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