were telling him
just drop out.

Don't let yourself
be humiliated.

He wouldn't do it. And he
was smarter than both of us

because all he knew
was he had to get in there

and then his ability
would lead the rest of the way.

Welcome to "Today"
on a...

Not long after we returned
from Tibet,

I became a producer
at the "Today" show,

and my first week on the job,
my father was a guest.

On "Close-Up"
this morning, Germany.

The new US ambassador there,
Richard Holbrooke.

- Today marks his first official day on the job.
- Hi, Bryant.

Your appointment must have had
some special significance for your mother.

Well, it did.
She was born in Germany.

My grandfather served
in the First World War

for the Kaiser and even won
the Iron Cross.

My mother was brought up
in Hamburg

and left with her family
in 1933.

My father had read
the book "Mein Kampf."

And one month after
Hitler was elected,

he decided to get
away from Europe

and we went to Argentina.

The family was Jewish.

Absolutely, but my father
wasn't very religious.

Not at all, actually.

When she was 18,
my grandmother Trudi

left Argentina
for America.

Trudi, Dick's mother,
was very forward-looking.

They wanted to be modern.

They wanted to be American.

And the Jewish background

was just one of those things
of the Old World.

She and Dick's father said we're
gonna leave all this behind us.

That's nothing but trouble.

- Little more than a year after.
- Dick went to Germany,

I asked him to come home and be
Assistant Secretary of State for Europe.

The whole idea was to make

this newly free Europe
after the Cold War

united, democratic,
and peaceful.

And the Balkans were
the big obstacle there.

In 1984, Sarajevo
hosted the Winter Olympics.

Eight years later,
the city was at the center

of a horrific civil war
and under siege.

- Roger.
- David!

- Hey, welcome back.
- Hey, man, how are you?

Roger Cohen was
the Sarajevo bureau chief

for "The New York Times"
during the war.

Yeah, all this was
completely destroyed before.

When was the last time
you were here?

Well, it's amazing to me.

I haven't been here
for 16 years.

I mean, this place
haunted me.

I just couldn't
come back here.

- This was all destroyed?
- Oh, no, this was just completely destroyed.

This was a wasteland.

There were the shells
of apartment buildings.

There were people
living in them

and they were, like, raising
rabbits, you know, to eat.

Their kids were bicycling around
manically between the rooms

because they couldn't
go outside.

Now we're emerging onto
what was known as Sniper Alley.

The Serbs were in
Grabovica here to the right

and there were certain cross
streets where they had a clean shot.

You would just get onto this
stretch and you would just go.

This is where my father would
stay when he came to town, right?

Yeah, yeah.

He hated being just in
the diplomatic bubble.

That's why he would,
whenever he could,

you know, he would try to
mingle, try to get a sense

of what people were feeling,
what people were thinking.

He did not believe in
sitting in an office

in Washington
and pontificating.

And he didn't think you could
understand Bosnia without coming here.

Not for a moment.

Two years before my father

was appointed
as Assistant Secretary,

he had traveled to Bosnia
as a private citizen.

He saw the war
in its early stages

and wrote about it
in his journal.

"We are going blind
into a war zone."

A moment ago we heard
machine-gun fire

"and smoke is rising
in the near distance."

"The town just ahead of us
has life in it,"

but an air of tension.
Little sound.

"No one raises
their voices."

At a time where most people
were trying

to hightail it away
from Bosnia,

he traveled
to the Balkans.

That was certainly
the most brutal year

Europe had seen
since the Holocaust.

There were actual concentration
camps and rape camps

that had been established where
simply on the grounds of ethnicity

or religion folks were rounded
up in the hundreds,

in the thousands,
and systematically brutalized.

The issue seemed from here
was pretty simple.

Yugoslavia had broken up.

The Serbs reckoned that
Bosnia belonged to them.

They drove out
750,000 Muslims

in the first few months
of the war.

And they killed them
pretty systematically.

So far it's a victory
for the Serbs

under the charismatic
leader Slobodan Milosevic.

Milosevic was a high-powered
young Communist.

He was very, very smart.

And he was ruthless
in getting what he wanted.

- Greater Serbia.
- Yeah.

He was like a Hitler.

It was savage.

And the civilians
were targets.

And all hoped,
including myself,

that this would stop.

And then it didn't stop.

People here
are beginning to wonder

whether anybody out there
really cares anymore.

Imagine what it was like
to be seeing this

and people just were ready
to let it carry on.

The mantra of the world

was that this is centuries
of ethnic hatred.

We can't do anything
about it.

- And that was bullshit.
- Complete, yeah.

Because for decades these
people had lived together.

And it wasn't a civil war.
It was a genocide.

Mr. President,
do you not think

that the constant flip-flops
of your administration

on the issue of Bosnia sets
a very dangerous precedent?

There have been no
constant flip-flops, madam.

"There have been no
constant flip-flops, madam."

Ooh, baby. I just pissed off the
President of the United States.

I didn't really mean to,
but I'd been listening

to this sort of litany of how
great the Clinton administration

had been doing in Bosnia
and I'm like, "Really?"

I was up at the United Nations

and I saw more diplomats

from more countries than
any other American diplomat.

And they would come up
to me all the time

saying, "Why aren't you
people doing something?"

And I'm sad to say
that at the beginning

the Clinton administration
was slow on this.

As soon as my father
was sworn in,

he was pushing for more
aggressive American policy on Bosnia.

There are times
when the use of force

or the willingness
to threaten credibly

the use of force
is unavoidable.

In Bosnia,

confronted by a small group
of Bosnian-Serbs...

Not all the Serbs, but a
small group of Bosnian-Serbs

who are evil people,
genuinely evil...

Confronting true evil,

you had to be able
to stand up to it.

The phrase was diplomacy
backed by force.

I can remember lots of calls
from Dick saying,

"We have to refine
the exact terms

those sons of bitches
need to sign up to

or we're gonna whack them."

Richard understood
the only thing

that was going to change the
absence of a balance of power

on the ground
was military force.

But he couldn't snap his
fingers and send the air force in.

If use of force
was inevitable,

the Serbs were
the perfect adversaries.

Those guys helped
make the case.

This is the tragedy
of Srebrenica,

now overrun
by Bosnian-Serb forces.

By the summer of 1995,

Muslims basically were driven
into three safe areas

that had been declared
around Bosnia.

