Colin Powell: The Open-Access Man

By: George Gedda, Associated Press Writer (AP) It was before dawn, and Secretary of State Colin Powell was jetting back to Washington from Iraq. He would be able to spend only a brief period at his suburban Virginia home before reporting to his seventh floor State Department office.

He playfully reproached an aide for not giving him much free time between touchdown at Andrews Air Force Base and his first appointment of the day.

Few people have more claims on their time than Colin Powell. He has to keep up to date on topics ranging from Iraq to North Korea to Eastern Congo. There are the daily phone calls to foreign leaders, administration colleagues, and members of Congress. There are meetings to attend, luncheons, dinners, speeches, hands to shake. He has to keep President Bush happy.

Through it all, Powell manages, according to veteran observers, to spend more time before cameras and microphones than any of his predecessors. Over the past 16 days, Powell has made about 30 media appearances, including one-on-one interviews, formal news conferences, and on the fly question-and-answer sessions with reporters.

Six of the interviews have been with U.S. networks, and one each with Arab, Russian, French, Mexican, and German television news outlets. He spent a full hour with PBS' Charlie Rose for a broadcast Monday night. David Letterman will quiz Powell on Thursday.

According to State Department records, Powell had a combined total of 187 print, television, and radio interviews in 2002, his first full year in office. His predecessor, Madeleine Albright, had 97 in 1999. Powell's much higher numbers reflect the intense media fixation on foreign policy after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Powell has a staff that weighs media requests. They are under instructions to avoid playing favorites.

He is well suited to be a chief spokesman on foreign policy. He is an accomplished speaker, projects a benign image, has no syntax problems, and no need for notes. And it doesn't hurt to be an international celebrity.

For print media interviews, Powell takes a short stroll from his office to a large conference room. For TV, he has the choice of a small outer office with a handsome grandfather's clock or a second floor TV studio that previously served as the main press briefing room.

There are reasons why Powell is so obliging to interview requests. Aides say he believes it is important for him to defend U.S. policies at a time when much of the world sees the United States as a go-it-alone power that pays too little heed to international treaties and is too eager to use military force.

The problem is particularly serious in the Muslim world. A spring survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center shows an astonishing decline in pro-American sentiment in countries such as Indonesia and Turkey since Bush took office.

While 75% of Indonesians had a favorable opinion of the United States in 2000, 83% now have an unfavorable view, according to the poll. In Turkey, the percentage was the same, up from 55% last summer.

Powell patiently tries to rebut the widespread view in the Muslim world and elsewhere that the Iraq example proves the United States is a controlling power.

"We left Germany. We left Japan. We left Italy. We left France. We left all the places that we liberated in World War II, in order to come back to our own shores. We are not occupiers. We are liberators. We don't take sovereignty. We return sovereignty," he told a Russian interviewer recently.

Powell seldom has to grope for words. One exception occurred several months ago when he was addressing school kids at the State Department. Powell chose an 8-year old for the first question: "Can I have your autograph?" the child said.

Uncharacteristically, Powell hesitated. He didn't want to say no but knew that if he said yes he would touch off a stampede to the podium. He resolved the dilemma by suggesting that the young man wait for the autograph until after the event.