house and helped persuade the united nations that saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which of course iraq did not. powell, a lifelong republican, broke with his party to endorse barack obama for president in 2008 on "meet the press" with tom brokaw. >> i think he is a transformational figure, i'll be voting for senator barack obama. >> he then backed joe biden for the white house in 2020, after leaving the republican party and speaking out against former president trump. >> we have to make sure that our top leadership, especially the president of the united states has to be an example for the rest of the country that we are one nation, one people. >> joining me now, nbc news correspondent courtney kube at the pentagon, and john letterman. >> as proud as he was being secretary of state, he always wanted to be referred to after he left the state department for the rest of his life as general powell. >> that's a really interesting point. technically as the secretary of state, he would be referred to as secretary going forward after his retirement, but you know, if that was his preference that would make a lot of sense. you mentioned that he served in the military. he's ultimately reaching the chairman of the joint chiefs, the first african-american to serve in that role and also the youngest at 52 years old when he took over as four-star general and the chairman. back up 35 years before that, as a young man and college in new york city, he was in the rotc candidate. he graduated from college as a young second lieutenant, and then he spent two tours in vietnam before coming back to the united states and serving in a number of increasingly more and more senior roles in the military and in washington, d.c., including as deputy national security adviser, and then national security adviser under president ronald reagan. then of course doing so in uniform, andrea, as you well know before them becoming chairman of the joint chiefs. as we heard already today from one of the people who considered himself general colin powell's mentees and that was the current secretary of defense lloyd austin. he said this about general powell just today. >> the world lost one of the greatest leaders that we have ever witnessed. alma lost a great husband, and the family lost a tremendous father. and i lost a tremendous personal friend and mentor. he has been my mentor for a number of years. he always made time for me, and i could always go to him with tough issues. he always had great counsel. we will certainly miss him. i feel as if i have a hole in my heart. >> in addition to his time successfully -- as the chairman of the joint chiefs -- in addition to his time of course successfully as chairman of the joint chiefs, serving when the u.s. military was involved in the persian gulf, in desert shield and desert storm, you know, he came out of the military after 35 years of service as a very popular figure. i think what we heard there from secretary of defense lloyd austin is one of the ways he will really be remembered by the military, not just as someone who shattered glass ceilings, who was able to blaze trails for younger men and women, particularly african-american men and women in the military, but someone who even in his retirement days was able to continue to serve as a mentor. i've heard from a number of senior military officials today current and retired, who have said they continued to reach out to him, even more recently asking for his advice, and he was someone who was always there willing to help, willing to provide advice and counsel. i think that's going to be one of his major legacies today, andrea. >> thank you so much, courtney, and i didn't mean to interrupt, but i was just so struck by those comments by general austin. as you point out, courtney, one of the people who was a mentee very recently, in fact, last july, when he was being named and had then taken over as secretary of state, was secretary of state antony blinken who spoke about that today just now. >> he gave the state department the very best of his leadership, his experience, his patriotism. he gave us his decency. and the state department loved him for it. secretary powell trusted the career work force here. he empowered them. he treated people the way he expected them to treat each other. >> and he recalled that it was on july 4th that he spent several hours with general powell getting his best advice as to how to be a foreign policy leader and how to work within the political context. kelly o'donnell, you know that so well. you covered him for many, many years in many incarnations. talk to me about the general powell you knew. >> reporter: well, certainly it was always striking the humility he brought to his larger than life stature, and that impact that he had in drawing admiration from people from a wide political spectrum. that is certainly the case with colin powell and we will hear more about that as his life is remembered. i'm struck by one statement from george w. bush who knew general powell as a trusted adviser to his own father, president bush 41 and to his own administration, and he talks about how he was a great public servant and was so relied upon by many presidents that he received the medal of freedom twice, and he goes on to say that he was a great family man and a