NBC's Andrea Mitchell Recalls Hillary's Heroic, Yet Giggly China Trip of 1995

February 16th, 2009 4:33 PM

NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's first official trip to Asia on Monday's Today, and she couldn't help recalling Mrs. Clinton's trip to the United Nations summit in Beijing in 1995: "Starting today in Tokyo she will cover 21,000 miles in seven days....In Beijing her reception will be a lot friendlier than 15 years ago when as First Lady, Clinton provoked the Chinese by campaigning for women's rights."

As you can see from a photo that appears in Mitchell's memoir Talking Back, Andrea and Hillary didn't find the whole trip too unfriendly. Hillary wrote: "To Andrea who helped make our trip a lot more fun!"

Mitchell added this caption in her book: "Sharing a joke with First Lady Hillary Clinton en route to Mongolia after the Beijing women's conference in September 1995."

Mitchell also found space to praise President Obama in her Hillary story: "In Japan alone, she will find so much excitement about Barack Obama that Tokyo's biggest newspaper sold eight million copies of his Inaugural address and in a first, they even printed it in English."