The largest one
was the town of Srebrenica.

The Serbs attacked
Srebrenica

and 10-15,000 men
tried to walk through

basically 20 miles
of Serb territory.

The first group
of refugees

expelled
from Srebrenica

arrived in Bosnian government
territory early this morning.

Hundreds of refugees are
arriving in Tuzla every hour.

I was working for the International
Rescue Committee in Tuzla.

And it wasn't clear
what was happening,

but Srebrenica
was being overrun.

International attention
has now turned

on the fate of thousands
of Srebrenica's men.

We definitely got some
of the first stories

as the refugees
emerged from the forest.

And we were feeding this
information back to our bosses.

And Dad is essentially
in on the phone call.

- You're calling in as part of your team...
- Yeah.

- ...and telling him what you're seeing?
- Yeah.

"Have you seen my son?",
pleads this mother.

"He was wounded and
then they took him away."

After these long days, we
would go back to the hotel

and basically scream at
everyone we could back in America

and tell them, "You
have to do something."

- Including our father?
- Including our father, yeah, yeah.

"I remember what he said. He
said, "I'm doing all I can, God damn it.

My paper is on
the president's desk."

I remember a very intense

and emotional meeting
in the Oval Office

in the aftermath
of Srebrenica.

There was a picture on
the front page that morning

of a 20-year-old woman
who had hanged herself

after a mass rape.

And at breakfast
that morning,

my oldest daughter
Karenna

confronted me
and said,

"What can we do
about this?

Why are we allowing
this to continue?"

8,000 Muslims had been
gunned down in cold blood.

And I think something
snapped at that point,

and at that point
you say to yourself,

"Okay, we've got
to take a gamble."

And what's the best
gamble around?

What's our trump card?

Dick Holbrooke,
you know?

"In early August,
the president decided

I would begin a last-ditch,
all-out negotiating effort.

The president was saying
this is it,

"the real and perhaps
last American push for peace."

He immediately felt

that he was a man
that didn't have a script.

He had an idea.

His idea was he was
gonna stop this war.

But how it was
gonna happen,

what cards we would
have to play,

how he would do it,

that was not a script
that had been written.

When Dick arrived,
we would talk.

"So what's the game plan?"

That was the whole thing

is that he had to create
the game plan.

There is no game plan
for something like this.

Mr. President.

When we first started,

we went to see
President Tudjman.

Mr. President.

That looked easy.

We flew to Belgrade

and we were whisked in
to meet Slobodan Milosevic.

Then we had to go
and see Izetbegovic.

So we had to get
to Sarajevo.

There was a discussion about
how would we get there

and could Milosevic
assure us safe passage

because Sarajevo
was surrounded.

But Milosevic said, "I
cannot guarantee your safety."

We're going to Sarajevo
through Zagreb later today

and we have nothing to say
on the talks.

So we decided we would
drive over Mt. Igman

from Croatia.

My father and General Clark

got into
an American Humvee

and the rest of of his team
followed behind

in a hulking French
armored personnel carrier.

"The Mt. Igman road
was often described"

as the most dangerous
road in Europe.

The roadbed itself
had little foundation

"and no reinforcement
along either side."

What's it feel like to
come up this road again?

Will always bear the
stigma of tragedy for me.

Our family was on vacation
in Wyoming

and I came in off the golf
course and got a call from Richard

saying that he and Wes Clark
were on the phone,

and they told me what happened
on the Mt. Igman road.

And I was heartsick.

The French armored
personnel carrier

slipped over the edge and plunged
several hundred yards into a ravine

where it detonated two
land mines and caught fire.

The vehicle
probably rolled

side over side
maybe 25 or 30 times.

And then it caught fire
and blew up.

Three brave, brilliant,
fine Americans,

career government
officials

who were devoting their lives
to the cause of peace

in this part of the world,
have died in this accident.

I remember when my father
called that day

and he was very upset

and he said, "I'm okay,
but it's been horrible."

These three people mattered.

We will miss them
unbelievably.

The country realized that what
we were doing was important

and we had to succeed.

It also reminded people
that, you know,

it isn't just soldiers
in battle who are in danger,

that diplomacy in dangerous
areas is inherently risky.

I'm going back to Paris

with our reconstituted
team tonight.

If this peace initiative
does not get moving,

one way or another,
NATO will be heavily involved

and the Serbs
don't want that.

- "As I woke up,
- I turned on CNN

and heard terrible news."

- The timing was deliberate.
- It always is.

"A Bosnian-Serb mortar
shell had killed

at least 35 people in
a marketplace in Sarajevo."

The busiest hour
of the day

in the busiest place.

"Watching the small screen
fill with scenes

of new carnage, I wondered if
this was a deliberate response

to my public warnings
the day before.

And the key question...

"What would we do
in response?"

As Sarajevo slept,

NATO warplanes
began the bombardment.

The city skyline
became silhouetted

against the relentless
explosions of missiles

finding their targets
with unerring accuracy.

If anyone doubts
the resolve

of NATO
and the United States,

they should only look
at what happened last week.

He knew that he had to say
to the Serbs, "Enough."

And I remember once
he was going to Belgrade

to see Milosevic.

We look forward today

to important and productive
talks with President Milosevic.

And the bombing was supposed
to resume the next day.

And he thought to himself,
"Should we stop the bombing?

'Cause I'm gonna see him.
Will this send the wrong signal?"

And then he thought,
"No, the signal we must send

is this is not gonna stop.

I'm coming to see you. I'm
gonna hit you at the same time.

See how you like that."

That's having the balls
to say to the guy

who'd been the strongman
of the Balkans,

"You finally met somebody
just as tough as you."

You're gonna have dinner tonight
in Belgrade with President Milosevic.

- Do you trust him?
- My job isn't to trust.

My job is to negotiate.

One time he called me
from Milosevic's office.

"Hey, man,
I mentioned to Slobo

that you're a big
Cuban cigar smoker.

And I asked him
if he would give you some.

He said he would
send you a box.

But I wouldn't believe him

"because he lies
all the time anyway."

Then he said to him, "Don't
you lie all the time, Slobo?"

The one time I had lunch
with Milosevic,

I thought he had the coldest
eyes I'd ever seen

and I was glad
that Holbrooke was there

to try to bring him around.