friend. so speaking to him -- of him in both the personal terms and about his life of public service. i think what is so striking is that whether it was at the pentagon or whether it was at the department of state that sense of his to go to the ground level of troops and staff members to know what they were thinking and seeing as a mark of his own leadership to inform his leadership but also to validate the work of those who were serving their country in positions less than his own. and that is something that certainly has affected many of the people who have served him and part of why there's a great affinity and admiration for him and he has many people who have worked around him who will speak kindly of him not only today but for a long time to come. and of course we know that his passing is marked by covid-19, but he was also battling the blood cancer, multiple myeloma, and he had had parkinson's, so he had had some struggles with his health. and he also of course was fully vaccinated according to his family. this was a breakthrough case that took the life of a really remarkable american statesman. >> and he had previously suffered from prostate cancer as well. josh lederman is at walter reed. one of the things about him, he was so true to the military, and when he first was diagnosed with multiple myeloma i talked to him because i knew of several breakthroughs that were underway in boston and other medical centers, and he said, no, no, i'm sticking with walter reed. the military knows best, and that was always true. he had a lot of consultations with people at nih, people you all know very well. josh lederman, any more about the medical diagnosis? because the fact that he died from covid-19 even though he was fully vaccinated, but he had those underlying conditions, which did compromise his immune system, the treatment for multiple myeloma. >> reporter: that's right, andrea, and the family of colin powell are thanking them for the caring treatment that he received here. we don't know exactly what the complications from covid-19 that he had were. we also don't know exactly when he tested positive for covid-19, but as you pointed out, we do know this is a man who had struggled for some time with many health problems, including that bout with prostate cancer while he was secretary of state in 2003, actually underwent surgery for that as the sitting secretary of state. and with his more recent multiple myeloma, which is a cancer of the white blood cells of the bone marrow. we know that put him at an increased risk for severe covid. there was a study in the journal "nature" that found that people with multiple myeloma were also less responsive to the covid-19 vaccine. the latest reminder for why folks should make sure to go and get those booster shots, particularly if they may be immunocompromised. >> josh lederman, courtney kube, kelly o'donnell thank you so much. barry mccaffrey which hired admiral, jeremy bash former chief of staff at the cia and defense department. general mccaffrey, you served with him. you knew him in the clinton administration, and since, your reaction, you knew him as a vietnam veteran, really did reshape the american military when he was chairman of the joint chiefs. >> no question, andrea. look, it's a sad day for my wife and i. my thoughts are with alma and his family. this is one of the most remarkable leaders i ever met in my life. used to interest me when he'd walk into a room in the white house, you know, 2 or 300 people in the room, he'd look for the soldier, the law enforcement officer, the single black mother, you know, he was a global figure, but with a tremendous sense of humility. and another comment, a story i like to tell about colin powell, when he retired as chairman of the jcs, he was a possible presidential contender. he had a giant book deal. he was the highest gallop ratings of favorability in the history of the polls. he spent the last two weeks as chairman going down and spending his noon hour taking photos with people that worked in the pentagon, and it was the majors and the secretaries because he knew that's who made the organization work. so just a special leader, a humble man, tremendously well-prepared, and a model of public service. i also want to share with you former defense secretary robert gates who was with him in several administrations in a statement today saying america has lost a great patriot and public servant with the passing of colin powell, a friend for nearly forty years, colin's whole life was about duty, honor, and country. he was gone far too soon. my thoughts and prayers are with general powell's family. he was the son of jamaican immigrants. rising to the highest level of the u.s. government. >> he was so extraordinary and alongside people like general barry mccaffrey who fought in vietnam and became kind of the true north for younger officers like me coming along. i'll give you a practical example of his mentorship. i've known him for many, many years. finally i was selected to be supreme ally commander of nato, probably due to a computer error of some kind. i went to see general powell, and i said, sir, what advice have you for me? he gave me a number of very practical things, and at the end of it he said staph ree tis, when you get over there, just remember you're not charlemagne. in