60 minutes rewind madeleine albright has been on the job for a few weeks now and washington
is already used to the idea of addressing the country's top diplomat as madam secretary but
when we dropped in on the new secretary of state last week we found she's still getting used to
the idea do you ever pinch yourself every morning you know sometimes you wake up and you think well
i just had a nice dream do you think it's really true you know and so it's a little bit like that
somebody said to me early on do you realize that you have thomas jefferson's job
and that kind of a little uh oh there yeah yes well this entire hall is filled with
former secretaries of state and it gives you a great sense of history and uh i have to
and to think that i'm now at the end of this line what do you want people to know about you
i actually i want them to know everything about me i am somebody who who likes to have people know
about me i am not a secretive person one thing about albright that is no secret is that she came
to america as a child a refugee whose family fled czechoslovakia twice first from the nazis then
from the communists but there were some things about her life that even albright didn't know
until just a few days ago with the opening up of czechoslovakia and with my naming as secretary
of state there has been some very compelling information that the washington post found
that my family was indeed of jewish origin and that my grandparents may in fact have
died in concentration camp and this was all unknown to you totally i was raised catholic
and my parents uh were very political and saw the story uh as one or their explanation to us was
that they left for political reasons what albright claims she just learned is that two and possibly
three of her grandparents were rounded up by the nazis and taken to auschwitz where they die at the
time albright her sister and parents were refugees in london her parents never told her that they
had converted to catholicism in the 30s and only told her that her grandparents had died in the war
this new chapter in our family history has come as a surprise to albright who had been very close
to her parents particularly her father joseph corbell a czech diplomat who was serving at the
united nations in 1948 when the communists took over in prague were you very serious as a as a
young girl a young woman yes i was i remember the war distinctly we were in london during the blitz
i remember what it was like to come out of the airaid shelter and see london bombed and then i
was sent to school in switzerland by myself when i was 10. so i was pretty serious i think i was
pretty boring in high school i was very i was a foreign policy wonk even then your sister says
you're a lot more fun now i think i am i think i am i hope to i hope i am i know that fun for you
is working hard but you have to do something to get away from this i have a farm not far from here
and nobody would ever recognize me on the farm as i uh play around in my garden barefooted and
i go to the movies and i knit but there's an awful lot to do you're having fun at it yes
so far so good young madeleine corbell as a new immigrant tried to have fun too but her father
maintained a certain old world outlook believe it or not my father used to follow me on dates
he would let the poor boy drive me to the dance follow us and then insist that we be driven home
and to this day i will never forget the mortification of when he's made me get into
his car while my date followed me home and then invited this poor boy in for milk and cookies
i didn't see that boy again and a chat with him that too albright says she tried to be less
protective when raising her three daughters they were there in the oval office last month holding
the family bible when albright was sworn in as secretary of state the senior cabinet member
and the country's top diplomat so help me god so help me god congratulations madam secretary
in her new job madeleine albright is moving straight ahead in washington's fast lane
but she's been in the public eye for the last four years when she served as
ambassador to the united nations there she stood out from the pinstripe crowd
how many times have you seen the macarena at the security council
you certainly weren't the typical diplomat at the united nations you were known for being outspoken
some even said that you were at times undiplomatic is is that just the way you are or was that
a deliberate tactic well first of all i truly do believe it's important to say what you think
and albright often did exactly that in the usually stuffy confines of the u.n she told off the french
the comments by the french defense minister are very ill informed and counterproductive she warned
saddam hussein let it be absolutely clear to the iraqi government that a repetition of its past
mistakes will be met by my government with the same resolve as before she threatened haiti's
military leaders you can depart voluntarily and soon or you can depart involuntarily and soon and
she used an undiplomatic spanish word to express her contempt for the way cuban fighter pilots
boasted about shooting down two unarmed american civilian planes last year frankly this is not
cojones this is cowardice her boss president clinton called that the best one-liner in his
administration's foreign policy and it reflected something else that's different about madeleine
albright she's willing her critics say too willing to send american troops into foreign conflicts
she backed using american military force in haiti in somalia in rwanda and in bosnia rather than
feeling that it is wrong to interfere i always believe that if you can stop something early
and you can show the support of free countries for those who are under totalitarianism
then it's worth doing that's my mindset there are a lot of people who would read that as
your willingness to put american military men and women in harm's way the ability of america to
marry force and diplomacy is something that is very important to the maintenance of our values
and i think that we have to be very very selective when we think about using our military
but we can't be afraid to diplomacy was not in her career plan in college she covered politics
for the student newspaper and wanted to become a journalist three days after graduation in 1959 she
married joseph albright a reporter and heir to a newspaper fortune but his job stood in her way one
of my husband's editors actually said to me honey you may want to be a reporter but you can't be on
a competing paper and you can't be on the paper that your husband works on so why don't you find
another career and i did and i didn't fight it so you could have been a journalist i could have
could have ended up covering the state department well i could have and i could have asked nasty
questions do you get peeved at all when people focus on appearance rather than substance what
is noted uh what i have on or whether i'm going to have a facelift i think that kind of
gets me down i haven't had a facelift by the way the story will continue after this
albright had her first children twins in 1961 but she was determined to have a career as well
she went to graduate school and got involved in politics she worked on capitol hill for then
senator ed muskey and then moved to the carter white house as an aide to the national security
council when you went to work for senator muskie your first paying job you're 39 years old you must
have felt you had a lot of catching up to do did you have a plan i never had a plan and i've said
this to a lot of young women is that the only plan i ever had was to try to use the knowledge that i
had work hard and have a good time um my version of good time which is which is to work hard
and make and make a difference as hokey as that might sound if albright's professional life had
a hokey storybook quality not so her personal life what would you say was the greatest setback
in your life well um a diversion from plan i must say was my divorce probably
in that i had not expected that and i had expected to continue in what i was doing and live happily
ever after you didn't see it coming i certainly did not know did that change you in some way
did it did you become more determined did you feel you had something to prove no i think it made me
more self-reliant though i think if it taught me anything it was to to rely on my own judgment
and to do what i needed to do for my daughters and for myself after the breakup of her 23-year
marriage albright got a job teaching international relations at georgetown university in washington
but she tried to teach the women in her classes something else to interrupt i found that as a
woman kind of working my way up in the government was that women often wait too long in meetings
to make their views known then all of a sudden some man says whatever it is that
you were gonna say and everybody thinks it's brilliant so i basically taught people never
to raise their hands and interrupt and i think that that's what women need to do
you