Madeleine Albright, the first woman to become U.S. secretary of state, has died

Madeleine Albright, the first female U.S. secretary of state, who served under the Clinton administration, has died.

Transcript

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

* Madeleine Albright has died at the age of 84. As the first woman to serve as secretary of state, she changed the face of diplomacy around the world. Her family said the cause of death was cancer. Albright was an outspoken American diplomat even after she left office. Here she was in 2012, upon learning that she would be receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: It took me quite a long time to find my voice, but I'm not going to be quiet now.

SHAPIRO: Albright was born in Prague. Her family fled Czechoslovakia, first from the Nazis and then the Communists. In the Clinton administration, she served alongside White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, who joins us now. Welcome. And I'm sorry for your loss.

JOHN PODESTA: Well, thank you, Ari. She was obviously a dear friend, and it's a huge loss for all of us who loved her, but it was a loss for the country, too.

SHAPIRO: How would you describe Madeleine Albright's approach to diplomacy and her view of the U.S. role in the world?

PODESTA: She was a fierce advocate for our country, but more profoundly for democracy, for freedom, for human rights. I think it came from her upbringing, from her and her family having to flee first Nazi Germany and then flee communism. And, you know, she just loved America. She won't she wanted it to live up to its ideals. And she projected that in every conversation I think she had with with foreign diplomats.

SHAPIRO: The New York Times quoted her as once saying, "everybody has their own style, and mine is people to people." Tell us what that people-to-people style looked like in practice.

PODESTA: Well, if you look, she was very straightforward, whether she was talking to the president or talking to a foreign dictator. She would just, you know, be extremely straightforward. And I think what that meant was that people trusted her. They knew that she was going to give it to them straight and that they could deal with her straight. If she gave her word, she kept her word. She had a coterie of former foreign ministers who served with her who she stayed in touch with for the last 20 years trying to provide advice to a younger generation of diplomats. And she was a great mentor to so many young women through her teaching at Georgetown and Michigan, Wellesley and other places.

SHAPIRO: I imagine those other foreign ministers were almost all men, that she stood out in that group.

PODESTA: (Laughter) It was Madeleine and her boys, she referred to them as. And, of course, yes, they were - every other one of them was men. And they all - she was the leader of the pack, though. They all respected her greatly.

SHAPIRO: She was a powerful leader. And tell us what she was like in more personal, private settings. Is there a moment, a memory that you'll treasure as you think back on the years you spent working with her?

PODESTA: Yeah. I was thinking about that. We used to travel overnight with the president on our overseas trip, and we shared a cabin. And we sometimes slept on the floor of that cabin in the morning to try to get a few hours sleep before we go into meetings. She'd gig me and say, people are going to say we're sleeping together. So, you know, she just had a...

(LAUGHTER)

PODESTA: She just had a wonderful sense of humor. She was - she lit up the room. She loved being in Aspen, in her home state of Colorado, where she had grown up, and would love to sing, would love to, you know, regale in stories. And, you know, people just loved being with her.

SHAPIRO: And she continued to play an active public role after her time in government. I mean, she wrote an op-ed about Vladimir Putin as recently as last month. Tell us about her post-administration life.

PODESTA: Well, you know, she stayed as an active adviser to, you know, mostly to to Democrats. But I think that to - I think if you asked Secretary Rice or President Bush, maybe not so much with President Trump, you know, they often reached out to her to get her advice. And, of course, she was very, very close to President Obama, to Secretary Clinton. And as you noted, just a month ago, she wrote an op-ed in The New York Times that the West had to stand up to Putin's aggression. The last time I talked to her really was about that and how much I admired what she had written. And she said to me, you know, there's a lot going on in the world. And that was indeed true. And we'll miss her voice in those debates.

SHAPIRO: John Podesta was chief of staff in the Clinton White House and worked closely with the late former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who died today at 84. Thank you for remembering your friend and colleague with us.

PODESTA: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.