Excerpt of "Colin Powell"

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I M P E R F E C T P A T R I O T

J E F F R E Y

J .

M A T T H E W S

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

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University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 undpress.nd.edu Copyright © 2019 by the University of Notre Dame All Rights Reserved Published in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

∞This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

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C O N T E N T S

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction 1

P A R T I . T H E M I L I TA RY Y E A R S ONE

Obedient Son (1937–1957)

11

TWO

Dutiful Soldier (1958–1969)

24

T H R E E Follower

and Commander (1970–1982)

FOUR

Loyalist (1983–1988)

FIVE

Chairman (1989–1993)

52 76 109

PA RT I I . T H E C I V I L I A N Y E A R S SIX

Presidential Icon (1993–2000)

S E V E N Leader,

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Follower, Odd Man Out (2001–2004)

159 179

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C O N T E N T S

E I G H T Adviser NINE

(2002–2003)

Defender in Chief (2003–2004)

Epilogue

222 261 307

Notes 316 Bibliography 371 Index 385

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Leadership is all about followership.

— colin l. powell

Introduction On the morning of February 5, 2003, Colin Powell took his

seat at the large, curved table of the United Nations Security Council. He had been tasked by President George W. Bush to prosecute Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the court of world opinion. “This is an important day,” Powell announced, “for us all.”1 The American secretary of state’s highly anticipated presentation marked the zenith of his extraordinary forty-year career in government service; it was as if he had been preparing for the moment all of his life.

According to the Bush administration, Saddam Hussein represented a clear and present danger to the security of the United States, a danger so ominous that it warranted an internationally televised evidentiary hearing. The president had allotted Powell less than a week to prepare a comprehensive case meant to justify preventive warfare and the overthrow a foreign government.

Powell was up to Bush’s challenge.

The secretary was the perfect person to assemble and present the case against Iraq. Effective prosecutors must have credibility and ability, and the retired four-star army general possessed both, in spades. Having served successfully as the senior military assistant to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, as national

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s­ ecurity adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Powell’s experience in international security affairs was exceptional. Moreover, by 2003, the secretary of state’s reputation for trustworthiness at home and abroad was un­ paralleled, far exceeding that of President Bush and all other senior advisers, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice. Powell’s stature and popularity had been forged during the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War when, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he earned a reputation as an articulate, trustworthy, and decisive warrior-leader. A decade later, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Secretary of State Powell, more than any other principal of a hawkish National Security Council, was perceived as the least likely to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. In January 2003, when Bush instructed Powell to prepare the brief against Iraq at the United Nations, he told the secretary, “We’ve really got to make the case, and I want you to make it. You have the credibility to do this. Maybe they’ll believe you.”2 Powell’s sterling reputation was matched by his capacity to construct and deliver persuasive and compelling briefings.

Acutely aware that his and the president’s credibility would be at stake, the secretary and his staff worked assiduously with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the White House to craft a cogent, nonpoliticized, fact-based presentation that exposed the Iraqi danger. Inherently cautious, Powell sought to draw only incontrovertible conclusions from “solid evidence” and to discard questionable intelligence “that seemed a stretch or wasn’t multisourced.”3 Powell’s first decision was to reject a White House proposal for a three-day U.N. presentation that dissected Iraq’s nexus with terrorists, its record of human rights violations, and its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. Instead, Powell insisted on a succinct ninety-minute presentation that focused predominately on WMD. He and CIA Director George Tenet also rejected a WMD report prepared by Vice President Cheney’s

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office. Powell and Tenet concluded that Cheney’s contrived document contained numerous unsubstantiated claims that rendered it “a disaster,” “worthless,” “incoherent,” and “unusable.”4 In the end, Powell’s presentation relied extensively on the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding “Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction.”5 CIA officer Michael Morell, who assisted Powell in the intelligence vetting process, marveled at the secretary’s rigorous, systematic approach to building the prosecutorial case against Iraq. With each iteration of the U.N. speech, Powell challenged every sentence and renewed his questioning about the quality of the in­ telligence. “Point by point,” Morell later wrote, the secretary “would ask us for backup information on the assertions, and as we dug into them, many seemed to fall apart before my eyes. . . .