Day three of Richard
Holbrooke's latest Balkan shuttle,

his third capital
in as many days.

The grinding work

of being the action officer
for stopping a war

is brutal.

We're going to go to Zagreb
and see President Tudjman.

We're going to go to NATO.

We have to get
to Rome tonight

- and we're on a very tight schedule.
- It was pretty tough.

We have to go see
President Izetbegovic.

We got a very tight
time schedule.

You might sleep on
the aircraft for 10 minutes.

We're very tired.
That's a short statement.

People were keyed up for it.

All the real issues
are finally being negotiated

for the first time
in 16 months.

When he showed up,
it changed the story completely.

We're talking about the map,
about constitutional issues,

about economic
reconstruction.

It just gave so much heft,

and then the intellectual brilliance
of being able to push this through.

Of course
we are making progress.

I think we've made
a little progress.

Milosevic realized
he could not prevail.

Thank you. I will report
to President Clinton.

That we were not going
to permit it

and we weren't going to allow him
to continue to kill people at random.

I'm pleased to announce
that the parties in Bosnia

have agreed to a cease-fire.

And that's basically
what got us to Dayton.

The most unlikely location
to make peace

from the most savage of wars.

A bleak air force base
in Dayton, Ohio.

The idea to take these guys

out of this poisonous well
of history into America,

that was genius.

This war was all about
a terrible, poisonous past,

and no country
rids people of their past

and allows them
to begin anew

as much as
the United States does.

If Dayton

and the peace process
do not succeed,

the country will slip
back into war.

There was tremendous
pressure on him.

He was in the hot seat.
There was no daylight

between him and what
he was trying to accomplish.

The most bitter
of enemies

will sit down
with negotiators

to try to bury
their differences

as they have their dead.

I think by then
your dad had traction,

and that's a fearsome sight,
Holbrooke with traction.

Did you think going into Dayton
that it was going to work?

Not really.

The setting of this dinner
was so spectacular.

It certainly demonstrated
that the US

was not a country
to be trifled with.

Typical of Richard,
it was a piece of theater.

He told me very directly,

"Kati, you have to make Milosevic
and Izetbegovic talk to each other."

This was my first diplomatic
assignment from my new husband.

But much of the evening, they were
each looking in a different direction.

Toward the end of the dinner,
as a desperate woman,

I said,
"How did this war start?"

And Milosevic said,

"Mm, I didn't expect
it to be so long."

And at that point
Izetbegovic piped in with,

"Me neither."

And then they
started talking.

By the end of dessert,
they were calling each other.

Slobodan and Alija.

Milosevic and the Serbs
had been the aggressors

throughout the war,

yet Alija Izetbegovic, the
founder and president of Bosnia,

had made recent gains
in the battlefield

and was deeply conflicted
about making peace.

What is your sense

of how your father
felt about my father?

I understood that.

- "Day three, Friday,
- November 3.

A new problem arose.

An intrepid young 'Christian Science
Monitor' journalist David Rohde

had set out for Srebrenica

"hoping to write a follow-up
account of its fall."

Srebrenica had kind of
fallen off the map

and I was specifically frustrated,
to be honest, with your father

'cause he stopped talking
about this atrocity

which I thought was even
bigger than I had reported.

On October 29,

showing more courage
than wisdom,

he began digging near the
presumed site of a mass grave.

I had been in once,
found them, gotten out,

and reported the story,

and I decided to go
in a second time.

Big mistake.

Not surprisingly,

he was picked up
by Bosnian-Serb police.

As Dayton opened,
he was missing.

I gave the Serbs
a bargaining chip

because they had me and they
accused me of being a spy

and they insisted they weren't
going to let me go.

"I told Milosevic that while
we would continue

to discuss the issues,
no agreement would be possible

"at Dayton unless Rohde
was found unharmed."

To my amazement
and embarrassment,

he told Milosevic
he was gonna stop the talks.

That he personally
was responsible

for the safety
of David Rohde.

"Milosevic was astonished.

'You would do all this
for a journalist?'"

- The correspondent for.
- "The Christian Science Monitor"

was greeted warmly
by diplomats.

It worked. I'm here today
because of your dad.

- Saturday,
- November 18, 1995.

Negotiations have
a certain pathology.

A kind of life cycle

almost like
living organisms.

At a certain point, which one
might not recognize until later,

the focus and momentum
needed to get an agreement

can disappear.

Something can happen to break
our single-minded commitment.

We worried that if we were
still at Wright-Patterson

over the Thanksgiving
holiday,

only a few days away,

it would create the impression
we had stayed too long

and accomplished
too little.

- I remember at one point.
- Milosevic

was worried whether Dick
had the right fortitude.

And he came up to him and
in this heavily accented English

"he said," Question is,

Richard Charles
Albert Holbrooke,

"do you have balls
to finish this deal?"

- He said that to my father?
- Yes.

And I was standing there
and I looked over at Dick

and Dick didn't answer, but,
boy, did he take it on board.

After 20 days,
the talks were faltering.

The obstacle to an agreement
was Izetbegovic

and the Bosnians, who remained
reluctant to make peace.

Your dad, thinking
that we needed a visual

to convince Izetbegovic,

created this sort of
poster-sized board

on all the gains
that the Bosniaks had gotten.

Izetbegovic kind of shrugged

and the thing gets left
on the side of a couch.

But apparently it was left
in such a way

that any visitor coming next

could see what it was
on the side of the couch there.

Milosevic turned out to be the
next visitor to see Izetbegovic,

he happened to look
over there and he said,

"Wait a minute."

Milosevic saw the poster
and was furious.

55% of the land was being
given to Bosnia and Croatia,

which violated a key
principle of the talks.

The split was supposed
to be 51-49.

The map had to be redrawn.

Chris Hill and your father

were running back and forth
in these negotiations.

He would run up and down
the hall saying,

"He's just agreed.
No, he said he's not agreeing."

And then we had the Croats.

Keeping them on board
was important.

I came
to the American parlor.

And your father
had in a hand

champagne

and told me

we finished negotiations.

I told him, "Richard,

I want to see the map."

The map was terrible.

The problem was as the Bosnians
fixed the map,

they gave historic
Croatian land to the Serbs

rather than their own land,
and that was never going to fly.

I refused. I refused.

Finally tonight,

the US negotiators gave all
of the parties that deadline...

