Colin Powell Being Colin Powell

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By Robert Parry (about the author) Page 5 of 15 page(s)

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While it's certainly true that combat is brutal, the mowing down of unarmed civilians in cold blood does not constitute combat. It is murder and, indeed, a war crime. Neither can the combat death of a fellow soldier be cited as an excuse to murder civilians in retaliation. Disturbingly, that was precisely the rationalization the My Lai killers cited in their own defense.

Yet, in 1995, even as Powell promoted his book which contained these recollections, the U.S. press corps didn't challenge him on this passage.

Back Home

By the time Powell returned home from Vietnam in 1969, he was proving himself the consummate team player. He even rallied to the defense of another Americal officer who was accused of murdering Vietnamese civilians.

In a court martial proceeding, Powell sided with Brig. Gen. John W. Donaldson, who had been accused by U.S. helicopter pilots of gunning down civilians almost for sport as he flew over Quang Ngai province.

In 1995, a senior Army investigator from the Donaldson case told me that two of the Vietnamese victims were an old man and an old woman who were shot to death while bathing. Though long retired -- and quite elderly himself -- the investigator still spoke with a raw disgust about the events of a quarter century earlier. He requested anonymity before talking about the behavior of senior Americal officers.

"They used to bet in the morning how many people they could kill -- old people, civilians, it didn't matter," the investigator said. "Some of the stuff would curl your hair."

For eight months in Chu Lai during 1968-69, Powell had worked with Donaldson and apparently developed a great respect for this superior officer. After the Army charged Donaldson with murder, Powell submitted an affidavit dated Aug. 10, 1971, which lauded Donaldson as "an aggressive and courageous brigade commander."

Powell did not specifically refer to the murder allegations, but added that helicopter forays in Vietnam had been an "effective means of separating hostiles from the general population."

In the interview with me, the investigator in the Donaldson case said "we had him [Donaldson] dead to rights," with the testimony of two helicopter pilots who had flown Donaldson on his shooting expeditions. Still, the investigation collapsed after the two pilot-witnesses were transferred to another Army base and apparently came under pressure from military superiors. The two pilots withdrew their testimony, and the Army dropped all charges against Donaldson.

After returning from Vietnam, thousands of veterans, including John Kerry, joined the anti-war movement and denounced the excessive brutality of the war. For his testimony about war crimes in Vietnam, Kerry continued to pay a price more than three decades later, during Campaign 2004 when supporters of George W. Bush effectively accused Kerry of treason. The charges proved crucial in damaging Kerry's reputation with millions of American voters.

By contrast, Powell held his tongue in the early 1970s and maintained that silence during Campaign 2004 although Powell knew that many of Kerry's statements about the Vietnam War were true. Indeed, Powell had acknowledged many of the same facts in My American Journey, except surrounding them with rationalizations.

Mid-Career

Colin Powell's post-Vietnam career was a time for networking and advancement. He won a promotion to lieutenant colonel and was granted a prized White House fellowship that put him inside Richard Nixon's White House. Powell's work with Nixon's Office of Management and Budget brought Powell to the attention of senior Nixon aides, Frank Carlucci and Caspar Weinberger, who soon became Powell's mentors.

When Ronald Reagan swept to victory in 1980, Powell's allies -- Weinberger and Carlucci -- took over the Defense Department as secretary of defense and deputy secretary of defense, respectively. When they arrived at the Pentagon in 1981, Powell, then a full colonel, was there to greet them.

But before Powell could move to the top echelons of the U.S. military, he needed to earn his first general's star. That required a few command assignments in the field. So, under Carlucci's sponsorship, Powell received brief assignments at Army bases in Kansas and Colorado. By the time Powell returned to the Pentagon in 1983, at the age of 46, he had a general's star on his shoulder. In the parlance of the Pentagon, he was a �water-walker.�

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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at more...)

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