RICHARD C. HOLBROOKE BIOGRAPHY

RICHARD C. HOLBROOKE  -  Ambassador Holbrooke was nominated by President Clinton to be Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs, and he was confirmed by the Senate on August 25,1994. His most recent position, prior to becoming Assistant Secretary of State, was as U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Ambassador Holbrooke has had a varied career as a professional diplomat, a magazine editor, an author, a Peace Corps director, and an investment banker.

Ambassador Richand Holbrooke began his career in 1962, immediately after graduating from Brown University, as a Foreign Service Officer. After studying Vietnamese, he was sent to Vietnam and, in the following six years served in a variety of posts related to Vietnam -- first in the Mekong Delta as a provincial representative for the Agency for International Development (AID), and then as staff assistant to Ambassadors Maxwell Taylor and Henry Cabot Lodge. In 1966 he was re-assigned to the White House, working on the Vietnam staff of President Johnson. In 1967-69, he wrote one volume of the Pentagon Papers, served as a special assistant to Under Secretaries of State Nicholas deb. Katzenbach and Elliot Richardson, and simultaneously served as a member of the American Delegation to the Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam, Headed successively by Averell Harriman and Henry Cabot Lodge.

Following these assignments Ambassador Richard Holbrooke spent a year as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. In 1970 he was assigned as Peace Corps Director in Morocco. In 1972, he resigned from the Foreign Service to become Managing Editor of the quarterly magazine Foreign Policy, a position he held until 1976. During 1974-75 he also served as a consultant to the President's Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy, and was a contributing editor of Newsweek magazine. In 1976 he coordinated National Security Affairs for the Carter-Mondale presidential campaign.
In 1977, President Carter appointed him Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, a post he held until 1981. During his tenure, among other major events, the United States established full diplomatic relations with China. In 1981, he became Vice President of Public Strategies, a consulting firm based in Washington, DC and a consultant to Lehman Brothers, eventually assuming a full-time position as Managing Director at Lehman Brothers.
He also served as a member of the Carnegie Commission on America and a Changing World (chaired by Winston Lord), and chairman and principal author of the bipartisan Commission on Government and Renewal, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation and the Institute for International Economics in 1992.
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Citizens Committee for New York City, and the Economic Club of New York. Prior to assuming his current post, he was a Director of the Council on Foreign Relations, the America-China Society, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and the International Rescue Committee.
He is co-author of "Counsel to the President," the memoirs of Clark Clifford, as well as numerous articles and columns on foreign policy.

Ambassador  Richard Holbrooke was born on April 24,1941 in New York. He received a bachelor's degree from Brown University. He has two sons. One is a producer at NBC News; the other works in a refugee camp in Thailand.