Finish this tonight
or else pack up and go home.

Tudjman insisted
that Izetbegovic

put some land
on the table, too,

and Izetbegovic would not
accept the deal.

"Sometimes Izetbegovic seems to
want revenge more than peace,

but he can't have both."

The Serbs committed
terrible crimes

and they were going
to be rewarded for it.

The absence of justice.

That kills you, really.

The Bosnian peace talks
in Ohio collapsed overnight.

Three weeks after
their first handshakes,

the bitter enemies were locked
in nonstop arguments.

The United States has already
told the Balkan delegations

the talks will end
in a few hours.

"Time had run out.

We had to see Izetbegovic.

'There are 700 journalists
waiting outside the base, '

"I said, and we needed
an answer immediately."

Izetbegovic was a man
under pressure.

He was carrying alone

the weight for the survival
of his people and his nation.

"There was a long,
agonizing pause.

We watched Izetbegovic
carefully.

No one spoke.

Finally,
speaking slowly,

Izetbegovic said,
'It is not a just peace,

"but my people need peace.'"

- To people who doubted.
- American leadership,

they saw it once again
in Dayton.

To people who doubted the
American commitment to human rights,

they saw it in Dayton.

And I am personally very proud
to have been part of it.

- I remember the first time.
- I came back here after Dayton.

The first US troops
were arriving.

And I got in my jeep
and I drove out

of this city
I loved and hated,

and I just drove straight
out of town past the airport.

People were clearing
away roadblocks.

I couldn't believe it.

It's a tough peace,
but it's a peace.

Four years of hellish war.

The three presidents agreed to an
astonishingly comprehensive plan.

It's a hell of a job.

I think people ought to take
a moment and say,

"This is something
really historic."

I really do not know

that any other political

or diplomatic figure at the
time could have done this.

The attempt
to destroy Bosnia

was over.

But Milosevic
was still in power.

And by 1998 he had turned
his malevolent attention

to another country
in the region.

In 1998 you called him back
to help with Kosovo.

Someone told me it was like
Holbrooke-Milosevic round two.

That's exactly what it was.

After my trip to Bosnia,

I drove to a small town
in Kosovo.

More than anywhere I went, I can
see the result of my father's work.

Armed and ready,
these villagers in Kosovo

have been preparing for a civil
war in which they would fight

for their independence
from Serbia.

These men were fighting
the Serbs

when my father came to see
them in this farmhouse,

a visit that changed
the course of the war.

This is an attempt to find out
what is going on inside.

Oh, my goodness.
Wow, look at that.

Today, they consider
my father a hero.

Your father and his father.

That's your father?

Because three years
after Dayton...

After exactly 11 weeks
of bombing,

the Serbs will lose
all control over Kosovo.

...Milosevic's reign
of terror was over.

Anyone who has a chance
to do something

which results in lives
that are not destroyed,

refugees are allowed
to return,

and a tremendously dangerous
situation is brought under control

can feel pretty
good about it.

Richard Holbrooke has just
authored the book.

"To End a War."

He left the government
and wrote

a best-selling account of his
diplomatic success in the Balkans,

which was optioned
to make into a film.

Remember he had this great line
about who he wanted to play him?

Yes, Denzel Washington.

He returned to Wall Street

where he had worked
in the '80s

and enjoyed his new level
of celebrity.

Your father was larger
than life in so many respects.

People have thousands
of Holbrooke stories.

Hillary would rather
tell stories

about traveling
with Holbrooke

than relive all of our most
important family reunions.

He just was so intent
upon making his case.

And I'd push open the door
to the ladies' room

and he follows me in
and we're in Pakistan.

I turn around and say, "Richard,
do you know where you are?"

He looks around and says,
"Oh, my. Oh, my."

He was frustrating

at the same time
that he was endearing.

But with all the chaos,

all the attention
somewhere else,

I never once
had any reason to doubt

the total commitment
of his friendship.

He was a genius
at friendship.

You talked about
being a great friend.

Did you guys ever talk
about being a father?

Uh, yeah. Sure.

What did he say?

Well...

you asked.

Uh, you know, he wished
he'd been a better father.

Yeah, I think he did.

I'm not sure he knew
how to do that.

When I was about
eight years old,

my parents took me
to a striking new complex

that had recently
been built in New York.

These buildings,
my father said,

would become the most
important in the world.

They would prevent
future wars.

By now he's done Germany,

the European desk
at the State Department,

Bosnia, and Kosovo.

And I thought he needed
a new challenge.

So I asked him to go
to the UN.

My father did not live
to see how his dream

for the UN dissolved in the face of
the harsh realities of the Cold War

and the inadequacies
of the UN system itself.

But I never forgot
the initial visit

and my father's noble
if overly idealistic dream.

Excuse me.
I'm sorry.

Despite its many
problems and failures,

I still believe
in the importance,

indeed, the necessity
of the United Nations.

The UN job brought him
back to New York,

which was his favorite
city in the world,

and he made the ambassador's
residence a high-powered hot spot.

He used the social
platform to the max.

We'd lie on the bed
like two generals

moving armies around a map.

Only instead of armies,
they were people around a table

because Richard believed that
the key to a successful dinner

was in the seating.

It was very important
that Nelson Mandela

always have movie stars around
'cause he got a kick out of that.

And that Robert De Niro had
somebody talkative next to him

because he's not a talker.

Do you think about him
a lot in this job?

I think about him,
I would say, most days.

Your father recognized
that we do carry

inordinate responsibilities
as the leading superpower,

and that often the United Nations
went places so we wouldn't have to.

And so it is uniquely in
the United States' interests

to try to get the most
out of this flawed body.

Eventually he got
the US to pay its bills.

The security council
took on HIV/AIDS.

And it was Richard.

He changed the dynamics.

He placed it right
in the center

of UN discussions.

My father loved being
at the United Nations,

but ever since high school,
there was another job he coveted.

How close was he to becoming
your Secretary of State in 1996?

Well, I never considered appointing
anybody but him or Madeleine.

President Clinton said
he had two choices

for Secretary of State...
My father or you, of course.

Did you ever feel
he was a rival or vice versa?

Well, I didn't look
at him as a rival,

but I was
Secretary of State.

I've always wanted to ask you
this, Mr. Vice President.

If you had won in 2000, would he
have been your Secretary of State?

