But in today’s Washington, where everyone’s ethics seem to be on trial, Holbrooke may have been asking for trouble. Bill Clinton wants to make the combative veteran diplomat his United Nations ambassador, and Holbrooke’s on everyone’s short list to be secretary of State in a Gore administration. But his bulldoglike personality has made Holbrooke more than a few enemies on the way up. One injured party may have been an anonymous State Department official who sent a letter to the department’s inspector general last year claiming that Holbrooke violated conflict-of-interest regulations by using his State contacts to win business for Credit Suisse. Under ethics rules, that’s taboo for a year after resigning.
So began the saga that has left America without a full-time–and badly needed–U.N. delegate for eight months. Ironically, the mysterious accuser’s original charge against Holbrooke, involving contacts in Hungary, was eventually dropped. But it touched off a broader investigation by the State inspector general’s office, ““a full-scale gotcha game’’ that enraged Holbrooke, says a source familiar with his thinking. The IG interviewed more than 50 associates, including Holbrooke’s maid and Elie Wiesel. (The Nobel Peace Prize winner at one point had asked Holbrooke for help in obtaining visas for Bosnian children. Wiesel, who says he was ““surprised’’ by the inquiry, insists there’s ““no way’’ Holbrooke did anything wrong.)
Ultimately, the probe did produce an allegation of minor civil infractions involving the 1996 South Korea trip. The Justice Department alleges that Holbrooke, who had left State a month before, technically violated the rules against contacting State officials by suggesting that Laney join him in meeting President Kim. Holbrooke also crossed the line, the investigators said, in agreeing to a lunch arranged by Laney and by appearing with the ambassador at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Holbrooke is expected to pay a $5,000 fine soon to settle the matter, without admitting fault. He has said he did no business in Seoul, and Laney says he was invited to the ceremony not by Holbrooke but by Credit Suisse. In addition, neither Kim nor the foreign minister ended up seeing Holbrooke. Sources on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee tell NEWSWEEK that the dispute is unlikely to threaten Holbrooke’s nomination. State IG spokeswoman Linda Topping would say only, ““We’re doing our job.''
No doubt. But critics note that since last June, when President Clinton nominated Holbrooke, the U.S. has been getting outmaneuvered on the U.N. Security Council over Iraq, is unable to negotiate its U.N. back dues and is equivocating over how to salvage the bullet-riddled ceasefire that Holbrooke negotiated in Kosovo last fall. ““This is all part of the prosecutorial mania’’ in Washington, says Leslie Gelb, president of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. ““They’re making it impossible for people of ability to participate in public service.''
What’s unclear is why the State IG expanded the probe. Some Holbrooke supporters are peeved that Madeleine Albright, who beat him to the secretary of State post in 1996, did nothing to stop what they consider an out-of-control investigation. But others say she simply couldn’t–especially in the current climate of scandal in Washington.
Who fingered Dick Holbrooke? The identity of the letter writer may never be known. Despite cocktail-party chatter about the Albright-Holbrooke relationship, his antagonists tend to be not cabinet secretaries but bureaucrats–junior aides whom Holbrooke, in his zeal to get things done, can sometimes trample. That blunt approach came out in his negotiations to avoid even a token settlement, say Justice Department officials. ““I guess this is the famous Holbrooke arrogance,’’ says one senior official. The United Nations may soon be getting an earful of it, too–and with the French and Russians acting feisty on the Council, U.S. officials couldn’t be happier. Albright, says a senior State official, ““is increasingly frustrated she doesn’t have Holbrooke there.’’ That makes two of them.
