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Information in the 21st Century; Women Leaders; and Tracking Terrorists
An Interview with Madeleine Korbel Albright
Madeleine Korbel Albright served as the 64th Secretary of State of the United States from 1997 to 2001. She was the first woman Secretary of State and is the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. As Secretary, Dr. Albright reinforced America's alliances; advocated democracy and human rights; and promoted American trade and business, labor, and environmental standards abroad. Donna Scheeder, Deputy Assistant Director for the U.S. Library of Congress, had the opportunity to speak with Secretary Albright. Secretary Albright will speak to the SLA's convention in New York City on Wednesday, June 11, 2003, at 9:30 am.
Donna Scheeder: Good morning, Secretary Albright.
Madeleine Albright: Hi. How are you?
DS: I'm fine, thank you. We're very grateful that you're taking your valuable time to talk with us this morning. I took the liberty of doing a little research, and I've familiarized myself with a couple of your speeches, particularly the one from March 8, 2002, to the 21st Century Literacy Summit.
MA: Yes.
DS: You said in that speech that it was just as interesting to be the first American secretary of state of the 21st century as it was to be the first woman secretary, particularly because of how both the classroom and the workplace have gone global. Could you talk about that?
MA: Well, I think that clearly one of the great marks of the 21st century is the availability of information about ourselves and about each other. It's the major link in the way the international system can and should function. If you go back and look at our history.I've been reading John Adams, which is fabulous, but it shows how everything was different in terms of lack of communication between ambassadors and Washington, and how people operated completely on their own and without information. And some of my own studies when I was an academic concerned the role of information, or the lack of it, within closed communist systems.
So, the idea that all of a sudden we're living in a completely information-filled world is fascinating to me. In terms of studying other systems, for example, I was known as a krem-linologistwhich meant that you sat there and analyzed five words and tried to figure out if they were in a different order. Then, all of a sudden, everything opened up and there was just this flood of information, which meant that you had to look at things completely differently. You had to sort out from among a lot of information rather than trying to suck out from a little bit.
DS: You mentioned access to information. How worrisome is the potential for increased terrorist action now that so much government information is disseminated electronically?
MA: Well, I think that's one of the risks in terms of how much is available, but the question is how you limit it without limiting people's ability to operate in an information world. For example, we were very interested in dealing with the drug problem in Colombia. When I went down there, I was shown how all the information we had would make it easier to track a lot of those little boats that the drug dealers have. But the drug dealers could also figure out how they were tracked!
So, we need information as a government to track terrorists and to understand where their financial networks lead and who their contacts are and how they communicate with each other; but, at the same time, they have the ability to tap into our system. It's a double-edged sword, but we could not have the advantages of information sharing in the 21st century if we closed it all down.
DS: That leads me to a question about the aftermath of 9-11. It was clear that there were several breakdowns across government agencies with respect to information sharing. Do you believe that the creation of the Homeland Security Department solves this problem?
MA: Well, I think it goes a long way to helping it. We don't know yet how Homeland Security will work. It's going to be the biggest of the agencies and involves an awful lot of people who were in other parts of the government. All these people are going to have to learn to work with each other. Part of what has to happen is the breaking down of the culture of proprietary interests by different agencies or groups within the government.
DS: What were some of the obstacles you faced as secretary of state regarding information, and were you ever in a situation where the information you received was incorrect and was critical to what you were trying to do?
MA: I can't cite a case, but I'm sure it happened because, as I said, there's a ton of information out there. And one of the things that happens when high-level people in the government get informationintelligence informationis that we have a number of intelligence agencies. The Defense Department has its own intelligence
DS: DIA and CIA
MA: and the State Department right. And, part of what they have is conflicting. So you have to kind of triangulate. You have to compare a piece of information from one place with information from another place and come up with what you believe is the truth.
DS: I want to turn for a moment to your career. The information profession is made up in large part of women who work successfully in male-dominated environments, and, of course, you've broken tremendous ground in that area. Could you share with us any insights you have into your success in a male-dominated world?
MA: Well, you're going to have to read my book. [laughs] I think that what has to happen is that wewomenhave to develop our own voice. It took me a while to work my way through the system, and I did a lot of very different kinds of jobs and volunteer work that nobody might have thought would add up to accumulating a lot of credentials in different areas.
But ultimately what made the difference was that I had a really good education and worked very hard and took opportunities and made opportunities. I always kid about this, but it's true: I learned to interrupt. Women often sit in meetings and wait to be called on and never get a chance to make our points. So I decided that I would begin to speak out more and more confidently in things that I believe in.
DS: You mentioned in that address to the 21st Century Literacy Summit that the Internet is awesome because it helps people accomplish what they choose, but that our civilization will be defined by what people choose to do. What can information professionals do to help people make the right choices, or is that a political question?
MA: Well, a lot of it is political, but I believe that we are blessed by the access to information. This goes back again to my study of dictatorships and communist systems. What happens in those systems is that information is controlled in every conceivable way, which means that people are propagandized and have no way of finding anything out.
Take Iraq or North Korea, where people operate within hermetically sealed walls and, therefore, having alternative sources of information is really important. Now we have tons of it and people can access it from anywhere and feel a part of a much larger picture rather than feeling isolated. Part of the way that the international system will ultimately work is if people can be a part of it rather than being on the outside.
It's the people who are on the outside who are suicide bombers or who take terrorist actions. So, being in it, I think, is very important. In terms of decisionmaking, there's so much information that you have to figure out what is relevant and what is not.
I've seen another aspect of this since I've returned to teaching: I'm trying to figure out how to make students really learn, given the fact that there is so much information. I used to be one of these people who spent large portions of my life in the library with index cards, looking things up and writing them down. I felt as though the information had to go through me, so to speak.
And this makes me sound antediluvian trying to figure out what information was relevant to what I was doing was also part of the process. Now, you can click onto Google and the information just comes up in whatever order some dataset muck-a-muck has decided. So what I'm doing with my students is trying to get them to use informationnot in long papers, but to change it; to know the quality of the information being used, and to in some way go through the process. But I have to tell you it's a challenge, because it's an entirely new way of turning information into knowledge.
DS: We're really looking forward to having you talk to us in New York.
MA: I'm so excited about that.
DS: I think this discussion has proved that we have a lot in common, and we'll be looking forward to your insights on how information is changing the world.
MA: I'm delighted. You don't know this, but I did my dissertation on the role of the Czechoslovakian press in 1968, the role of information in change in communist countries. Then I did the same kind of study about the role of information in Poland. I've always been fascinated by how information affects societies in terms of people feeling empowered or feeling isolated, so this is right down my alley.
DS: Do you feel that the U.S. government is moving in the right direction in the balance it's trying to strike between access to information and national security?
MA: No, I don't. I'm worried about that. I don't know the answer, but certain aspects are making me nervous. I do know that in the long run the U.S. has always worked this out. You know, we've had periods like this before, and I'm hoping that various good principles will take over.
We are in a completely there's no way to overstate thiscompletely different atmosphere. I think we all have to learn, and I know that mistakes will be made, but I believe that with the good common sense Americans have, it will come out right in the end.
DS: Well, thank you very much. I'm looking forward to meeting you in June.
MA: Me, too. Thanks very much. Good-bye.
DS: Thank you, Secretary Albright.
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