THE MILOSEVIC EXPERT

...At Dayton, the two spent countless hours walking the grounds of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base...

...Press accounts, while invariably noting his intelligence and diplomatic skills, are almost uniformly critical of his personality...

...Albright's staff tried to figure out the identities of the anonymous sniping generals (Marine Corps commandant charles Krulak is a major suspect), while friends and advisers tried to calm her, apparently without success...

...Architect of the Balkan debacle...

...If, for instance, Milosevic were to send a message to the Contact Group indicating his willingness to cut a deal of some sort, should the United States negotiate with him...

...After seven hours of futile negotiations, Holbrooke went to the roof of his hotel to do an interview with CNN...

...Privately, some staffers admit that many Senate Republicans simply don't like or trust him...

...Officially, Holbrooke is the victim of a dispute between the White House and the Foreign Relations Committee over a U.N...

...He's a terrible kiss-ass when he wants something," says a Helms aide...

...Holbrooke is also in the process of rewriting his prior perceptions of Milosevic...

...These days, virtually nobody is calling Richard Holbrooke foolish...

...To his credit, Holbrooke seems to be reassessing his own understanding of Milosevic...

...Even friends concede he can be an abrasive self-promoter...

...Two days later, the Post printed another, even more pointed attack on the secretary of state, headlined, "Albright Misjudged Milosevic On Kosovo...

...If they're going to push him, we're going to have a huge debate...

...unnamed four-star officers were quoted as saying they had never believed that bombing alone would force Milosevic to comply with American demands, but had agreed to carry out Albright's plan anyway because, as one put it, "we have civilian control over the military...

...We just don't think it is appropriate for the man who was the architect of the Balkan debacle to be representing the United States at the U.N...

...Which is odd, since as the clinton administration's longtime Milosevic expert, Holbrooke, the former special envoy for Bosnia and Kosovo, could be held as responsible as anybody for NATO's profound misreading of the Serb leader...

...Holbrooke has a remarkable number of enemies in Washington...

...Yet, so far the Washington Post has run no reassessments of Holbrooke's diplomacy...

...During an interview with C-SPAN, Holbrooke explained how he had prevailed in his negotiations with book editors: "They said, 'But, you know, if this book comes out and the wars resume, we're gonna look like fools.' I said, 'It's not gonna happen.'" Two years later, both Holbrooke and Random House have been proved wrong...

...Slobodan Milosevic, portrayed in Holbrooke's book as Machiavellian but responsive to reason, has turned out to be bloodthirsty and unpredictable...

...Look at the incompetents running the war, says Gary Hoitsma...

...In To End a War, Holbrooke describes "midnight steak and shrimp dinners" the two shared and sing-alongs they attended at the Officers' Club...

...James Inhofe of Oklahoma...

...Meanwhile, despite the publisher's fears, To End a War has been a great success...

...The war in Kosovo has only hardened Inhofe's position...

...Holbrooke knows he has a bad reputation, and has worked to make friends on the Hill...

...Helms, who "said this trip was all right...

...But he hasn't been, at least not in the press...

...Inhofe doesn't buy it...

...She should have just brushed it off...

...Less than two weeks after the NATO air campaign began, the Washington Post ran a front page story explaining that military leaders at the Pentagon had known from the beginning that Albright's strategy in Kosovo was flawed, even ludicrous...

...They're not alone...

...Holbrooke, still flushed from his starring role in the agreement that halted the fighting in Bosnia, wanted to call his book, To End a War...

...Holbrooke might want to start sucking up to Sen...

...Holbrooke, he says, is the only one capable of screwing things up this badly: "He's the only one with intellect enough to be the intellectual author of the mess we're in...

...Literally...

...Before saying almost anything else, Holbrooke let viewers know he was "very grateful" to Sen...

...We're in the middle of one of the most controversial policy processes ever, and all of us have to be prepared to take a share of the hit, fairly or unfairly...

...arrears bill sponsored by senators Jesse Helms and Joe Biden...

...Clinton, ever flexible, has not yet decided...

...Albright is famously thin-skinned—she once told a biographer that if 99 percent of the press coverage she receives is positive, her goal is to "eliminate the one percent"—and, by all accounts, she was distraught over the Washington Post stories...

...For his part, Holbrooke, though technically no longer a part of the administration, has taken a much harder line in White House meetings, arguing that Milosevic is a criminal and that further negotiations of any kind would serve only to legitimize his rule...

...We're going to oppose the nomination," says Gary Hoitsma, Inhofe's press secretary...

...One of the more heated debates now taking place at the White House is over how to deal with Milosevic when the current bombing campaign ends...

...That's what life is like...

...Praised enthusiastically by critics, the book is about to be reissued in paperback...

...Eager to correct what in retrospect looks like credulity, Holbrooke reportedly is writing an epilogue for the paperback edition of To End a War that will depict Milosevic as a monster...

...Holbrooke hasn't been in an official policy-making position for years...

...Tucker Carlson is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...If his book's characterization of Milosevic seems at times close to affectionate, Holbrooke has said, it is only because he knew when he wrote it that he might have to negotiate with Milosevic again...

...So far, that's not what life has been like for Richard Holbrooke...

...Last month, he traveled to Belgrade for a last-ditch talk with Milosevic...

...Back in Washington, members of Helms's staff watched Holbrooke on television and laughed...

...Holbrooke's nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations has been stalled on the Hill for months...

...Shortly after Clinton nominated Holbrooke to the U.N...

...On the other hand, it's clear Holbrooke never considered him an irrational madman...

...None of this went over well at the State Depart- ment...

...War has erupted again in the Balkans...

...In title at least, he is merely an investment banker in New York...

...Random House, fearful of being overtaken by events in the Balkans, pushed for a safer title, Precarious Peace...

...Holbrooke and Milosevic never became friends...

...Holbrooke knows Milosevic better than perhaps anyone involved in the administration's Balkans policy...

...Again, unnamed Pentagon officials put distance between themselves and what the Post referred to as "Albright's war...

...This time, even the head of the cIA, George Tenet, went out of his way to disassociate himself from Albright, letting it be known that he had long expected Milosevic to step up the slaughter of Albanians if NATO bombed Kosovo...

...after dinner, they chatted over drinks at nearby Packy's All-Sports Bar...

...Holbrooke's explanation for his apparent change of heart over Milosevic is convincing, but it may not be enough to help him in Congress...

...Instead, the blame has fallen squarely on the hapless secretary of state, Madeleine Albright...

...In one now-famous Vanity Fair profile, Holbrooke's second wife, Blythe Babyak, described him as "the ultimate Washington nightmare husband," a person whose "idea of heaven was watching himself being interviewed on TV...

...Madeleine's upset about everything," says someone who knows her well...

...post, Inhofe called Helms and informed him that "under no circumstances" should he let Holbrooke's nomination out of the Foreign Relations Committee...

...At one point, Milosevic, an American pop culture buff, joins in a rendition of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy...

...She's secretary of state...