Recognize me if my tie was fixed, but ok. Just leave it this way. All right. David i dont consider myself a journalist. And nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer, even though i have a day job running of a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . We are here today at city college, a place that you graduated from. Colin thank you, david. David why did you pick city college . Colin i was accepted at ccny. I was accepted at nyu. Nyu was charging 750 a year. I couldnt handle that. It was easy to get to city college. David you grew up in the bronx . Colin i grew up in the south bronx. David your parents were immigrants from jamaica. Growing up in new york, did you enjoy new york as a young boy . Colin i thought it was a wonderful place. It was a diverse place. It bonded on me this is what the world is, people of different backgrounds, cultures, colors, you name it. Ccny replicated that perfectly. I learned a little bit of yiddish working in another corner of the south bronx, a place which sold juvenile furniture, carriages, and toys. He was a russian jew. There was me, an irish driver, and an italian salesman in the store. After i had been doing this for a couple of years, he came up to me and put his arm around my shoulder, and said my name, using the yiddish diminutive, i dont think you can stay at the store. This will go to my daughters and to their husbands. I want you to get your education and go somewhere and do something. I had no intention of staying at that store and being somebody that just dragged boxes around. It touched me so deeply that i remembered it for the rest of my life and wrote about it in my memoir. He thought enough of me to tell me that i should get my education and move on. And that is what i did. Ccny was the source of that education. David did you ever think you would be the chairman of the joint chiefs and the secretary of state to the United States . Colin no. People ask me that all the time, and it usually starts out with what year did you graduate from west point . I did not go to west point. I could not have aspired to go to west point. Did you go to citadel, texas a m, Virginia Military institute . No, they wouldnt let black guys in then. It was beyond any level of expectation, but it happened. Why did it happen . Because i got a Quality Public School education. Elementary school, junior high school, high school, and then ccny let me in with my modest average. It was rotc and ccny that made the difference. David you were a geology major. Did you think you are going to go into the geology world . Colin no, i was the geology major because i busted out of civil engineering. Now you go. [laughter] colin that did not need to come up, david. Thank you very much. David you are in the rotc. You have an obligation to go into the military. Colin i graduated in 1958 and went to fort benning, a segregated state and the segregated city, so i knew well on post i was like anyone else, but when i left post, there were places i could not go and i was thrown out of hamburger joints in columbus, georgia. David they would say we dont serve you. Colin it was even worse than that. I stopped at a hamburger joint and went to the window and asked for a hamburger, and this nice white lady from new jersey said i cant serve you. You can go around the back. I said no thanks. I went on to the base, that was early 1964, and then the Civil Rights Act of the 1964, the accommodations act was signed in july. Just before july 4. On july 5, i went back to that hamburger joint, and they served me. What america discovered is that segregation was not just a burden for blacks. It was a burden for whites. We are living in a crazy system. David you went to vietnam and you were injured. Colin yeah. David you came back to the states and went back again to vietnam. Colin about five years later, went back, and got injured again. David when you came back, your career took off. You became a white house fellow. Colin i did. I was one of 15 people who would serve one year in washington in one of the offices of the cabinet. In my case, i worked in the office of management and budget learned a lot about government in that year. Colin after your white house fellowship, you did what . Colin i went to korea. I commanded an Infantry Battalion in korea. It is one of the most rewarding years ive had in the army. We were just starting out in the volunteer army, and it was my opportunity not only to train these young people and give them a ged education and english as a second language. David you eventually went to europe. Colin i was a young lieutenant for two years. And then, the period you are talking about, i worked for cap weinberger. David the secretary of defense . Colin the secretary of defense, and i was his military assistant, senior military assistant. We became exceptionally close. After two years, it was time for me to move on and get back in the army. They got me an assignment in germany where i took command of the division. I was now a two star general. One day the chief of staff says, weve changed. I said, sir . The family is packed. Stuff is moving. Mr. Weinberger wants you to stay here for another year. I said, and not take a division . Thats right. Then he said something that is quite right, just remember, you are here to serve. You serve where we need you. I can find Division Commanders anywhere. Mr. Weinberger, the secretary of defense, wants you to stay on. Yes, sir. I went in that evening to see secretary weinberger. He knew i was kind of disappointed. So he looked at me and said, colin, youre not going to get a division now, and i know that disappoints you, but next year going to get a corps, and that is two divisions, 70,000 people. A year later he let me go and i went to germany and took command of the fifth United States core headquartered in frankfurt guarding one of the invasion routes week expected the russians to use. David that was a great job. Colin it was a great job. It lasted four months. David there was the irancontra scandal, new National Security adviser wanted you as his deputy. Colin i said, frank, it cant be that important. He said it is that important. I said see if you can risk your entire career by saying the next sentence well, frank, if it is that important, why doesnt the president call me . Half hour later david a call from . [impersonating ronald reagan] hello, general powell. This is ronald reagan. Yes, sir. I really want you to come back here. David hes reading the talking points that frank gave him. Colin i want you to come back here and be the deputy for National Security. David so you went back . Colin yes. One day i was chairing a assad good, i can go back into the army now. One day i was chairing a National Security meeting and the president walks in. He sits at the head of the table. Frank comes around to the side, and while the meeting is going on, frank rips off a piece of paper, scribbles something on