- Well...
- I want to know.

I will say most people
were justified

in believing that he
was first in line.

What do you think it was that he
never got this job that he really wanted?

He was so close so many
times, it seems, in a way.

I can empathize.

If you had been elected, would he
have been your Secretary of State?

Well, I can't imagine
anybody else.

In fact, when President Obama said,
"I want you to be Secretary of State,"

I said, "Oh, no, no, no.
What about Richard Holbrooke?"

Two days after
the 2008 election,

my father did interview for the
job with President-elect Obama.

It was a 30-minute meeting.

He went in there
and he did his thing.

Including saying to Obama,
who greeted him as Dick,

saying back to him, "Would
you please call me Richard?

It's very important
to my wife."

He said, "My wife Kati
feels so strongly

that people call me Richard."

And, I mean, like, the
president can kind of call you...

- Whatever the hell he wants.
- ...whatever the hell he wants, right?

He told me that and I said,
"That's a joke, right?"

You didn't
really say that?

I said, yeah,
you didn't really say...

He says,
"Oh, yeah, I did."

And Obama, by the way,
told others about that.

Once again my father did not
appear to have a job

with the incoming
Democratic administration.

So he did
what he had done before

and got away from Washington,

joining my family and me
in Telluride, Colorado,

our favorite place
to be together.

Yeah!

You got that
with the cap off

because, I'm sorry, but I'm
only doing that once today.

There's no second take.

He was funny and warm.

What do you hope for 2009?

That Kitty

gets as tall

as you.

- Okay.
- But that will never happen.

It was both our best

and last time together
in Telluride.

A few weeks later,
he accepted a job

in the Obama
administration.

I next have the great
personal pleasure

of introducing the special
representative

for Afghanistan
and Pakistan.

Ambassador Holbrooke will
coordinate across the entire government

an effort to achieve United
States' strategic goals in the region.

- When he started he said,
- "Dave, I think I know how

to be Secretary of State. I could
make a great deputy to you."

But he thought that he now had
the hardest job in the administration.

Well, I think by many...
Many metrics, he did.

I thank you
for your confidence

in offering me
this daunting assignment.

It's an extraordinarily
moving thing

for me to return
to this building again

having entered it
so many years ago

as a junior
Foreign Service officer.

To me, it was like reappointing
him to do Bosnia.

They gave it to him
because it couldn't be done.

I also have to thank Kati,

my two sons
David and Anthony,

for coming down
here today.

And I hope that I'll be able to see
you sometime in the next few years.

He sent me a text
at 12:00 midnight.

"If you're up."
I said, "Yeah, I'm up."

And he said, "Well, you
know, I've been offered this job."

In his own words, I was
the first person he called.

He called me at 6:00 A.M.

Vali Nasr and I have never
been able to determine

which one of us
got the call sooner.

He created this
all-star staff,

grabbing people from outside the
government, inside the government.

You know, one case
was like a USDA staffer

who sent him a blind email
proposing how to revolutionize

agriculture in southern
Afghanistan. Holbrooke hires him.

It was so typically Richard.

It was, "Okay, this is a big,
thorny problem.

We need everybody
inside the tent

and everybody trying to figure out how
we're gonna maneuver our way forward."

I often looked at our team
sort of like his chessboard.

Every one of us had
a very strategic role

and we were there
for a specific reason.

I was the NGO guy, and
it was one of the first times

they'd ever brought in
an NGO czar on a team.

He brought me in to help rethink
the whole Pakistan question.

I was a point person on
seeking a political settlement.

The way that he envisioned
our roles

is we, the outsiders, would
be bringing in a fresh lens.

The first thing
he said to me

is that I want you
to learn nothing here.

He thought the government
was not very good

at producing fresh ideas.

He was brilliant
and demanding

and extremely loyal,
and petulant,

and it was all true
in the course of a day,

in the course
of an hour.

They wanted
something different.

They needed someone to dive
into a "Mission: Impossible."

And the hope was that
this could be

what the Balkans
was to him earlier.

- But it was so different.
- It was different in every way.

And I think none of us
could have possibly bargained

for just how difficult
it would be.

But he, at the very least,
knew the history well enough,

knew the legacy
of the graveyard of empires

enough to go in, I think, knowing that
in some ways it was a suicide mission.

My father had been traveling
to Afghanistan since the '70s.

And exactly three years
after he died,

my eldest daughter
Bebe and I

went there to better understand
what went wrong on his last mission.

A fourth wave of attacks
is underway on Afghanistan.

Strike aircraft have been
launched from their carriers

in the Arabian Sea.

I was here when the bombing
started in 2001.

The Taliban collapsed very
quickly and they were finished.

There was an extraordinary amount
of goodwill on the part of the Afghans.

And we squandered that.

After the little golden period
after the Taliban left

when everything
seemed possible,

the United States
failed to explain

to the Afghan people
what they were doing there.

As civilian casualties
became a dominant issue

and the US made no adequate
explanation of why we were there,

things began to turn
in an unpleasant way.

By 2006-2007, the Taliban
were back in a big way

and mounted the first
big offensives.

When your father
came in 2009,

that's what he inherited.

He inherited at that point
eight years of neglect

and of mismanagement.

This is tough work. It's the
toughest job I've ever had.

There was a big gap
in our military commitment

and our diplomatic
commitment in Afghanistan.

If we didn't make
a full press

on the diplomatic front,

we wouldn't know whether
or not there could be

some kind
of negotiated ending.

The military
dominated everything.

Everything that we did.

And so for your dad
to show up,

you know, this high-energy,
brilliant, funny,

engaging diplomat
who knew the region

and was just ready to, like, push
everybody else out of the way,

it was just...
It was really great to see.

It was like, "Wow, man, we
got, like, the A-Team here again."

Tell me what you saw
and heard

and did it cause you
even greater concern?

Caused me to wonder
about my sanity.

In the spring of 2009,

the White House ordered
a comprehensive review

of US strategy
in Afghanistan.

There was this big review.
Are we doing the right thing?

Do we have enough resources?

Should we get out?
Should we go in deeper?

I insisted on a thorough
review of our strategy.

Dick was deeply involved in
the deliberations starting in 2009.

I've seen
a lot of these things.

This is the most thorough,
the most sustained,

the most thoughtful
process I have ever seen.

This review is now complete.

