“My Good Friend” Richard

Originally published Dec. 14, 2010

Yesterday Ambassador Richard Holbrooke died in Washington at the age of 69.

However one feels about him, Richard Holbrooke certainly made his mark on U.S. diplomacy. He probably will be most remembered for his fashioning of the Dayton Peace Accords that brought the barbarity of the Bosnian War to a conclusion, however uneasy and awkward, in December 1995.

My memory of Richard Holbrooke has a more personal aspect to it, though. Earlier that same year, in January, I was selected to escort a delegation of Albanian officials to the White House Conference on Trade and Investment in Central and Eastern Europe that was being held in Cleveland, Ohio. As a Foreign Service Officer, I was in Albanian language training at the time in preparation for my posting to Tirana that coming summer as Economic and Commercial Officer and so was the logical choice for the task.

Albania in 1995 was just a few years emerged from nearly half a century of the most rabid and isolationist form of Stalinist Communism and had nowhere to go but up. Trade and investment were two of the things the country most needed. And so I was excited to have my first real contact with some of the same people with whom I would be dealing when I arrived in-country and also to being in a position to help foster U.S. trade and investment with the country.

I’m sure everyone knows the term “herding cats.” Well, that was how I spent the few days of that conference, herding cats. Or so it seemed. While these were officials in such key state enterprises and ministries as those dealing with telecommunication, energy, trade, and finance, it soon became apparent that they really did not have much experience in dealing with international conferences. Or, for that matter, much interest in their areas of responsibility. More important pursuits, mainly to do with shopping and catching up on their sleep, with a little partying thrown in on the side, occupied their attentions that week.

I, of course, hadn’t expected that, and I would arrange meeting after meeting with American business people interested in doing business with, or investing in, Albania, and every time I would turn around to make the introduction, the Albanians would be gone.

“Look, these people really want to meet you and have something to discuss that is very important for you, so will you please meet with them? Just wait here for a minute and I’ll bring them over, okay?”

“Po, po, yes, yes, sigurisht, certainly.”

So I would get everything arranged, get the American party all excited, turn around . . . and the Albanians would all be gone again, as if vaporized into thin air.

Reminding that making these kinds of contacts was the reason they had been invited to the conference, for which the U.S. was paying, had no effect except to elicit more “po, po”s from the august men and women in the delegation.

Finally, it came down to the final evening of the conference, and it was planned to be a big night for all the countries in attendance, which included almost all the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. Each one would have a table to present its opportunities and advantages and be able to speak to a stream of business visitors invited to the event. Earlier that day I had actually gotten to shake hands and exchange brief pleasantries with President Bill Clinton, so this conference, and especially that final evening, was being given the full attention and backing of the Administration.

And when the time came, the Albanians all went shopping, and I was left to man the Albania table by myself. By that time I was so frustrated and upset with them I was literally muttering to myself.

It was then that Richard Holbrooke, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, walked up to me, reached out his hand, and cheerily said,”Hi, I’m Richard!”

To which I, in my befuddlement, and without even thinking, reached out my hand and, as equally cheerily as I could muster under the circumstances, replied, “Hi, Richard! I’m Frank!”

And at that moment of sudden realization, that moment in which I grasped with whom I was speaking and shaking hands, I saw my entire Foreign Service career evaporating before me in my mind’s eye. As a mid-level, not very senior officer, it was not customary to address an ambassador by anything other than “Ambassador” or “Sir” or “Madam,” much less someone as senior and renowned as Richard Holbrooke, much less by his first name. Picture my chagrin! Oh, the humanity!

But it quickly became apparent, as Ambassador Holbrooke, looking a bit off into space, began recounting that he had been to Albania once and what an interesting country it was and what he had seen there and on and on and on, that he actually thought I was Albanian. And I was not about to dissuade him from this idea. And I breathed a huge mental sigh of relief, and again when he finally finished up and wandered off to the next country, FYROM or Romania or Slovakia or whatever it was.

Later, when I recounted the incident to my State Department colleagues, they burst out laughing. And from then on, whenever the occasion arose, they would ask me how “my good friend” Richard was. And to this day, that is how I think of him, as “my good friend” Richard.

As for the Albanians, they had a full night shopping and partying and sleeping, and I got a small taste that week of the frustration, and the all-too-common funny and sometimes not-so-funny stories, I would encounter in the coming two years, and since.

Farewell, Ambassador Holbrooke. You will be remembered for far bigger things than this. But to me this is what stands out, and to me you will always be “my good friend” Richard.

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