Kim Jong Il

Amanpour Omits Husband’s Work for Albright, Downplays N. Korean Famine

By Matthew Balan | May 12, 2008 - 13:50 ET

Christiane Amanpour interviewed former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, famous for her October 2000 meeting with North Korean dictator Kim "He’s Not a Nut" Jong Il, as part of her "Notes from North Korea" program, which aired on Saturday and Sunday evenings. During the segment, the CNN senior international correspondent failed to note how her husband, James Rubin, worked as spokesman and Assistant Secretary for State for Albright from 1997 until May 2000. Albright emphasized how "it's possible to have verifiable agreements" with the North Korean regime and how "negotiations need to be pursued actively." The Clinton administration that she worked for conducted negotiations with the communist dictatorship during the 1990s and signed a nuclear agreement with them, which the North Korean government violated by conducting a secret uranium enrichment program. So much for "verifiable agreements."

Amanpour did call the North Korean regime "a police state" and a "dictatorship" during her special, but she downplayed the communist government’s responsibility for the deaths of millions of North Koreans during a famine in the 1990s. [audio available here]

Albright Calls Bush ‘One of the Worst Presidencies’; RNC Responds

By Jeff Poor | January 10, 2008 - 16:34 ET

BookFormer Secretary of State Madeline Albright has been in the public eye as of late out promoting her latest book and attacking the Bush administration on everything from global warming to globalization. So much so, that the Republican National Committee has fired back in kind.

Albright appeared at a Barnes & Noble in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. on January 9 to discuss what she thought would be important for the next president to consider. She saved the best and worst for last - using harsh words to criticize President George W. Bush.

[Click Here For Audio]

"This is a purely practical point here, and I think there's a lot of work to be done" Albright said. "And I think the judgment is that this is one of the worst presidencies we've had and people will wonder what it is that the role of the vice president is."