Colin Powell, the first Black US secretary of state whose leadership in several Republican administrations helped shape American foreign policy in the final years of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first, has died from complications from Covid-19, according to his family on Facebook. He was 84 years old.
“General Colin L. Powell, former United States Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, died this morning as a result of complications from Covid 19,” the Powell family said on Facebook.
“We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather, and a great American,” they said, adding that he had received all of his vaccinations.
Powell was a distinguished and trailblazing professional soldier whose career spanned combat duty in Vietnam to becoming the first Black national security adviser at the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the youngest and first African American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush.
His national popularity skyrocketed in the aftermath of the US-led coalition victory in the Gulf War, and he was considered a leading contender to become the first Black President of the United States for a time in the mid-1990s.
However, as George W. Bush’s first secretary of state, he pushed faulty intelligence before the United Nations to advocate for the Iraq War, which he later called a “blot” on his record.
CNN News
