Madeleine Albright, the first female U.S. secretary of state, has died of cancer, her family said Wednesday. She was 84.
President Bill Clinton chose Albright as America’s top diplomat in 1996, and she served in that capacity for the last four years of the Clinton administration.
At the time, she was the highest-ranking woman in the history of U.S. government. She was not in the line of succession for the presidency, however, because she was a native of Czechoslovakia. She was a native of Prague.
“She was surrounded by family and friends,” her family announced on Twitter. “We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend.” It said the cause was cancer.
Madeleine Albright remained outspoken through the years. After leaving office, she criticized President George W. Bush for using “the shock of force” rather than alliances to foster diplomacy and said Bush had driven away moderate Arab leaders and created potential for a dangerous rift with European allies.
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Madeleine Albright was born in 1937 in Prague, Czechoslovakia and immigrated to the United States with her family in 1948 as a refugee in the aftermath of World War II.
Her family fled to Britain in 1939 to avoid the Nazis and then the United States nearly a decade later to escape the communists’ grip on Czechoslovakia.
Madeleine Albright was a member of the National Security Countil and pushed for NATO expansion eastward into the former Soviet bloc and helped lead the NATO bombing campaign in 1999 to halt ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President Barack Obama in 2012.