other words, you're not going over there to be in charge of europe. it was that humility, that sense of humor, that kindness, finding time to talk to so many people in the course of his life as general mccaffrey just said. and i'll close with the other quality of general powell that always struck me, and it was his optimism. his optimism for america, for the country. he was a political centrist. he was always one to see the danger ahead but to believe that we could sumount it. he guarded this nation throughout his life and we honor him today. >> this is a legacy that continues. jeremy bash, you knew him very well, and i know what he was going through in 2002 when he was internally loyal to president bush 43 but arguing against the iraq war, then spending the weekend before that fateful u.n. speech, which i had covered at the security council. he went to langley, and he trusted and thought that he had properly scrubbed the speech he was about to give about weapons of mass destruction to get rid of influences coming he felt from, frankly, former colleagues who believed very strongly in wnd, and this was not so much a matter of manipulation but he felt he was being used and was afraid he was being used because of his reputation globally and his reputation, which we're seeing today british prime ministers, surviving british prime ministers speaking out. he's close to margaret thatcher. we've heard from tony blair, john major. talk to me about how he fought the influence of the cia and still got it wrong on wmd unwittingly but suffered reputationally and felt that very strongly for the rest of his life. >> andrea as we now know in hindsight the collection and analysis leading up to that famous national intelligence estimate by the intelligence community preceding the iraq war was faulty based on incorrect information. i think it's fair to say that secretary powell did his homework. he tried to block out all of the political considerations, certainly any partisan considerations, and really just focus on what we knew and didn't know. he worked hard not just that weekend before that u.n. speech, i think throughout his career to make sure whenever he was delivering a public assessment of the national security equities and the national security issues he did so premised only on fact, only on truth and only on his best judgment that had been informed by four decades in public service. and so i think in hindsight, although there's obviously many who would criticize secretary powell for that speech. when you look at that speech, his broader career, you see a man who was very protective of american national security values and equities. i think if you look at the powell doctrine, which if you're going to go into a military conflict, be sure you have an exit strategy. be sure that you know what you're trying to accomplish, what your objectives are, and how you're going to use the precise application of military force to achieve those objectives and how you're going to use all american aspects of power, including diplomatic power, including the moral power of the united states to further advance our interests and our values. i think if you look at that as well as the pottery barn rule, if you break it you buy it. if the united states is going to use our military power, we're going to own some of the consequences. i think those lasting legacies will hopefully inform generations of national security leaders because that's what colin powell left for the world as his legacy. >> i'm so grateful to you, jeremy, for being with us today on that score, and barry mccaffrey, it strikes me, i was looking back at an interview i did with him in afghanistan in 2002 when he was expounding on that. we were in the rubble of afghanistan after the american invasion, still afghanistan that country still suffering from the rubble left by the soviet invasion as i can attest to from being there in the '90s under taliban rule, and he was very reluctant to do nation building as we now thought of it and so loyal to the foot soldiers and the men and women, what it meant to the military. you saw that at west point in succeeding generations as you taught there. >> exactly. the gulf war is a great example to me of colin powell. she and schwartz cough both had been wounded in action in vietnam. they both had been out in the field. he understood fell well the consequences of military power, and throughout his career, and i observed him at close range up until a couple of months ago, he was extremely hesitant to commit u.s. military forces, and jeremy very nicely summarized some of his statements. if you break it, you own it. he was frequently under pressure to stand behind military options, which he was very reluctant to do. look, at the end of the day, powell was this person of enormous integrity and good judgment and a sense of humility. he listened to experts which most people in d.c., and he remained an infantry soldier. >> that is perhaps the best note to leave it on for now. we'll have a lot more coming up. just to remember, for all of those who are writing in on social media and elsewhere about that misleading, absolutely misleading wmd presentation at the u.n. in my report as well as others, he put his reputation on the line. he thought he was doing it correctly. he did his homework, and he was wrong. and