it, and he sends it down the table to me. I open up the little piece of paper and it says, you are now the National Security adviser. No interview, no nothing. So my last year and a half was of my time in the white house was with president reagan, became extremely close, and strong relationship. David when the administration ended, you went back into a military position, but not long afterwards, president George Herbert walker bush, the president of the United States right after president ronald reagan, said i need you to be chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Colin i am in atlanta, georgia, great command, beautiful house, and im at a conference where in the Baltimore Area where all the army senior fourstars and i get a call. Secretary cheney, now secretary of defense, wants to see you. So i said uhoh. So i go to the pentagon in chinos and a polo shirt and go into his office and he says, president bush wants to make you the chairman. David all of a sudden when youre doing your book tour, people said this man should be president of the United States. Colin it had never occurred to me. And then suddenly the book came out, and it caught media attention, and lots of people were coming to me saying you need to run. David any regrets about not having run . Colin no. Why . David some people say it is a great job. [laughter] colin prove it. David early in the bush administration, Saddam Hussein invaded kuwait, and was it clear to you that we should go in and try to kick him out . Colin well, it was clear to me this is a horrible invasion the at could not be allowed to stand, and the first challenge was to make sure he did not go south to saudi arabia. So general schwarzkopf was the commander in the region, and he and i were pretty close and talked about all of this. David you invented something known as the powell doctrine. Colin not quite. It was invented by a Washington Post reporter who came to see me one day and said, i am writing an article about the powell doctrine. I said, great, what is it . He said what we did when we invaded panama and took out manuel noriega, one, make sure you go to war after all diplomatic and political possibilities have been dealt with, and there has to be a clear political objective, not just military objective. And the second part of the powell doctrine is i used overwhelming force once, but i always said decisive force, so you dont have a gazillion people, just enough to have a divisive outcome. David you get the order from the president to kick Saddam Hussein and his troops out. Colin when that decision came down that we could not find a diplomatic solution, i received the order, and gave the order to norm, and we were ready. David there was a famous military maneuver, instead of going directly, you went around, whose brilliant idea was that . Colin any infantry captain could have figured this out. It did not take a general. Several generals made claims. Its the only conflict i have ever been in or ever read history about where i can say the president of the United States that there is no doubt about the outcome. They put their line of soldiers right on the border with saudi arabia, and they were stuck and could not move. Airpower would not let them move. Then they had four divisions along the coast. They were very light. All we had to do was fix these two forces in place and go around them, the left hook, and that is what we did. But to my surprise the night we launched the ground attack after the air attacks for several weeks, and i was expecting the marines, who were right opposite the iraqis, were told to attack, but dont get decisively engaged. I dont want to lose a lot of marines. I just want you to freeze the iraqis in place. Same thing on the coast. Just freeze them. Because we are going to go around them all. But the marines being marines, they did what they were told, but some soldiers in the marines found ways to penetrate the fire barriers, the fire trenches, the barbed wire, the minefields, and cut a path right through the iragi army facing us. So when that happened, military doctrine says exploit a success like that. So we told the marines, go, and they burst right to the forces, and they were headed into kuwait city before we launched the left hook. David the war is over and you decide to write a book about your life, my american journey. All of a sudden when you are doing your book tour, people were saying this man should be president of the United States. Colin it had never occurred to me, and suddenly the book came out, and it caught media attention. Lots of people were coming to me saying, you need to run. I did not think of running, and i have no passion to run. I felt an obligation to consider the matter, and so i did. Am a service man, and i tried to do what i think is right. Most of the Republican Party did not want me to run as republican. They even put out statement saying they did not want me in the party. David because you were too moderate . Colin i was too moderate. David any regrets about not having run . Colin no. Why . [laughter] david some people say it is a great job. [laughter] colin prove it. David you stayed in the private sector. George w. Bush is elected president and calls you and says, i would like you to be secretary of state. Colin he was the kind of republican i would want to be, so i was pleased to go back and serve. David 9 11 happens, when did you realize you would have to be involved in some kind of military confrontation . Colin you cant let Something Like that go by without doing something about it, and my job was not to immediately get involved in military matters, but to pull the International Community together. It was a very rewarding experience. It was the first time in natos history they invoked what is called article five, which said if any member of the alliance is attacked, we are all attacked, so they were all on our side. David subsequently, we turned our attention to iraq, and president bush decided we would do an invasion of iraq to go after Saddam Hussein. Colin what i said to the president before that was, mr. President , you need to understand that if you take up this government, you become responsible as the new government. You become responsible for 27 million iraqis who will be standing there looking at us. You take on great responsibility, and you are sure you understand that and want to do it . We were private when we had this conversation and he said, well, what is the alternative . I said the alternative is to have the United Nations be in the first position. They are the ones whose resolutions have been violated, so lets have a diplomatic approach. David president bush said i agree with your idea of going to the United Nations and convincing them. Colin he did. Before taking military action, he wanted to present our case to the United Nations publicly. It was a thursday afternoon, and i was with him and he said, would you take the case . David