Falling on His Sword

No one in his legions of admirers wanted to believe that Powell had been duped by the White House -- or, worse yet, that he had knowingly betrayed the nation's trust. Many assumed that he had privately argued against such a clearly misguided adventure and been overruled.

In fact, Powell had never advised against the Iraq invasion, although he had warned Bush of the difficulties and counseled patience. He had no reason to resign over Iraq, he told questioners. But the larger mystery of his tenure as the nation's chief diplomat, fourth in line for succession to the presidency, remained.

When Bush selected Powell as his secretary of state in December 2000, it was seen as a stroke of political genius that instantly assuaged concerns at home and abroad about the president-elect's conspicuous lack of foreign policy experience. As national security adviser to one president and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under two more, Powell had helped guide the nation through the end of the Cold War and had brought the military to victory in the Persian Gulf War. By the time he retired from the Army as a four-star general in 1993, he was a national icon of wise leadership -- the "most trusted man in America," according to polls.

Yet Powell had constantly found himself on the losing side of regular ideological combat inside the Bush administration, particularly against Rumsfeld and the powerful vice president, Dick Cheney, over Iraq and a host of other foreign policy issues. Though Powell had scored some victories, the rumored humiliations had been real. He had been purposely cut out of major foreign policy decisions more than once, and his advice often had gone unheeded or been only grudgingly accepted by the president. Why hadn't he resigned?

The easy answer had the virtue of truth: Soldiers didn't quit when they disagreed with the decisions of their commanders. The fact that he had been out of uniform for nearly a decade was irrelevant to Powell; he would be a soldier until he drew his last breath.

AS TEXAS GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH BEGAN HIS CAMPAIGN FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN 1999, Powell's initial impression was that Bush was "still getting his sea legs" on foreign policy and national security issues. Powell knew "Sonny," as he referred to him, only in passing, and his private preference was for another Republican candidate: Arizona Sen. John McCain, a fellow military officer and Vietnam veteran.

But Powell had served in the administration of Bush's father and considered himself part of the extended Bush family, with the personal loyalty that kinship entailed. "It wasn't as if I was a stranger, or that anybody had to worry or could imagine that I would not be for Sonny when the time came," he later reflected. He wrote a $1,000 check to McCain and contributed an equal amount to Bush.

Worried that Powell would outshine their candidate and suspicious of his Republican credentials, Bush's handlers ignored him for most of the campaign -- even as they regularly implied to the media that the respected general was a behind-the-scenes member of the governor's brain trust. Once McCain was vanquished in the Republican primaries and Bush began a head-to-head battle against Democrat Al Gore, the campaign hinted that Powell would accompany Bush on fact-finding trips overseas and would become his secretary of state. But no one on the Bush team ever approached Powell about such a trip, and there was no substantive discussion of a Cabinet position.

Powell later recalled that the only conversations he and Bush had had about foreign affairs came just weeks before the election, in the back seats of cars between events on the four days they had campaigned together that fall. He had no memory of an explicit invitation from Bush to serve in his Cabinet. Once the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Florida recount officially over in early December, Powell later said, "It just sort of happened as it was assumed to happen."

On December 16, three days after Gore conceded defeat, Powell flew to Bush's ranch in Texas to be unveiled as his first Cabinet nominee.

Powell and Cheney stood on either side of the president-elect as he read from prepared remarks to reporters gathered in a Crawford school auditorium. Turning to Powell, Bush invoked Harry Truman's tribute to his own iconic secretary of state, retired Army general George Marshall: " ' He is a tower of strength and common sense. When you find somebody like that, you have to hang on to them.' I have found such a man." When reporters later asked Bush about tears they had seen in his eyes, he replied that it was an emotional moment because "I so admire Colin Powell -- I love his story."

THE SECRETARY OF STATE SAW THE PRESIDENT FREQUENTLY, THOUGH RARELY ALONE. Powell found Bush better-spoken and more thoughtful in private than his public posturing as a rough-hewn, plain-spoken Texan would indicate, although he found Bush's fidgety impatience irritating, along with his tendency to interrupt everyone, from his Cabinet officers to visiting heads of state. While the president publicly praised the secretary's abilities and stature, their relationship remained stiff and formal.