he acknowledged it, and just to point out that the one war that he was more or less in charge of with bush 41 they got out before invading. they did not go to baghdad. they did not pursue the ground war to baghdad. in the second gulf war he didn't have that choice or that power. coming up, colin powell's death from covid complications is the heartbreaking reminder of the virus's risks to the most vulnerable, even when vaccinating. remembering the trail blazing general. this is "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. a mitchell reports" on msnbc. areer. typical day during a work week is i'm working but first always going for a run or going to the gym. i love reading. i love cooking healthy. it's super important to me. i was noticing that i was just having some memory loss. it was really bothering me. so i tried prevagen and it started to work for me. i wish i had taken prevagen 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under aggressive treatment at walter reed for the multiple myeloma. talk to me about that disease because there's a lot on social media about -- by the anti-vaxxers, oh, he was fully vaccinated. the treatment for multiple myeloma does block some effects of that vaccine, i believe. >> well, colin powell had three important risk factors for covid. one is his age, 84. he's at the very high end, and we know those people are much more vulnerable. second, as you point out, he had cancer, and third, he's a man, and men are at much higher risk of dying, especially in his age category. 58% of deaths in those people 65 to 84 are male even though they make up a minority of that age group. when it comes to multiple myeloma, it's a cancer of the cells, the b cells in the immune system that produce antibodies so they don't produce effective antibodies and they grow and grow. and when you treat someone for multiple myeloma it does sue press the immune system so he was immunocompromised. we don't know if he had a good response from the vaccine. we also don't know if he got a booster. saying fully vaccinated is vague on whether he got the booster that might have added protection. in other cases the booster does help, but we also need to remember that even people who are his age, the unvaccinated are four times more likely to die of covid than the vaccinated, and so there's still all sorts of reasons to get vaccinated. general powell does not give a good reason to be unvaccinated. he had multiple risk factors. >> and i was mentioning earlier he was completely loyal to the military and to the military care at walter reed, which is superb, and when i had spoken to him back in 2018 or 2019, i can't recall which, about multiple myeloma and what i'd heard from some medical research in boston at one of the cancer centers there, and he said, no, i'm going to walter reed. they've taken care of me all my life, and they've got it. they've got it covered. and i know that dr. fauci and others were involved in consulting so he had the best care possible in america. >> absolutely, he had the best care and one should remember that the new walter reed is across the street from the nih where the national cancer institute runs many clinics and treats many patients with this kind of cancer. >> thank you so much. >> this isn't a problem of the quality of his care at all. again, it's the three added risk factors. older age, having a cancer that actually compromises your immune system and being male. >> thanks so much, dr. zeke emanuel. it's very reassuring of course. >> a sad day for all of us. >> it's a terrible loss. >> yeah. and the other major story we're following today, the kidnapping of u.s. missionaries in haiti including american children. the fbi now on the ground amid the deteriorating situation. that's coming up. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. reports" on m. after my dvt blood clot... i was uncertain... was another around the corner? or could things 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around the corner could be worth waiting for. ask your doctor about eliquis. ♪ i like it, i love it, i want some more of it♪ ♪i try so hard, i can't rise above it♪ ♪don't know what it is 'bout that little gal's lovin'♪ ♪but i like it, i love it♪ applebee's. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. president biden has just released a statement upon the death of colin powell, and i just want to read in part what he says. he says time and time again he put country before self before party before all else in uniform and out and earned him the universal respect of the american people. having repeatedly broken racial barriers, blazing a trail for others to follow in federal government service, colin was committed throughout his life in investing in the next generation of leadership. whether through his care for the women and men serving under his command and the diplomats he led or through the work he shared with his wife alma at the america's promise alliance to lift up young people or through his years leading the eisenhower partnerships, colin's leadership included a focus on the future. we'll have a lot more on colin powell coming up. meanwhile, a desperate effort is underway to find and free 17 members of an american missionary group kidnapped while visiting an orphanage in haiti. a team of fbi agents are in