What was collapsing was some of the facts used in the NIE ­[National Intelligence Estimate].”6 After four days and nights of meticulous labor, Powell, Tenet, Rice, and Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin were satisfied that they had constructed a highly credible, “airtight” briefing that proved the president’s contention that Iraq was an evident and immediate danger to the United States and others.7 At the United Nations, before a worldwide television audience, Powell, with Tenet visible in a seat behind him, delivered a formidable case against Iraq. The secretary of state spoke soberly, methodically, and confidently for seventy-five minutes.

“Every statement I make today,” he proclaimed, “is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid evidence.”8 Powell’s prosecution, which purportedly gave proof of Iraq’s active WMD programs and its nefarious association with terrorist groups, was a multimedia affair that featured a vial of fake anthrax, satellite imagery, audiotapes, photographs, and renderings of mobile biological weapon laboratories. In his closing statement, the secretary concluded that Saddam Hussein was either on the brink of launching WMD or sharing them with terrorist organizations. As a consequence, Powell, the trusted and

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beloved hero of the Persian Gulf War, announced to the world that the United States “will not and cannot run that risk.” The Bush administration, he vowed, “will not shirk” from eliminating the Iraqi menace.9 Foreign reactions to Powell’s performance were mixed at best, but the response at home was decidedly favorable. Like many Americans, the secretary believed that he had made a powerful casus belli argument against Iraq. “My feeling,” Powell later wrote, “was that the presentation went well. . . . On balance, we seemed to have made a powerful case.”10 Tenet thought that Powell gave “an extraordinary performance.”11 Bush and Rice concurred. The latter described the presentation as a “tour de force.”12 The president characterized it as an “exhaustive, ­eloquent, and persuasive” briefing, and he ultimately concluded that it had “profound impact on the public debate.”13 Indeed, Powell’s line of argumentation converted many skeptics across the nation, assuring Republicans and Democrats alike.14 Both the Washington Post and New York Times editorialized that the secretary had made an earnest and convincing case.15 Forty-three days after Powell’s presentation, the United States invaded Iraq with the support of a majority of American citizens and with a formal authorization from Congress.

At the time of the invasion, before it was known that Iraq no longer possessed WMD, Powell’s performance in the preparation and delivery of the U.N. speech seemed a model of excellent followership in service to the president and country. Bush had assigned Powell an important and challenging mission, one that tested his abilities and leveraged his enormous prestige.

The secretary responded with considerable competence, composure, and dedication. Moreover, he demonstrated characteristic initiative and resourcefulness and exercised his capacity for independent critical judgment. Above all, perhaps, Powell acted honorably; he believed what he said. In building the U.N. briefing, he rejected information that he considered spurious and included only intelligence that he or the CIA leadership appraised

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as credible and reliable. That President Bush and so many Americans thought so highly of Powell’s conduct was completely understandable.

The thesis of this book is that Powell’s decades-long development as an exemplary subordinate was crucial to his extraordinary rise from a working-class immigrant neighborhood in the South Bronx to the highest echelons of American military and political power. Although once an aimless teenager, Powell joined the U.S. Army in 1958 with unbridled enthusiasm and a commitment to cultivating his professional skills and serving his superiors. He succeeded brilliantly. During thirty-five years in the military, Powell earned the respect and fidelity of numerous bosses and mentors who intervened regularly to advance his c­ areer. Early on, his superiors judged him as having unlimited potential and unswerving loyalty. They described Powell as “a young ambitious officer” who “immediately responds to suggestion and correction” and who “is completely dedicated to the service.”16 While Powell was stationed in South Vietnam as a ­junior officer, his commanders extolled his virtues as a model subordinate who “has demonstrated constantly his complete competence, levelheadedness, and dependability.”17 One major general even characterized Powell as “the most outstanding staff officer that I have seen in 32 years of service.”18 Similarly, Powell’s conduct as a senior army officer garnered profuse praise from civilian superiors. National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci characterized him as “totally dedicated,” “unfailingly loyal to me,” and “indefatigable in ensuring that I have been properly supported.”19 Defense Secretary Weinberger assessed Powell as being “categorically superlative,” writing that the major general’s performance as his senior military assistant “only confirms my belief that I could not have chosen a more loyal, capable, or dependable officer to fill this position of special trust and confidence.”20 By the time Powell was appointed as President George H. W. Bush’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he had become the consummate subordinate: a highly

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e­ xperienced professional who personified competence, commitment, thoughtfulness, agreeableness, composure, independence, and integrity.

