Temperatures will continue to fall over the next few days

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on
Sunday dismissed as "cheap shots" the criticism leveled at him
and others in Vice President Dick Cheney's memoir.
      

It was the latest volley in a clash that stretches back to their
first years in the George W. Bush administration.
     

 Powell went so far as to say that if Cheney's staff and others
in Bush's White House had been as forthcoming as the State
Department in the case involving CIA operative Valerie Plame, the
indictment and conviction of Cheney's friend and former chief of
staff never would have happened.
      

Powell made the remarks Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation" ahead
of the Tuesday release of Cheney's book, "In My Time: A Personal
and Political Memoir." Cheney said in an earlier NBC interview
that the book would cause "heads to explode" in Washington, a
description Powell said he expected from a supermarket tabloid and
not a former vice president.
      

"My head isn't exploding. I haven't noticed any other heads
exploding in Washington," Powell said. "From what I've read in
the newspapers and seen on television it's essentially a rehash of
events of seven or eight years ago."
      

Cheney and Powell had numerous disagreements in the
administration, particularly over policy toward Iraq and the run-up
to the 2003 invasion by U.S.-led forces. Still, Powell termed
"nonsense" Cheney's description of how Powell went outside with
his criticism of administration policies.
     

 Powell also suggested that Cheney wrongly took credit for
Powell's resignation from the State Department in 2004; Powell said
he had always planned to serve only four years. He labeled as
"almost condescending" the tone of Cheney's criticism of
Condoleezza Rice, who succeeded him as secretary of state.
     

 "Mr. Cheney has had a long and distinguished career and I hope
in his book that's what he will focus on, not these cheap shots
that he's taking at me and other members of the administration who
served to the best of our ability for President Bush," Powell
said.
    

  On the Plame matter, Powell said Cheney tries to "lay it all
off" on Powell and Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state
under Powell.
     

 Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was
convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI during its
investigation into who leaked to the news media that Plame, the
wife of a former ambassador critical of the Bush administration,
worked for the CIA.
      

Powell said that when Armitage realized he was the anonymous
source cited by syndicated columnist Robert Novak in an article
that revealed Plame's CIA connection, Armitage contacted Powell and
they spoke to the Justice Department and the FBI for the probe
ordered by Bush.
     

 "If the White House and the operatives in the White House - on
Mr. Cheney's staff and elsewhere in the White House - had been as
forthcoming with the FBI as Mr. Armitage was, this problem would
not have reached the dimensions that it reached," Powell said.
     

 Instead, Powell said, the FBI continued for two more months
trying to find out what had happened in the White House and that a
special counsel ended up conducting a two-year probe of what he
called a "mess."
      

Gallery

Politics and Government News

Reprising a clash that stretches back to the 
first years in the George W. Bush administration, former Secretary of State Colin Powell on dismissed former Vice President Dick Cheney's memoir as filled with "cheap shots."

Powell says Cheney taking 'cheap shots' in book

Go Deeper.

Like this?