haiti to assist the state department. haitian police have confirmed a gang have abducted the group from the ohio christian aid ministries consisting of 16 u.s. citizens and one canadian citizen, and including five children. this is just another sign of violence and disarray in haiti after the assassination of haiti's president jovenel moise in july and a devastating earthquake in august. joining me now is yamiche alcindor, white house correspondent for pbs, who understands a lot about haiti coming from a family with a history in haiti. let's talk about haiti because it's long been the poorest nation in our hemisphere, but the -- a decade ago there was a devastating earthquake. they had not even recovered from that, and this last earthquake on top of the assassination has left them completely without political leadership, without law of any kind, and it's in that chaos that gangs have proliferated and kidnappings for ransom. >> that's right, andrea. the situation in haiti has deteriorated over the last decade, but really over the last few years with gang members now beginning to control large swaths of the country, something like 60% of the country. haiti always had issues of poverty dating back decades, but what we saw in the last few years was really an escalation of insecurity in the country. when you talk to haitian activists on the ground, when i've talked to human rights activists on the ground, that's what they've been saying, that for years there's been a sense that people are not safe, they cannot go to the grocery store. they cannot send kids to school. now this kidnapping of 17 missionaries, 16 americans, and one canadian really underscores just the fact that the gangs are becoming just more dangerous and really in some ways more brazen in their attacks. there have been a lot of violence against haitian americans but to now have this large group of foreigners kidnapped on haitian soil really does show that the situation has deteriorated, and as we've been reporting on pbs news hour, long before the president was assassinated, which is i think when the world started to ta pay attention, haiti had been in the situation where the institutions in haiti, the supreme court, the parliament, they had all been sort of wasted away by the sort of political upheaval and political turmoil that had taken over the country. >> you know, when you think about it i was there during the civil war in the '90s and when there was a u.n. special peace keeping force led by ray kelly, who was also the new york city police commissioner and former treasury official at the time in charge of guns and drugs and things like that at treasury, but had to deal with the problems in haiti, and the lawlessness there was profound. the poverty was profound, but nothing compared to what they experienced after that terrible earthquake now that's been replicated. >> that's right, andrea, and when you go to haiti, the white house where the president is supposed to live, is still in shambles from the 2010 earthquake. that tells you just physically what the country is dealing with. the idea that that earthquake that happened more than a decade ago, that the literal head of the government in haiti is still in shambles. add to that there has been this haitian migrant crisis with people fleeing the country with the country not able to deal with the influx of people being deported back. my sources really tell me this is one of the most unstable and dangerous times in haiti's history, and it really does underscore that the people in haiti are saying to the biden administration almost daily that they need to be heard more and they hope that the situation can be changed. we really need to in some ways continue to pay attention to haiti and the crisis that's unfolding there. >> thanks so much, thanks for joining us today, yamiche. really do appreciate that. and as we continue today, memories of colin powell pouring in. next, the historic impact of the man who broke so many barriers. this is "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. 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[ kimberly ] i feel so much better. i feel energized to go outside and play with my daughter. i can ate anything. like, i don't have to worry. clearchoice changed my life. . today we are remembering general colin powell, the first black chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and secretary of state who helped shape american's foreign policy and military policy, and whose military experience spans from vietnam through the iraq war. joining me now is presidential the phone with us is our friend and colleague nicolle wallace. george w. bush's communications director, and happily the host of "deadline white house" right here on msnbc. john meacham, let me start with you. how will he be remembered? >> as an icon of the post-war, post-world war ii america, both at home and abroad when you think about it. he had opportunities. he rose on his merit in a world that was in many ways made possible by the activism of so many of the powerless and the dispossessed who put pressure on the american government to acknowledge civil rights and president truman desegregaing the military in the wake of world war ii. and he proved that given what lincoln called an open field and a fair chance, people could rise, and i