And as commander-in-chief,
I have determined

that it is in our vital
national interest

to send an additional 30,000
US troops to Afghanistan.

Your dad kept his cards

extremely close to his chest
on the surge.

Everybody suspected that
he had strong feelings about it,

but he never spoke in any
sort of group session about...

About where he personally
came out on that.

I'm not gonna get
into public debates.

I'm not gonna go
in that direction.

He wouldn't speak publically
about his private thoughts

on US policy
for Afghanistan,

but he was sharing
them with a journalist.

Bob Woodward was writing
a book about the war

and convinced my father
to meet with him secretly.

I knew your father
for 30 years.

And the deal was
he would be candid.

It's all on deep background.

I can use it, but not say
where it came from.

Seeing he's no longer here,

I've asked myself the question,
what would he want me to do?

And you being his son,
I'm sure he would want

you to have access
to this material

that explains
what he was thinking

and what was going on in those
meetings in the White House.

We're eating.

- So...
- He wasn't optimistic.

No, but he was a diplomat.

You know,
you keep pushing

and, you know,
eventually you may succeed.

He wasn't spending
Sunday mornings over here

'cause he didn't
believe in this.

But he was also
a realist.

There is no magic formula
in Afghanistan.

There is no date and agreement
in Afghanistan.

It's going to be a long,
difficult struggle.

What went wrong here
and what's still wrong here,

I think your dad got that
very quickly.

And really one of
the central problems here

that's bedeviled this giant
project from the start is Pakistan.

We said it before
and let me say it again,

Afghanistan cannot
be stabilized

unless Pakistan
does its part.

- He's the first person.
- I ever heard say

that you couldn't think about
Afghanistan without Pakistan.

It was one problem.
He'd call it "AfPak."

What Richard Holbrooke
hoped to accomplish

was a grand bargain.

What he was thinking
of was let me figure out

what would be best for the
various parties in Afghanistan

and then see what Pakistan's
concerns were about.

And then get
all the major powers

that were involved in
the region to play a role.

Pakistan's interests
and American interests

run in parallel.

He was the first American
diplomat to go into Pakistan

and try to establish
a normal relationship,

to say, "We're not just using
you to get what we want."

The American people care
about the Pakistani people."

And that's what Pakistanis
were dying to hear.

As my father was trying to reset
the relationship with Pakistan,

his diplomatic efforts
were complicated once again

by journalist David Rohde.

I'm researching this book
and I make, you know,

the biggest mistake
of my professional career.

I let competition and ambition
get the best of me

and I go interview
a Taliban commander.

He grabs me
and I'm immediately taken

to the tribal areas
of Pakistan.

In his first meeting

with the president
of Pakistan,

your father said,
"Free David Rohde,"

and Pakistani intelligence
didn't lift a finger.

An American journalist
kidnapped by the Taliban

is in Afghanistan
and has made a daring escape.

We were held in a house
near a Pakistani military base

and make it to the base
while our guards are asleep.

By the time we get to Bagram
and the plane lands,

I'm sort of realizing
there's all these consequences.

And almost immediately
there's someone saying,

"Ambassador Holbrooke is on
the phone and wants to talk to you."

You know, I just...

I was so ashamed,
to be blunt,

and I, you know,

I...

I'm pretty sure my first
words were, "I'm so sorry."

And he...
You know, he didn't...

He didn't...
He was very kind.

And...

That was the beginning
of months of...

my best period with him.
My closest relationship.

'Cause I come back
to New York

and your father spends hours
and hours with me

saying,
"Who are the Taliban?

What do they want? How
do we negotiate with them?"

He didn't come in
to manage a war.

He came in
to finish this war

in a way that it would have
a workable peace

that would allow us
to get out.

And in his mind, we need to get
to a political settlement.

That's something that Richard was
advocating from the day we started.

And in the first year
of office,

it was a taboo word.

- Reconciliation?
- Reconciliation.

Because the mentality
of the Iraq War

was that we don't talk
to terrorists.

"And the military would say," If
you're going to talk reconciliation,

you already are throwing
in the towel."

He and I would say often you
don't make peace with your friends,

and we had to be open
to meeting with and talking to

and exploring with
the Taliban.

But it was a constant
uphill struggle.

When he would come over here
on Sunday mornings,

I mean, he would
be dragging.

And at the end of this
process, I remember him...

I was walking him out
the front door

and we're talking about this
overall effort in Afghanistan,

and I just inquired
what's kind of the bottom line?

And he said,
"It can't work."

Testing, one, two,
three, four.

Bob Woodward wasn't the only
one taping my father.

Monday, August 2.

Starting these tapes,

which I should have done
a long, long time ago.

Always aware of his
place in history

and planning
to write a memoir,

he started recording
what he really thought

about US strategy
in Afghanistan.

I am supporting direct
talks with Taliban.

They've indicated
a readiness to talk.

I'm sure they'll take
a tough line at the beginning.

That's what negotiations
are about.

Petraeus is strongly
opposing all this.

He says he wants to do it
only when the time is right,

which he says
will be next year,

by which time he'll have had
more military success.

Frankly, I just don't
believe him.

We used to refer to each other
as each other's wingman.

I was his military wingman.

I used to say that he was
my diplomatic wingman.

It was very much a term
of endearment, if you will,

or of respect.

The way your dad
always told it

was Petraeus
was his wingman.

He hated that wingman
reference, didn't he?

He hated being someone
else's wingman.

He was perfectly happy
having his own wingmen.

He wanted to make sure
that the civilians

should be dominant
in this process.

I told David Axelrod

that we had been dominated
much too long

by pure mil-think...

Military thinking
and military domination.

And while I had great respect
for the military

and Petraeus was brilliant,
I liked them as individuals

and they were
great Americans,

they should not dictate
political strategy,

which is what's
happening now.

I remember him saying
to me once... he said,

"Well, the concept is
that we're counterparts."

But he said the
difference is... he said,

"General Petraeus has a
lot of resources that I don't."

- Meaning planes and so on.
- Well, there was...

There was a difference. We were
delighted to give him a ride on the plane,

and ultimately we got
him a plane, actually.

The military was spending

more than $2 billion
a week on the war,

while my father had
$300 million a year

for a civilian surge.

He spent two million
of that

on this bustling campus
in the middle of Kabul.

