THE SECRETARY'S OPEN FORUM

As delivered

Alan, thank you very much.

In addition to thanking and welcoming all of you who have been able to come out today to listen to Leon and perhaps enter into a conversation. I would like to particularly thank a number of people for being here. First and foremost, Lynn Fuerth, Leon's wife, and one of their many, many daughters, Eve, who is a colleague of Patty's at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID.) Also, several members of the crack Fuerth Team at ????? OVP are here. I am glad you could be here as well, particularly Ann Woolston who has been such a good friend and colleague of mine and help to my efforts to track Leon down and get him on the phone and see him in person over the last several years.

I can start by assuring you that if Madeleine K. Albright were not at about 35,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean winding her way back to Washington from Korea, she would be here today at this podium now introducing our guest. That's because of her extremely high personal and professional regard for Leon. But mine is fairly considerable as well, so I am glad to have a chance to fill in for Secretary Albright on this occasion.

In fact, given the premises for Leon's appearance today, we should probably begin by emphasizing that this is where he spent an important, informative, and I hope basically, happy part of his career. Leon spent eleven years as a Foreign Service Officer. In fact, pay attention, Hal, I am going to mention you. He spent two of those years working on the staff of Hal Sonnenfeldt, when Hal was the Counselor of the Department of State. I haven't asked him, but I am sure that Leon would confirm that Hal was the second-best boss that he ever had. In any event, after his 11 years as a Foreign Service Officer, Leon then went to work on Capitol Hill where he quickly established himself at the right hand of a certain Congressman from Tennessee.

I would like to share with you an anecdote, if I could, about how my own path first crossed with Leon's. It was almost exactly 27 years ago, I think it is relevant to today's events in several respects, not least because Ambassador Zuzul and a team from the Embassy of Croatia are here to listen to somebody who I know has been very good friend to them. This took place in November of 1971. I had just arrived literally several hours before in Yugoslavia to take up a post as a journalist working there and Leon was a junior officer in the U.S. Consulate in Zagreb, which of course was then a constituent republic of the old larger Yugoslavia. Leon and his wife Lynn were legendary then and subsequently, I might add, for having by far the best contacts in the local community in Zagreb and particularly among the youth.

Therefore, it was not surprising that Leon, or perhaps it might have been Lynn, first got a tip-off from some friends that the students at the University of Zagreb were about to stage a protest demonstration and go on strike against the Tito regime and in support of the nationalist leaders of Croatia. The immediate outcome was fairly brief, decisive, and rather violent. Many of the students ended up with their heads being cracked, quite a number of them in jail. The Croatian nationalist leaders were purged. A number of those went to jail and Tito lived on for another 8 or 9 years presiding over what seemed to be a very high degree of ethnic harmony in Yugoslavia.

Now, I site this story as backdrop to what I think is perhaps the most vivid of Leon's many contributions to U.S. national interests. Slobodan Milosevich, the most egregious personification of the most virulent strain of Balkan nationalism, is no longer the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in no small measure because of the steady, quiet, determined work that Leon has done over the past 8 years. He has done that work and much, much more in several capacities -- as National Security Advisor to the Vice President, as a member of the Cabinet-level Principals Committee of the National Security Council, and as a member of my personal favorite committee, the Deputies Committee of the NSC.

But, and here is the point that I really want to stress, he has done this work, he has made this contribution in his personal capacity. Never mind what title he has, he's done it by sheer force of his intellect, his conscience and convictions, his capacity for hard, often invisible, often thankless work, and the respect that his colleagues hold for his judgement and his values. There are a lot of other areas where he has made a lasting mark -- the Middle East, the Gulf, peacekeeping, and when necessary, war fighting, and in providing counseling to both his immediate boss and to his ultimate boss on some of the toughest issues of our time. I'd also note that Leon has been the virtual one-man secretariat for the bi-national commission that has greatly enhanced our country's ability to interact productively with the Government of Russia. Thanks in large measure to Leon's personal leadership, that commission, which has had one American co-chair and six Russian co-chairs, has been an innovative, productive, and sometimes absolutely indispensable mechanism for advancing our nations' interest in recent years.

Finally, I would just say that I am glad that in the midst of all that he has done for all of us and for his country, Leon has found time to be an extraordinary friend to many of us, including Secretary Albright and myself. So, ladies and gentlemen, friends and colleagues, I hope you will join me in welcoming home to the State Department, Leon Fuerth.

Thank you.

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