think that's the story at home. the story abroad is, as you say, he fought in vietnam. he presided over -- it was a critical element at the fall of the berlin wall, the end of soviet tyranny. he was the architect in many ways of a remarkably successful war in 1990, '91. tried to establish a post-cold war order, and is an emblem as well of the much more complicated world of the war on terror after september 11th and into iraq. i was thinking since nicole is here too this morning when i heard the news, i was reminded of a note that george h.w. bush generously wrote me, which makes me only one of all of american citizens having received a note from him. i had written a book 20 years ago about roosevelt and churchill and the president wrote that he was struck in the book that i probablybecause, ast bush put it in this note, i can't imagine doing what i had done without people like colin powell. >> john meacham, that's why we are always so fortunate to have you as a friend and colleague. susan rice, by the way just tweeting profoundly saddened by the passing of general colin powell, a pioneering military, a national security leader and a trusted friend and mentor. i will miss him deeply and cherish his many kindnesses. my prayers are with alma powell and the entire powell family. nicolle wallace, you served in the george w. bush white house with colin powell. that was complicated because after the push to iraq, which he opposed, he fell out with both cheney and rumsfeld and ultimately, you know, had his disagreements that caused him to leave the administration and be replaced by condoleezza rice at the state department. what was he like as a person and colleague? >> he was sort of this iconic figure within and among us, and he -- you know, the press people were never really welcome in the oval office, but we were always in the oval office because there were often press crises, and if he were the person, you know, ahead of us, or he were the person on his way out, he was larger than life. i was reading a reuters obituary, describes him as getting out maneuvered by cheney and rumsfeld, and i think over time that's not right. i think that his contributions to our politics are as seismic as his contributions to our country and our military and our government. i was on the mccain campaign when he announced his support for then senator obama. it was a political earthquake, the likes of which i cannot think of anything that rivals it. and when he came out and sort of laid his decades of military experience, his -- as we've all been discussing -- complicated legacy in the bush years, when he laid all that on the line and endorsed president obama, it was as big of a seismic sort of shift inside our country's politics as anything i'd ever witnessed. and having been on the campaign of the other guy, i don't know that there were many blows that rivalled that. and for him to have spent -- i mean, he went on to endorse hillary clinton in 2016. he was a vocal critic of the danger donald trump represented. he endorsed president biden. i mean, he was just a force on every field in which he decided to play. >> you are so right in pointing that out as you and jon know so well. i remember being on the floor of the convention, the gop convention in philadelphia in 2002, and he spoke, and at the time, it was only a few years after he had been -- the republicans had talked to him and wanted him to run against bill clinton in the second term and he had rebuffed them for a lot of reasons. and then in 2000 -- when he was on the floor of the convention, i was on the floor, he was obviously on the podium speaking, he was booed from the floor because he spoke about affirmative action. that was the beginning of a public break internally for him with the republican party, and so the endorsement on "meet the press" with tom brokaw in 2008 of barack obama, the black candidate, was such a mow mentous occasion in politics that you experience on the other side. let's play a little bit of that. >> i'm also troubled by not what senator mccain says but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said, such things that well, you know that mr. obama is a muslim. the correct answer is he is not a muslim. he's a christian he's always been a christian. the really right answer is what if there is? is there something wrong with being a muslim in this country? the answer is no. is there something wrong with some 7-year-old muslim kid believing that he or she can be president. i have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he's a muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. this is not the way we should be doing it in america. >> so nichole and jon, that was a profound part of his being. the son of jamaican immigrants, raised in the bronx. living through jim crow south, unable to be served publicly when he went off base at fort benning when he was an infantry soldier training for vietnam or going to the south to visit his sweetheart alma powell in birmingham, alabama, that is a lot of who he was including some of his final interviews with me about george floyd. i'm going to have to leave it there for now, but i keep thinking about his wife alma and the children and grandchildren and peggy sofrino, his so loyal long-time assistant, and all of you jon, and nichole you knew him so