linguistic skills and speaking yiddish. it is okay to smile today. i remember being a little one and being able to visit the pentagon. there was a lot of pride, joy and laughter about the kind of leadership going on with colin powell as the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. i remember my father being very proud to serve under him. i have a couple of things i want to share with our audience here. this is an image of colin powell on september 20th, 1989 after he was unanimously approved by the senate armed services committee to serve as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. and when he assumed his duties 11 days later, he made history becoming the youngest person i don t know if people know that as much as they know about breaking the barrier becoming the first black american to ever serve in that position. secretary, what was his idea going forward just in terms of the troops? well, in terms of the troops
a lot of the intelligence was based on what curveball was telling c.i.a. operatives and it turned out not to be true. but this certainly was, as you say, a blot on his career and something he felt badly about but that shouldn t define colin powell. there are two stories i very much want to tell and immediately thought when i heard about his passing. one was here is this black jamaican kid, he and his family moved to the united states. he lives in the south bronx and ends up working as a kid for some eastern europey an jews who ran a furniture store up there. and he learned yiddish from them. when they would negotiate with people about what the price to be for something the owners would go into the back room and the people, the customers, would be there with this little black kid and they would start
you touched my soul and reminded me about what this country is all about and why it is so great. let s stop screaming at each other. let s just take care of each other. joining us now is senior fellow and director of foreign and defense policy at the american enterprise institute. she worked in the office of the joint chiefs of staff under colin powell. also joining us, nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent, an dre andrea mitchell. nothing gets me every single time like your interview and your storytelling about this incident on the side of the road for all his military and political accomplishments, this is this story, it just gets me. tell me about it. well, as he would say in the yiddish that he sometimes spoke from the grocery store he worked in, in the neighborhood in the bronx, he was a mensch. a great human being. and i think cori would agree, for all of his military prowess and his wisdom and judgment, he