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Colin Powell, the trickster

We know now that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Secretary of State Colin Powell didn’t get along. And Powell is back in the news this week, refuting the assertions against him that Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld’s BFF, makes in his new book. But once upon a time, when Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and ...

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We know now that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Secretary of State Colin Powell didn't get along. And Powell is back in the news this week, refuting the assertions against him that Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld's BFF, makes in his new book.

We know now that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Secretary of State Colin Powell didn’t get along. And Powell is back in the news this week, refuting the assertions against him that Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld’s BFF, makes in his new book.

But once upon a time, when Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice were just starting out in the newly formed George W. Bush administration, they all got along and even ate lunch together every Wednesday. Powell even had some fun with his neocon colleagues, as Rumsfeld noted in this Feb. 8, 2001 snowflake:

February 7 Condi, Dick Cheney and I went to the State Department for the Wednesday lunch. The table was set elegantly, and there were silver covers over each of our four places. We all teased Colin about being so elegant at the State Department. When we took the silver metal covers off, underneath was a plain paper bag with our sandwich in it. It was a classic ruse.

One wonders what would be in a paper bag that Powell would give to Rummy, Cheney, and Condi today…

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin

Tag: George W. Bush

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