Chris Wallace on Colin Powell: He was ‘very protective’ of his reputation

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace on Monday remembered the late former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his controversial speech before the United Nations in 2003 about weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq War began.  

“I think the low light of his career was in 2003, when he addressed the United Nations and made the case that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He didn’t want to make that speech,” Wallace said during Fox News’s coverage of Powell’s death.

“He took a lot of pressure from people in the Bush 43 White House, including Vice President Cheney, who was reported to have said, ‘Look, you got high approval ratings, you can use a few of those points to sell the war.’ He was very skeptical of the case and actually went out to the CIA and was briefed on it and asked questions and was not thrilled about it but got given orders by his boss President Bush and Vice President Cheney and spoke before the U.N. and of course most of what he said about Saddam Hussein having chemical and biological weapons turned out not to be true.”

Wallace said Powell took the pressure to make that speech on behalf of the George W. Bush White House “very personally.” 

“He was very protective, understandably so, of his reputation, of his integrity, and he said for years later this was a stain on his career and he very much regretted making that speech,” Wallace added. 

In 2003, Powell testified before the U.N. that intelligence showed that the Iraqi military was deceiving U.N. inspectors and possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Powell, 84, died Monday due to complications from COVID-19, his family announced in a statement. The first Black American to serve as secretary of State was vaccinated, his family said, but had also reportedly been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a type of cancer.

Tributes to the late four-star general came pouring in throughout the day on Monday, including from Bush, who said he was “deeply saddened” to learn of his passing. 

“He was a great public servant, starting with his time as a soldier during Vietnam,” Bush said in a statement, adding he was “an American hero, an American example and a great American story.”