well and we all looked up to him. let me also move on to this memory as i thank you two. in 2019, a veteran driving along the washington beltway came across a driver, a driver stuck trying to change a flat tire on the side of the road. he looked closely, the good samaritan did not know that that driver was retired four-star general colin powell. here's part of their story. >> when i walked up to him, i said you're general colin powell, and he said yes, i am. >> he jumped out of his car, his sleeveless shirt on, short pants and so why is this guy freezing to death? he just wanted to help me. >> it almost felt like meeting an old friend. you have a situation, you have a flat tire, you're going to fix the flat. >> there was a connection between the two of you. >> yeah, because once i saw the leg, i wasn't sure whether it was blown off or whether he had an infection. it turned out it was a combination of the two. and so i knew he was one of me. he was one of my guys. >> he was one of my guys. just two military men doing what they were trained to do, to serve. joining me now is former secretary of defense, leon panetta. thanks for being with us today. i know you have a lot of reflections, but you've inherited a military that had really been transformed by colin powell, but also foreign policy establishment that had been informed by his silent protest. some said too silent, but his protest against the first iraq war and the misjudgments. >> colin powell is -- is in many ways, i think, one of the finest military leaders we've had in the post-world war ii era because of his dedication to our men and women in uniform and because, you know, we have really grown strong in our military because we allow everyone to be able to serve our country regardless of race or creed or gender, people who are willing to serve the united states of america. and a lot of that is due to the example of colin powell. in addition, i think his leadership not only as national security adviser and chairman of the joint chiefs but as secretary of the state was about trying to make america a leader in the world, and one dedicated to the values that america is all about. i think colin powell's passing may in many ways be the passing of a generation of leaders who are really committed to the truth and to our constitution and to our nation and the values of our nation. that's a real loss. >> and i just also want to bring in one ofcheney. he said he was a trail blazer and role model for so many and his legacy. >> i think it's really important to know that dick cheney promoted him to chairman of the joint chiefs when he was jumping over several other people higher in rank in experience, because among other things, he knew the stature of the man, and he wanted that breakthrough of the first black joint chiefs chairman. so dick cheney was -- had a lot to do with collin powell's legacy and with his pro -- promotion. >> i think a lot was based on the qualities of colin powell. yes, he was the first black chairman of the joint chiefs. he was the first black secretary of state. let me tell you something. when i talk to colin powell, i was interested in what he had to say, because he had this depth of knowledge about what our military roles should be. i think the powell doctrine is incredibly important to our country. i mean, we just went through what happened in afghanistan, and powell, powell's doctrine was about if you're going to take on a mission, commit yourself to a clear mission. you know, commit the amount of force that you need to accomplish that mission, but more importantly, have an exit strategy. that powell doctrine is and should be with us for a long time to come. >> when it comes to colin powell's legacy, jeremy bash who worked as your chief of staff at cia and at the pentagon alluded earlier this hour to what powell called the pottery barn rule. if you mess it up, you own your mistakes. how does that translate, also you break it, you own it, you buy it. how did that transfer to him at the pentagon and state department? >> again, i think it's this kind of important guidance that we need. look, we're the strongest military power on the face of the earth. but we also have to be wise enough to use that military power when it's needed. and when it represents the best in what the united states is all about. and that is colin powell's legacy. he really believed that when it came to our military mission, we ought not to abuse that power. we ought not to just simply use it carelessly. he thought we ought to use it in a responsible way that represented protecting our national security interests. and that really should be the principle guide in the use of military force. what is in our national security interest? >> mr. secretary, thank you very much for being with us. really, really appreciate that. up next, my personal memories of colin powell, a great american and a friend. when "andrea mitchell reports" continues. but we need to go hig. 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"meet the press daily" starts right now for garrett haake in for chuck todd. welcome to meet the press daily. i'm garrett haake. we continue to follow reaction here at home and all over the world to the death of general colin powell. the former secretary of state

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