I’ve been working on this profile of Richard Holbrooke for a couple days now, and it’s taken over my life. The topline: Holbrooke is power center of the Obama administration’s foreign policy, and the piece is a glimpse into how he works at the State Department and what it means. There’s a lot of anonymous quotes in this piece, and I simply don’t know how I could have done the piece without them. Anyway, here it is — it’s loooong — just published by the Washington Independent:

This weekend, Holbrooke gave foreign allies their first public glimpse of the new administration strategy, but — with one significant exception — still stuck to broad themes. He called the idea that the U.S. might scale back its goals in Afghanistan “journalist gobbledygook,” something that worried senior Afghan officials who visited Washington last month to inform the administration’s strategy review. Instead, Holbrooke pledged an end to what he called an era of “neglect” of the seven-plus-year war, and in its place would come an intensified U.S. commitment — “more troops, more resources, more high-level attention,” he said. Holbrooke did make one declarative statement about forthcoming U.S. policy: while expressing worry about an expanded Taliban hold over western Pakistan, he said that “You can’t send troops into Pakistan. That’s a red line.”

As a special envoy, Holbrooke’s influence is perhaps most directly felt at Foggy Bottom. Holbrooke is not shy about telling staffers at the bureau responsible for South and Central Asia, known as SCA, that his authority steps directly from his relationship with Clinton and Obama, according to people who have been in meetings with him. “Since the job does not have statutory position in the bureau, it had to be explained,” said one. While Holbrooke’s diplomatic cables are written to the secretary of state, “they are seen and cleared by others as appropriate.” Some department veterans noted that the assistant secretary for SCA typically reports to the secretary of state through the undersecretary for political affairs, while Holbrooke will not.

 You could call this getting my Laura Rozen on.

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