Profile: Gen. Colin Powell

Dec. 17, 2000 -- During the 1991 Gulf War, Gen. Colin Powell’s steady gaze looked out from television screens across the world. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff appeared smart, certain and straightforward.

After the Gulf War, which successfully expelled the Iraqi army from Kuwait, Powell’s instant celebrity grew, his name becoming synonymous with integrity to many Americans across the political spectrum. Then, the speculation surrounding his potential political career began swirling.

But the speculation ended Saturday when George W. Bush named Powell as his secretary of state.

National Myth

“He is charismatic,” says Howard Means, Powell’s 1992 biographer. “As soon as you meet him, you can’t help liking him. I think that comes across in his interviews and it came across during the Gulf War. When I first met him, right away I could see myself going fishing with him and having a few drinks over a good conversation. He just makes you feel at ease.”

Powell’s life journey reads like a national myth. Raised in poverty in the South Bronx by immigrant parents from Jamaica, he went to public schools, including the City College of New York, where he joined the ROTC.

After graduation, he was commissioned in the Army as a second lieutenant and rose through the lower ranks to become the first African-American and youngest Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from 1989 to 1993, when he retired from the military to write his 1995 best selling autobiography My American Journey.

For the past seven years Powell has remained in the public eye, traveling the country speaking to schools, businesses and other organizations about his life story. He’s also sat on various corporate boards and chaired America’s Promise, a civic organization dedicated to uplifting youth through mentoring programs, after-school programs and education.

Military Man

Powell says he fell instantly in love with the military when he joined the ROTC program his first semester at City College. Although never a star student, he excelled in the Army.

“The discipline, the structure, the camaraderie, the sense of belonging were what I craved,” he wrote, comparing it to the other pillar of his life, the Episcopal church.

Powell served two tours in Vietnam. During the second, he survived a helicopter crash-landing, going back into the smoking wreckage to pull out his commanding general and two others.

For that and other valor in Vietnam, he received two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, a Soldier’s Medal, and the Legion of Merit.

For the next two decades Powell moved back and forth between the military and Washington bureaucracy.

In 1973, he traveled to South Korea to take command of a battalion but then returned to Washington later that year as a staff officer at the Pentagon. After graduating from the National War College, the Harvard of military education, in 1976 Powell took command of the Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. In the early 1980s, he completed assignments as assistant commander of the Forth Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colo., and as deputy director at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Then in 1987, while stationed in West Germany as commanding general of the Fifth Corps in Frankfurt, he was called back to Washington to serve as national security adviser.

Powell, 63, has served three presidents — Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bill Clinton — at the very top of the national security establishment; first as deputy national security adviser and then as national security adviser. Finally he was appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior ranking member of the U.S. Armed Forces and top military adviser to the president.

During that time he helped shape American defense and foreign policy. His career has spanned the fall of the Berlin Wall, 1983 invasion of Grenada, downsizing of the military, 1989 invasion of Panama, 1991 Gulf War, collapse of the Soviet Union, 1992-93 engagment in Somalia and the crisis in Bosnia.

President Powell

In 1996 and 2000 Powell supporters pressured the now-retired Army general to run for president or at least take a role as vice president. They touted their hero as the only candidate with the moral stature needed to unite a politically divided country, and heal longstanding racial wounds. Twice Powell said he wasn’t interested, but left open the possibility of an appointed position such as secretary of state.

“Secretary of State is the perfect position,” for Powell, says Caspar Weinberger, secretary of defense for seven years under former President Ronald Reagan and Powell’s former boss.

“He has experience with Washington bureaucracy, the military, the private sector and foreign policy. He has the knowledge, clear vision for the country and full grasp of the major issues confronting the United States internationally,” says Weinberger. “And he recognizes the importance of the United States being a strong country.”

The Powell Doctrine

It was under Weinberger’s tutelage that Powell honed the “Powell doctrine,” which had been the Weinberger doctrine until the Gulf War, which was the successful epitome of that philosophy.

The doctrine was inspired by lessons learned from U.S. involvement in Vietnam and principles Powell took to heart from a military philosophy book published in 1830. He read On War as a student at the National War College in the early 1970s.

Essentially, the Powell doctrine says a country should avoid intervening in international conflicts unless there is a vital interest and a clear, achievable goal.

“I think the doctrine simply requires that you are a lot more selective about where you get involved,” says Weinberger. “It’s not isolationism, but it is being very conscious, as [Powell] is, that we should not deplete our resources by intervening everywhere. We can’t be the world’s police force, nor should we.”

In several interviews Powell has accused civilian leaders of being too quick to place troops in jeopardy for ill-defined missions, and has cited Lebanon, where 241 Marines were killed by a terrorist bomb during a peacekeeping mission in 1983 as the probable result of uncertain foreign policy.

He has also been critical of U.S. policy in Bosnia and Somalia for not having a clear and consistent purpose or full military commitment.

“As soon as they tell me [military intervention or humanitarian aid] is limited, it means they do not care whether you achieve a result or not,” Powell told The New York Times in 1992. “As soon as they tell me ‘surgical,’ I head for the bunker.”

Criticisms

Powell’s career has attracted some criticism over the years.

He was faulted in some corners for not using his position as custodian of the operational journals of the Americal Division in March 1968 in Vietnam to report the massacre at My Lai, where American troops were accused of killing 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in March 1968. The massacre was eventually brought to light.

Powell points out he was not with the division at the time of the massacre and cooperated with the inspector general’s staff investigator, who asked him to produce the journal for the date of the massacre.

Others have questioned Powell’s role in Iran-Contra.

As Defense Secretary Weinberger’s chief military adviser, Powell knew of the initiative to approach the “moderates” in Iran and send U.S. missiles from the Defense Department to the CIA, which then sent them to Israel and eventually to Iran.

But Powell and Weinberger testified they did not know Admiral John Poindexter’s national security adviser’s office, and Oliver North, had illegally arranged to inflate the price of the missiles and divert the extra money to the Nicaraguan Contras.

Some have also questioned whether Powell’s deliberate manner will fit the frenetic life of a secretary of state. Those who have worked with him say he walks a straight and narrow path, does not like to ruffle feathers and is extremely premeditated in his actions, says Means.

“The Powell doctrine requires a certain amount of time and deliberation before taking action,” said Tom Graham, former head of the Arms Control Division and current president of Lawyers Alliance for World Security. Graham has worked with Powell on several occassions. “The secretary of state often has to make quick judgements and act quickly, but I don’t doubt Powell’s ability to move decisively for a moment.”

But once a decision is made, it is usually final. “He doesn’t sit around wondering if he made the wrong decision,” says Means.

Cheers and Boos in 1996

Powell’s opinions on racial and social issues diverge sharply from conservative orthodoxy, earning him criticism and praise for his centrist stance. He is a supporter of abortion rights and affirmative action, while he opposed President Clinton’s effort to lift the ban on gays in the military. He also disapproved of the move to impeach Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, saying in 1998 that it distracted the nation from “serious issues.”

His words of support for affirmative action earned him boos at the 1996 Republican convention. But his call for Republicans to “always be the party of inclusion” earned him a standing ovation. But still, the moderate Powell was viewed skeptically by some delegates, who tend to be more conservative than the Republican electorate as a whole.

At July’s Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Powell won more standing ovations and helped George W. Bush in his efforts to put a “new face” on the Republican party and reach out to African-Americans in particular, who have traditionally favored the Democratic Party.

He declared education was the key to America’s future, supported immigration, explained minorities’ concerns and pushed again for affirmative action.

Powell and his wife Alma have a son, two daughters, and two grandsons.