The objective that we have

is to get these students
away from rote learning,

which they start
in first grade.

And to question things.

This is the reading room
for the students.

And we have
literacy programs.

To me, what Nancy has done,

it just makes you
proud to be an American.

One of our
major objectives

is to promote research.

His idea
of the civilian surge

to match the military surge

was exactly right.

We worked so hard

to try to not
just talk about it,

but actually deliver on it.

- Thank you so much.
- Okay. Thank you so much.

And I think if he were
able to be here,

"he would say," Look, we
made it some of the way,

but not all of the way."

It seemed another one
of the challenges in this

was his relationship
with President Karzai.

Well, I think Karzai
was always somewhat...

reluctant around Richard.

Somewhat even suspect

of what
he was trying to do.

President Karzai, who's not
necessarily corrupt himself,

but the Afghan government.

It's a predatory government.
It preys on its own people.

It drives people to the Taliban.
It sustains the Taliban.

And I think your father
understood that very quickly.

And he just went...
As he was won't to do...

He went head-on
into Karzai.

Ambassador Holbrooke
had a vision.

The vision has not been
lost sight of,

though there have
been setbacks.

When he first met
with President Karzai,

- he pushed.
- He did.

And can you explain to me
some of what happened then?

Well, there was a very
strong pushback.

This is not a country where
you can get anything by pushing.

There was a period of time

where President Karzai
wouldn't meet with him.

Didn't trust him.

I think this situation
didn't lend itself

to quite the same kind
of approach

as he had engaged in
in Bosnia.

He could browbeat
Milosevic.

He can't browbeat
an Afghan.

You can kill an Afghan
with cotton,

but never with a sword.

And did he
understand that?

It took him time.

This is the only country
that made Richard Holbrooke

rethink his entire approach.

They didn't know
what to do.

They were like,
"Oh, my God."

The guy that everybody's
been telling us is so great

for so long, he wears
these very fashionable capes

"and is very articulate, he
doesn't like our special envoy."

Now what do you do? I
think if you're the president,

you know, you're faced
with a choice.

You back your envoy
or you don't.

In March of 2010,

the president traveled
to Afghanistan,

but he left his special
representative to the region

behind in Washington.

I told your dad
that the president

was basically en route
as he was in the air.

And I'm pretty certain

that he didn't know
that it was coming.

We were working night
and day on this issue

and we only found out
when we saw the headlines.

I would acknowledge
that Ambassador Holbrooke

made some mistakes
early on.

But he recovered
from that.

A senior member
of President Karzai's team

"called me and said," President
Karzai wants to let your boss know

that the past is the past.

"That he wants to work
with him and he respects him."

So they made their position
very clear.

Unfortunately, they didn't
get the same message

from the administration.

Oftentimes they would come
back to me in frustration

and say, "Who speaks
for the US administration?

There are so many
different voices.

It's unclear to us
who we should be listening to."

You had
an organization chart

that made no sense.

You take somebody
and then you say

you're the AfPak
representative,

but you only report
to the Secretary of State.

It was portfolio
without power.

In the middle of the day I went
over to the White House

to see Tom Donilon,
who was extremely agitated

and kept saying,
"You're going too slow."

You don't have a strategy.

"The president's
very dissatisfied."

"I said," Tom,
we have a strategy.

You guys have never
let us lay it out."

That, of course,
got him even more agitated.

Dick and I had
very intense

policy debates
with each other.

We never minced words.

So, yes, there were
some issues.

Tom said things like,

"I'll write
my strategy myself."

An odd thing to say, because
he doesn't have a strategic sense.

So what he thinks is strategy
is actually political.

That really is the way
the White House thinks.

They don't have a deep
understanding of the issues themselves.

But increasingly,
they're deluding themselves

into thinking they do.

Holbrooke walked into
the apex of a trend.

Since John F. Kennedy,
the White House

has taken firmer and firmer
control of foreign policy.

But the highest level
of White House control

is the Obama White House.

Richard had set up
an interagency office

in the State Department.

Of course, no White House
is going to like that

because that's supposed
to be their job.

So that right away set up
a conflict with Doug Lute.

Lute was a very important
figure in the White House.

He kind of had the same
job your father had,

but he had broader
authority.

And they didn't get along.

And this again was part
of the, you know,

who's in charge?

Thank you for doing this.

What a pleasure to meet you.

It's a real privilege
to just

be able to reflect back on
your father's contributions.

Seems to me he never
really got rolling.

Did he make mistakes?
Did he... what happened?

Part of it is
the nature of the beast.

It's the nature of the task
that he was assigned.

You know, very candidly,
I'll tell you that

he had more
of a free rein

under... in the Clinton
administration

and perhaps expected

that same free rein
under Obama.

Well, I've spoken to several
people from my father's staff

who said that, actually, you
were opposing him at many turns.

I even read... somebody
said you were consumed

with trying
to foil Holbrooke

or that you were
driven by hatred.

I'm not driven by hatred
by anything or anyone.

You know, look, I've read
some of these same reports.

I haven't read
any of those reports

that are on the record from
people who would really know.

And it was a very personal
experience for me.

And I'm still, to a large
extent, unpacking it.

But I think the tensions
became at some point

a bit personalized.

And your father
was an outsize personality.

Look, he's tough
to work with.

I mean, you know,
I'm probably...

This probably comes
as no big surprise

to anyone whose last
name is Holbrooke.

He'd, you know, make
his own appointment,

he'd come in,
he'd close the door.

Typically put his feet
up on the desk, you know?

He was confident
edging on arrogance.

I mean, he knew
where he was going

and no one
should get in his way.

The ways he knew
how to do it

were "I'm going for it,
watch out for my elbows,"

and flattery.

And those two things
didn't work with Obama.

Obama is a cat.

You know, he's cool.

He ran into
kind of no drama.

They were very different
leadership approaches

and they clashed.

And he knew that he was
in the crosshairs.

You've written you saved
his job more than twice.

Tell me
what happened there.

Well, some of it was...

just disagreements,
policy disagreements.

But there were generational
and temperamental differences.

I would be in a meeting

and I would see Richard
making an important point

and having his hard-won
experience not understood.

It just wasn't
communicated in a way

that broke through
the resistance

to talking about Vietnam
in 2009.

- In some of the early NSC.
- Meetings with the president,

I referred to Vietnam
and was told by Hillary

that the president did not
want any references to Vietnam.

