Since his passing, Colin Powell has been lauded as a statesman, patriot, and trailblazer for Black Americans. As a journalist, I saw another dimension to him: He was a model official in his respect for the First Amendment, and the information he provided to reporters, much of it on the record. You would never hear him deploring “fake news,” even when the reporter got something wrong. Colin saw briefing the press as one of his responsibilities, and he never misled us intentionally.
In my first face-to-face meeting with Gen. Powell when he was deputy national security adviser, I asked him about the efficacy of the contras opposing the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. President Reagan had routinely described them as “freedom fighters” and, in words written for him by Pat Buchanan, had called them “the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers.” Colin offered a less lofty view. He told me they were “a highland fighting force that won’t be marching through the streets of Managua.” He saw them as putting some extra pressure on the Sandinistas, nothing more.
I appreciated his evaluation and, moreover, was surprised he hadn’t said this on background. (There were times when Colin talked on background or off the record, but his default position, unlike so many in Washington, was on the record.)
Both for my reporting for The Washington Post and for my book, “President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime,” Colin Powell often played the role of explainer, providing me with a unique perspective on why people acted as they did. For instance, in analyzing the role of Adm. John Poindexter, the national security adviser who was indicted for his role in the Iran-contra affair, Colin observed that Poindexter’s military experience was largely as commander of a destroyer. He said that ship commanders had to make many decisions on their own, unlike Army officers (such as Colin himself, of course) who had to take a more collegial approach. In keeping with that dynamic, Poindexter was by and large a lone wolf as national security adviser, rarely talking to the press.
Colin also was my principal source for discussion of Reagan’s idea that communist nations would band together with capitalist ones to oppose an invasion from outer space. He understood the roots of this idea, which was the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
Here is a passage from my memoir about that:
The dependable Colin Powell repeatedly deleted references to what Powell called “the little green men” from Reagan’s memos or speeches. This didn’t stop Reagan from telling [Mikhail] Gorbachev in Geneva that the United States and the Soviet Union would cooperate if threatened by an invasion from outer space. The usually voluble Gorbachev was at a loss on how to respond and said nothing. Reagan told me this in satisfaction, believing he had scored a point on Gorbachev. Perhaps he had. Powell came to the view that the outer-space references were meaningful to Reagan and did not try to remove it from a resonant speech the president gave to the United Nations on September 21, 1987.
In keeping with his high character, Colin was repentant for the blunder that most significantly marked his time as secretary of state under George W. Bush: his assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I pointed out to him that many others believed the same to be true, including Bill Clinton and the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. And, of course, the U.S. intelligence community had arrived at that conclusion, which formed the basis of the case Colin made before the United Nations.
“Yes,” he said, “but that doesn’t excuse me.”
Simple words, but ones rarely heard in Washington — or in political circles anywhere. I respected him as much as anyone I have ever covered.
Lou Cannon is editorial adviser and columnist for State Net Capitol Journal, a Lexis-Nexis publication. He previously worked for The Washington Post and is author of “President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.”
