PHOTO AP/RUTH FREMSON

Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright
talks with a reporter
during an interview in
her office at the State
Department in
Washington Monday,
Feb. 3, 1997.

Madeleine

ecretary of State
right's tragic family

MICHAEL DOBBS SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

short, plump woman with closely cropped black
hair and pale blue eyes sat in the front row of
a news conference in the American library
in Prague, staring intently at Madeleine
Albright. It was 1994.
The woman clutched a letter in her hand. She showed
little interest in the weighty foreign policy issues being

Michael Dobbs covers the State Department for the

Washington Post, from which this article was excerpted.

addressed by the visiting U.S. ambassador to the Unit-
ed Nations. Her mind was occupied by the sorts of fleet-
ing observations about health and appearance and the
effects of time upon a face that relatives have about one
another. "What fashionable black stockings Madlenka
is wearing today," the woman thought, as discussion of
the Czech Republic's transition from Communist dicta-
torship to free-market democracy whirled about her.
"They go well with her high heels."
Dagmar Simova searched Ms. Albright's face for a sign

of recognition. Any sign of recognition. They were first
cousins. They had lived in the same household decades
ago, as children in exile from a world at war. As adults
they had lost touch, divided by the Iron Curtain, although
they had met up once briefly in Prague, after the fall of
the Berlin Wall. Even after that reunion, however, a dis-
tance persisted in their relationship. When Ms. Simo-
va had heard that Ms. Albright would be in Prague again,
she had decided to seek her out in person. Occasionally
during the news conference, the P:thassador would glance