I was very struck by this

since I thought they were
obviously relevant issues.

I was constantly
interpreting for him,

translating, arguing.

It was very frustrating. It
was frustrating for me to see

and frustrating for him
to go through.

It stung him deeply.

It hurt him deeply.

He didn't want
to talk about it

'cause it hurt him
that much.

Today was a difficult day

because I woke up in the
morning feeling quite uncomfortable

and realized I was back
in atrial fibrillation.

Did not do the kind of work I
should have done over the weekend,

but that's par
for the course.

One can just feel
the growing tension

and pressure
in every direction.

I certainly can feel it.

He looked, you know,

like a shell of himself
in those last days.

He wasn't taking
care of himself.

He wasn't sleeping and
he was increasingly frazzled.

I've never talked about
this publically,

but in those final
weeks and months,

he was constantly
sending warning memos.

One of his very final
memos which he gave to me

to hand-deliver
to Secretary Clinton

because he no longer
trusted all of the staffers.

So he would hand-deliver
eyes-only memos

saying very, very bleak things
about our prospects in Afghanistan

and decrying the fact
that while military leaders

had the ear of the president
again and again every day,

Secretary Clinton had one hour
with the president each week

to cover all the topics
in the world.

And so in some ways it was
a practical critique

of a system he saw swinging
away from the civilian side

and towards power being in
the hands of the military side.

And in some ways it was a
very personal critique, too,

of his own shrinking voice
in the policy process,

which was
very hard to see.

There wasn't a week
that went by

that I didn't tell
him to leave.

I didn't say
get out tomorrow.

I'd say prepare a strategy
for leaving.

He would say,
"I can't walk out tomorrow."

I said, "For heaven's sake",

I didn't say you should
walk out tomorrow.

I didn't say that at all."
Then we'd argue about that.

But he'd purposefully
misunderstand.

- When he knew perfectly well also...
- He knew what I was saying.

And the writing was on the
wall, he just didn't want to read it.

No.

No, because
he was always hoping...

And this was part
of his nature, too...

That tomorrow there
would be a miracle

and Obama would like him
and everything would be fine.

Hillary has delivered
the all-important memo

to the president seeking
negotiating routes out of this thing.

Finally, the president
is focused on it.

Maybe we'll look back on it as one of
the most important memos we ever wrote,

but that remains
to be seen.

That's all for tonight.

The week that he died...

This isn't known,
but it's absolutely true

and absolutely tragic...

He was trying
to see the president

alone in the Oval Office

to tell him his strategy,

his plan for exiting
Afghanistan.

And he couldn't get in.

The meeting with Axelrod
went late,

and he was scheduled to meet
with Secretary Clinton

up in her outer office.

He was running late.

He came rushing in
and I was sitting on the couch,

and I'd saved
the big chair for him

where he always sat
when we had meetings together.

And, you know,
he was saying,

"I'm so sorry. I'm sorry.
First I met with the Pakistanis,

then I met
with the White House."

But that was
typical Richard.

It was like I'm doing
a million things

and I'm trying to keep
all the balls in the air.

And I was looking at him
and I just saw

this deep red flush
go up his face.

And I said, "Richard,
what's wrong?"

And he said, "I don't know.
Something's happening."

I said, "Well, you're going
to the doctor right now."

I rode in the back
of the ambulance with him

and we talked the whole way
to the ambulance.

- I was holding his hand.
- What'd you talk about?

I actually...
I wrote this down

because I was... I don't think
I had my BlackBerry on me.

I had this receipt from a Chinese
food restaurant in my wallet.

My notes are weird.

Just amalgam of...

You know, the first one was
call someone in Axelrod's office.

But then the next one was call
David and have him come down.

And then Anthony and...

He said, "Tell my kids
how much I love them."

Tell the staff that they're
the best staff ever.

"Make sure that
I don't die here."

I've got...

You said, "Make sure
that I don't die here."

Yeah.

"I want to die at home.

I've got a lot
left to do."

- Can I see?
- Yeah.

"Eric in Axelrod's office."
"David come down."

"I love so many people."
"Tell Les I love him."

But that's... it was the
"I love so many people"

that he kept
coming back to.

"Career."
This amazes me.

"Career in public
service is over."

"Don't let him die here."

"Die at home
with his family."

Veteran diplomat
Richard Holbrooke

has died after undergoing
multiple surgeries

to repair a torn aorta.

Richard Holbrooke
doesn't die.

Richard Holbrooke is alive.

Richard Holbrooke
is the most alive person

that any of us have ever
encountered and will ever encounter.

Oh, I was thinking
what a loss to the US.

What a loss to the world.

I was just undone.

I got up from the table
and went to my room

and found it very difficult
to see that night through.

I just don't think
any of us

really could believe
that he'd be gone.

I just thought
here we are in a time

when the world seems
to be coming apart again.

Why do we have to lose
the one person

who seems to be able
to put things together?

That's what I thought.

You know, I loved him.

All the things that people
ever criticized him about

reminded me of people
criticizing General Grant

for being a drunk
and Abraham Lincoln saying,

"Find out what he drinks and
give it to the other generals."

As I went around the world

working to understand
my father's life and legacy,

I often thought about
one of his favorite quotes,

which was from "Moby-Dick."

"I am tormented
with an everlasting itch"

for things remote.

I love to sail
forbidden seas

"and land on barbarous
coasts."

20 years after the war,
the peace my father forged

in the Balkans holds up,

tenuous, but real.

Spending time
in the region,

I was surprised not to find
any streets or buildings

memorializing my father.

However, there was this one
spot in Kosovo named after him.

Tricky Dick's.
Look at that, Bebe.

That's totally
his glasses.

Look at this.
Wow, he was here.

He just must have
been so happy.

I like that a bar
was named after him.

He feels like the last
of a kind somehow.

We live in an age where
diplomacy is almost a dirty word.

If you believe in diplomacy,
you're somehow

kind of wonky or feeble
or not tough enough.

But, no, diplomacy
is the only way

that you end wars
and spread peace

and give kids a future.

And your father
believed in that.

He was a diplomat.

- I want to thank.
- Willie Nelson,

Ambassador Richard
Holbrooke,

and Bobby
on rhythm guitar.

God bless America,
everybody.

Good night.