New York- Did Secretary of State Colin Powell tell his British counterpart two years ago that the U.S. government’s three top hawks were “f–g crazies”?
Respected Brit journalist James Naughtie reports that in private talks with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw before the war in Iraq, a deeply frustrated Powell used just those words to describe Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Powell’s chief rivals in the Bush administration.
Yesterday, Powell – through a spokeswoman – predictably denied Naughtie’s account, which appears in a new book, “The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency.”
“This is nonsense,” Powell said. “I never said anything like that to Jack, nor him to me. Anyone who says I did is wrong.”
Likewise, after fevered consultations between the State Department and the Foreign Office Wednesday night and yesterday, a British official E-mailed me: “These allegations are without foundation. Secretary Powell has never used these words to the Foreign Secretary.”
But Naughtie – a well-known BBC radio personality whose contacts in the British government are deep and wide – refused to back off.
“I did not use these words lightly,” he told me yesterday. “I had information which convinced me utterly that they had been used. Whatever the statements issued from the two offices concerned, I stand by the quote.”
Naughtie declined to discuss his sources, but he is known to enjoy a longstanding close relationship with Straw, who teamed with Powell in the United Nations in a foiled attempt to prevent military action in Iraq.
The politically embarrassing quote comes at an especially bad time for Powell, who has publicly tried to show loyalty to President Bush in the heat of the reelection campaign.
But privately, according to numerous press accounts, Powell opposed the timing of the war against Saddam Hussein and has since lamented its cost in money and lives.
Powell’s spokeswoman, Emily Miller, dismissed Naughtie’s account: “Someone’s just trying to sell a book.”