you made the case that we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. When it turned out he didnt, do you think you were embarrassed by that, think that the u. S. Was embarrassed, or had we known he had not had weapons of mass destruction, he would have gone ahead anyway . Colin no, he wouldnt. I asked him, mr. President , Saddam Hussein can prove he has no weapons of mass destruction, then you do not have basis for war. Are you prepared to accept that, even if it means Saddam Hussein will remain in place . Hesitatingly he said, yes, i will accept that. I spent three days at the cia with the intelligence communities and prepared the document i would present, and every word in there was approved and written by the cia. So we went. I gave the presentation. It seemed to go well. I was confident that it went well, but then within a few days or a couple of weeks, it started to fall apart, so yes, i was more than embarrassed. I was mortified. Even though the president had used the same information, congress had used the same information, secretary rumsfeld, condoleezza rice, all of us were using the same information, but im the one who made the biggest presentation of it, so it fell on me. That is show business . David today in hindsight, would you say the invasion was a mistake . Colin i would say the execution of the invasion was not done properly. We abandoned the army without any discussion in washington, then we abandoned something worse, the baath party, and said anybody who worked in the baath party could not work in the new government. Those were two monstrously bad strategic decisions, and we did not have enough force in there to do what we wanted the iraq army to do, and the place fell apart. Right now, iraq has a democracy. It is tricky, but it is a democracy. They have elections and are trying to restore order in their country. If they do all that, i think it is bad we went about it in such a terrible way, in my judgment. Others will not agree with me. That if they come out to this difficult process right now as a democracy, no weapons of mass destruction, no Saddam Hussein, then i think you would have to judge it differently than it is being judged in now. David what is it, in your view, that makes a person a great leader . Colin a person who understands they are leading followers, a person there who is to put a group of human beings to work that has value, purpose, and the leader will give them the inspiration needed to achieve that purpose, and the leader will make sure they have everything they need to get it done. David president bush is reelected. In the second term, you retire as secretary of state and do things in the private sector. One of the things you did is set up the colin powell school. At ccny. Tell us about the colin powell school. Colin when i left the state department, i came up here to see a little center, the colin powell center, that had been endowed by the rudin family. I wanted to see what they were doing. The answer was they had not been doing much. It was more of a mini think tank. I sat in the Conference Room here at ccny, and about a dozen students came in, and i saw incredible diversity among these 12 kids, and i saw passion in their eyes. I saw them hungry for a better life. I knew that most of them came from families where nobody had yet graduated from college. This is the first generation of that family. When it got back to me, i said, my god, this is me. This is me 50 years ago. I have got to be a part of this. David i know you are very proud of the school, as you should be. As you look back on your life in public service, did your parents live to see your success . Colin they both saw me make colonel. They were very proud of that. My father was failing. I could see that. He did not see me make general, but mother was there when i was promoted to general. She stood there in this line of people, very proud. She was only about this tall, 53 or so. There was the secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense and all these generals watching, and she was very proud. She and my wife pinned my stars on, and from there on in, in an almost yiddish expression, she would say to everybody, my son the general. David you have seen many great leaders in your career political leaders, military leaders. Obviously you have been a great leader yourself. What is it, in your view, that makes a person a great leader . Colin a person who understands that they are leading followers,. A person who understands that they are there to put a group of human beings into work that has value, has a purpose, and the leader will give them the inspiration to achieve that purpose, and the leader will make sure they have everything they need to get it done. So i have always taken on every job ive had, what am i trying to do, what is the purpose, what is the vision, why are we here, what are we doing . And then get that down to the lowest person in the organization and make sure they have whatever they need, diplomatic weapons or real weapons of war, make sure i took care of them and gave him every opportunity to be successful. So that is what leadership is all about, inspiring followers. There is a story about lincoln that i have always appreciated. In the early days of the civil war, he would go to the old soldiers home outside of the swampy are, like in the north part of the city, and there was a telegraph office there. And one night a message comes in, and the telegraph operator writes it down and, mr. President , it is not good. He hands it to him. The message says, the confederates have just raided a union outpost by Fairfax Station and have captured 100 horses and a Brigadier General, and lincoln says, oh, god, i hate to lose a hundred horses. The telegraph operator asked him, what about the Brigadier General . And then lincolns reply was, i can make a Brigadier General in five minutes, but it is hard to replace 100 horses. Someone gave that to me the day i made Brigadier General. [laughter] colin and it has been on my desk ever since, to this day, and it is there to this day. It always reminded me that your job is to take care of the horses. Do not care about being a Brigadier General. Take care of the soldiers, the employees, the clerks, the students, the faculty, whatever it takes to be successful in whatever you are trying to achieve. Matt coming up on bloomberg best, the stories that shaped the week in business around the world. Relief for retailers as sales set records. Opec agrees to extend production cuts. Nuclear flashpoints flare again in north korea. Pres. Trump it is a situation we will handle. Matt the world watches washington as the senate grapples with the tax bill. The fed chair and the chair apparent speak on capitol hill. The case for raising Interest Rates at the next meeting is coming together. Matt a fed president shares insight in an exclusive conversation. The strategy of moving Interest Rates up given wh