Citation From the October 18, 2021, edition of MSNBC’s José Díaz-Balart Reports
JOSÉ DÍAZ-BALART (ANCHOR): Andrea, just how much of a trailblazing figure was Colin Powell?
ANDREA MITCHELL (MSNBC ANCHOR): He was a trailblazer so many times over. In the military, becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and then the first Iraq War, Desert Storm. Of course, the way he shaped foreign policy, military policy. But most significantly, in many ways, was his trailblazing as an African-American, because that is part of the motivation for him leaving the Republican Party after he was booed on the floor of the convention during his speech in 2000 in Philadelphia — I was there — when he talked about affirmative action and the need for the Republican Party to change.
And then gradually over the years, evolving, even though he was, you know, at the cabinet level, in the Bush 43 administration, and had first started as deputy national security adviser to Frank Carlucci and then as national security adviser under Ronald Reagan, he became — at least voting as a Democrat, and endorsing Barack Obama in 2008. Because he had always told me that his most important legacy was the Colin Powell Institute at CCNY, where he had gone as a son of immigrants, of Jamaican immigrants in the Bronx. Obviously, a Black person who cared so much, so deeply about people of color and about first-generation Americans and immigrant Americans. And someone who had been active at Howard University and other historically Black colleges over the years, who had risen in the military, starting with Vietnam, as a soldier in Vietnam, and later, of course, becoming, you know, rising to the very top of the American military, and then, as secretary of state under Bush 43.
But breaking with the Bush administration in many ways. He was the only member of the Bush 43 cabinet who argued against the second Iraq War, the second Gulf War, and who reluctantly testified at the U.N. in February of 2003, and also became persuaded by George Tenet, really, at CIA the weekend preceding that testimony, had gone to Langley to go over all the data, their claims of weapons of mass destruction, and was repeatedly trying to scrub that testimony, as he told me many times, and grieved for years, for the rest of his life the fact that he had misled the nation and the world over it, but had done so unwittingly. And eventually he was really an uncomfortable fit with Bush and Cheney as the years progressed in the Iraq War, and eventually the change was made to Condoleezza Rice for the second Bush term. So — and he went on with America's Promise and all of his other nonprofit contributions to African-Americans and to others, and broke with the party several more times in succeeding years, in becoming a prominent spokesperson for Democratic presidents.
DÍAZ-BALART: Yeah. And Peter, just how respected was Powell, by both — people on both sides of the aisle?
PETER BAKER (CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES): Yeah. You know, he had this great presence, right. When you were in the room with Colin Powell, you knew you were in the room with Colin Powell. He just sort of had this magnetism, this respect. He came across I think as this figure of great sobriety, maturity, the kind of person that presidents of both parties felt they could rely on. You know, he was obviously the most important and certainly most famous general in the United States in the post-Vietnam era. He also could have been the first Black president, had he chosen to run. He was recruited to run, encouraged to run in 1996, decided not to do it to Bill Clinton's, you know, great fortune.
He had such a, you know, bipartisan respect across the board, and I think that he was one of the few figures who did kind of cross a lot of those dividing lines in America in our modern times. You know, he not only obviously broke barriers and all the rules Andrea just described, and obviously, there's that great tragedy for him in having been what he saw as the frontman for what turned out to be false intelligence. It was such a — it was such a bitter pill for him, you know.
We have a biography of James Baker out, and in that book, we tell the scene of Colin Powell coming to testify before the Baker-Hamilton Commission to look at what's happening in the second Iraq War. And they ask him an open-ended question at the beginning of his testimony, and it just sort of triggers this 20-minute monologue from him, full of passion and anger and bitterness over what had ended up happening, that his credibility was used to justify a war on terms that turned out not to be true. And obviously it did sour him. And when he got up to leave, James Baker turns to Leon Panetta and says, really sadly, he says, “That's the one person who could have stopped this.”
And I think that he knew that, which is why he, you know, did find this a bitter pill in the end. But he had so many important roles and important moments in our American life. He was a figure unlike almost anybody in our modern generation, and I think people will remember the totality of his record at this particular moment.
DÍAZ-BALART: Yeah, absolutely. But David, and Andrea talked a little bit about that United Nations February speech, which really kind of was something that he always talked about was a major mistake in his life. Despite being a highly respected figure, Powell took a hit for going to the U.N. then to make the case for the Iraq War, where, as we know, he presented false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. How did that affect him?
DAVID IGNATIUS (ASSOCIATE EDITOR, THE WASHINGTON POST): I think as was said earlier, he was bitter. Afterwards, he felt that he had been asked to argue a case that he fundamentally didn't believe. One of the terrible ironies of his involvement in the Iraq tragedy is that he is, more than anybody else, the person who rebuilt our military after the Vietnam War. He believed that the military had been badly shaken, had lost confidence. He wanted it to fight, as he sometimes put it, short, winnable wars — wars that would not be ambiguous, that would not have the characteristics of the Iraq War that he had such misgivings about, and then ended up testifying in support of it at the U.N. So, in the arc of his story, his ability to rebuild the military, make it strong, make it confident again — and then sadly, be secretary of state at the time in 2003 when the military embarked on a campaign that really has I think been bitterly difficult, the Iraq War, more than anything else for the military, is the war that showed the limits of military power.
Just one more point about Colin Powell and the military. Operation Desert Storm, during which he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, really is the great lesson for all modern militaries about the power of modern technology. People who were around then remember the videos that were shown of precisely targeted weapons taking out bridges, individual Iraqi tanks on the battlefield. And it showed that a new generation of weapons had arrived. Colin Powell was the symbol of the military, as chairman in that time. Every other military around the world realized that they could not compete with the United States as it showed force in Operation Desert Storm. Russia, China, every other country began to alter their plans for modernization. So I think as a military leader, Powell helped put the military back together again. He did have this very sad coda to his life.
In my experience with him, just adding to what Peter Baker said, what I remember is that he always had a smile on his face. He was better at cracking a joke in the beginning of a meeting or a social gathering, he always had something funny to say — and then he'd get down to business. But he had that gift for dealing with people that I think is part of why presidents liked working with him so much.