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CNN Live At Daybreak

Where is Colin Powell?

Aired September 03, 2001 - 08:39   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: You know, Washington insiders expected Secretary of State Colin Powell to become a key player in the Bush White House, but others have emerged in the first six months of the new administration. So where is Colin Powell? That is the question asked in this week's "Just in Time."

And state department correspondent for, Massimo Calabrese, is in Washington with more detail.

Good morning, Massimo.

MASSIMO CALABRESE, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Good morning.

LIN: Well, we were just showing the videotape of Colin Powell's first day at work, there he was being celebrated by the State Department employees as the Gulf War hero that he was and certainly the Washington player that people expected him to be. So what is the question here and what's happened?

CALABRESE: Well, the question is why he hasn't had a more visible and forceful role in foreign policy in the first seven months.

I asked my taxi driver on the way over here what he thought of Colin Powell as secretary of state, and he said, well, I think he'd be a good one if they'd let him.

The real issue here is that there's a difference in outlook and a difference in approach between Colin Powell and most of the other heavy hitters in the administration of foreign policy.

LIN: Well, who's not letting him -- who's not letting him be the player that they expected him to be?

CALABRESE: Well, there's a couple of people with whom his views diverge. People had always predicted he would have differences and he's had differences in the past with Vice President Cheney; Don Rumsfeld, the DOD, is also considered very much a hard-liner. The labels people used them to be unilateralists and so forth, whereas Colin Powell is seen as a multilateralist.

The surprise here is that the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, has also ended up much further out on the right end of the spectrum than other people expected. She was thought -- it was thought that perhaps she would be a moderator between Powell and the hard-liner. As it turns out, she's actually one of the people pushing the hard-line agenda as much as anyone. And the key thing there is that she has more access and influence than anyone over the president.

LIN: Is it more about personality than power? Colin Powell has always somewhat disdained the Washington power plays and the elite. You know, he was pushed to run for president and declined to do so. Does it really say more about his personality than really his influence?

CALABRESE: Well, I'm sure he would want people to think that. I'm not -- he has spent a good amount of his career in Washington as insider fighting bureaucratic battles, but it is -- the key question here is: Why isn't Powell fighting harder? And there's a couple of ways of thinking about it.

He is a longtime military staffman. His aides say, you know, he's a good soldier, salutes, and he says, you know, my job is to serve the president. There's also a degree to which on individual policy issues he is, in fact, winning, whereas at the beginning of the administration a lot of things that he wanted to do were rejected or squashed by administration officials; a lot of those policy positions have come back to where he is.

But that's really on a small day-to-day level. For overall policy vision he's not winning, and so there may be something in his character as well, where he just frankly doesn't want to have to deal with it.

LIN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

Well, Powell says publicly: It's not for me to be frustrated, that's not an option. But what do Colin Powell's friends tell you?

CALABRESE: Well, we spoke to a lot of people for this story and to a lot people who are close to him, and they certainly make it clear that he is, in fact, frustrated, that being boxed in, having the agenda taken away from him is causing him grief on a day-to-day level.

LIN: All right, Massimo, thank you very much for this report. We'll be reading in this week's "Time" magazine.

CALABRESE: Thank you.

Massimo Calabrese, state department correspondent for "Time."

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