Powell’s exemplary followership notwithstanding, there can be little doubt that he also exercised effective leadership, both during his military career and thereafter at the State Department. Subordinates, superiors, and outside observers regularly assessed Powell as a capable, ethical, and inspirational leader.21 As early as 1961, when he was a twenty-four-year-old first lieutenant, his army evaluator wrote, “[Powell is] a truly outstanding officer in every aspect and attribute of leadership. . . . This young lieutenant has the professional knowledge equivalent to an officer of higher rank and greater experience.”22 A decade later, after Powell successfully led a once-troubled American battalion in South Korea, his boss, the colorful and exacting Major General Henry E. Emerson, concluded, “Goddamn, this son of a bitch can command soldiers. He was charismatic. He really raised the morale, especially the esprit of that unit. . . . He sure as shit showed me what he could do as a commander.”23 By 1991, in the afterglow of decisive U.S. military victories in Panama and the Persian Gulf, Republican senator John McCain boldly proclaimed that General Powell was “the greatest military leader this country has produced since World War II.”24 After his retirement from the army, Powell continued to demonstrate able leadership during the first term of the George W. Bush administration, at the helm of the State Department. According to John Naland, former president of the American Foreign Service Association, “Powell [was] easily the best leader and manager State has seen since George Shultz. . . . As far as the Foreign Service is concerned, Powell has been an absolute standout.”25 While acknowledging Powell’s praiseworthy leadership, this book’s primary focus is on his development and performance as a follower. Throughout his forty-year public career, Powell was always somebody’s subordinate. Even if one excludes Powell’s Army Reserve Officer Training Corps experience at City College of New York, he spent more than 10 percent of his active-duty

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army career as a full-time student, a definitive follower role. Furthermore, as a senior military officer—serving at the rank of colonel and higher—most of Powell’s job titles reflected not his expanding leadership authority but rather the persistence of his follower status: executive assistant to the special assistant to the secretary and the deputy secretary of defense, military assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, executive assistant to the secretary of energy, senior military assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, deputy senior military assistant to the secretary of defense, deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, and assistant to the president for national security affairs. Moreover, even after securing the exalted positions of national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and secretary of state, Powell’s principal duty was to serve as a chief counselor to four presidents and three secretaries of defense.

Powell’s performance as a subordinate reveals not only core elements of superior followership, but also human fallibility and central characteristics of bad followership. Too often successful and patriotic military officers such as Powell have prioritized ­career ambition, excessive obedience, and blind loyalty over in­ dependent critical reasoning and ethical principles. The U.S. Army’s cover-up of atrocities committed against Vietnamese civilians in Vietnam, in which Powell played a minor role, and later, the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra scandal, in which he played a substantive role, exemplified the degrading nature and dangerous consequences of unethical followership. And while Powell’s subsequent tenure as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff marked a high point in his evolution as an exceptionally effective and ethical subordinate, his followership skills were tested mightily after he became George W. Bush’s senior foreign policy adviser. In fact, many critics of the Bush administration characterize Powell’s performance, as represented by his influential yet fallacious 2003 U.N. speech, as the epitome of bad followership.26 Powell himself has acknowledged some dire career mistakes and has written that his presentation advocating a ­second war with Iraq “was one of my most momentous failures”

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because it “had enormous impact and influence in this country and worldwide. It convinced many people that we were on the right course.”27 From a broad perspective, this book examines and promotes the often pivotal, if relatively unsung, role of effective and ethical followership in the leadership process. Only in recent decades did scholars begin to seriously investigate the nature and influence of good and bad followers.28 Unlike prior research on followership, this book takes a biographical approach, offering a fresh examination of Colin Powell’s distinguished, though ultimately controversial, public career. Powell’s story is instructive on many levels. During various periods of his life, he personified the qualities associated with both good and bad followership. Moreover, Powell’s government service shows that ethical and effective followership, as with good leadership, is developed over time and is dependent on the influence of others, especially superiors, mentors, and role models. Powell’s career further demonstrates the tremendous power that followers can exert on leaders and organizations, and also exemplifies the reality that most people in positions of leadership serve concurrently in positions of followership.

In the end, this biography provides a critical perspective on the nature of good and bad followership and thus on the broader phenomenon of the leadership process. “Some may wonder why so much is made of just where leadership and followership begin and end,” writes Pulitzer Prize winner James MacGregor Burns.

“But this question lies at the heart of the core issue—the relationship of leadership and followership not only to each other but to social change and historical causation.”29

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