Interview on the Tavis Smiley Show

(4:45 p.m. EDT)

MR. SMILEY: Decorated Vietnam veteran, four-star general, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and now America's top diplomat, and you can add to Colin Powell's remarkable resume, cancer survivor. Late last year, the Secretary of State underwent successful prostate cancer surgery, now has a clean bill of health, thankfully. And I'm honored to have him join us tonight during our Road to Health week. Mr. Secretary, nice to see you, sir.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you, Tavis. Good to see you.

MR. SMILEY: You look well. Let me -- and I tell you, you look well, knowing that you travel all the time. How many miles did you do last week alone?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, last week, we went around the world and traveled something like 23,900 miles in about 8 or 9 days.

MR. SMILEY: Wow. What does that do for a guy who's recovering from prostate cancer?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I don't know about a guy recovering from prostate cancer; for a guy as old as I am, it can be tiring. But no, I'm six months, seven months now, almost, since my operation and I'm doing great.

MR. SMILEY: You covered a lot of territory in your travels last week. There are two or three things I want to get to specifically. I can do this sooner or later, but I might as well do it sooner and get it out of the way -- the videotape that everybody has seen, who knew that Colin Powell could get his groove on like that? (Laughter.) What were you doing? Whose idea was this?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, every year, we go to this conference of the ASEAN, the Asian nations, and one of the traditions is that at the last night, at a dinner, the delegations of the different countries are expected to put on a skit. The Russians will put on a skit, the Indians will put on a skit, others will put on a skit. And of course the Americans are expected to put on a skit. And every year we have to come up with an idea so this year we came up with what you saw, that Village People YMCA rendition. (Laughter.) But it's supposed to be a private dinner, but every year now you guys in the press have been doing everything you can to penetrate the dinner and the performance and get the video, and you were successful again this year. (Laughter.)

MR. SMILEY: So we weren't supposed to see that? That was --

SECRETARY POWELL: Oh, no, that was not supposed to be shown on every network in the world and every newspaper in the world.

MR. SMILEY: But you know what, you got major cool points for that, though. Now we know you can get your groove on, you're stocking it up with me.

SECRETARY POWELL: I can get my groove on, and frankly, as I go around my own neighborhood, I get a lot of warm smiles and pats on the back because I had the guts to do it. Yeah.

MR. SMILEY: Well, I'm glad we got a chance to see another side of you. So I think it was all good, so thanks, I'm glad somebody got the footage for us to see it.

Let me go from what's playful to what's not so playful, your trip to the Sudan last week. This -- what's happening there is -- I'm trying to find the right word for it. Let me shut up and let you describe it. What do you make of what's happening in the Sudan?

SECRETARY POWELL: It's a terrible situation. We have a problem with people in desperate need and I'm working with the United Nations and other nations around the world to provide for the food that they need, the shelter they need, the money that is needed to buy these commodities. The United States has put forward a lot of dollars and Congress is about to give us another $90 million to help with this problem.

But the real problem is that there is a civil war there and there are these groups called the Jingaweit, which essentially means terrorists on horseback, who are destroying these villages and forcing people into camps, where we try to take care of them. But what we have to do is get the security situation under control, get rid of the Jingaweit, so that these people can go back home. We don't want to have camps that they're going to live in.

So it is a horrible situation. It does not yet rise to the legal definition of a genocide, but let's not worry about what the word is. The situation is what we're worried about, and we placed some demands on the Sudanese leaders when we were there last week -- and by "we," I mean me and Kofi Annan -- and they have started to respond, publicly anyway. They have said they would do what we asked. Now we have to see whether they actually do it.

MR. SMILEY: What has to be done specifically to make sure that we don't -- that we aren't found -- the U.S., that is, Mr. Secretary, that we aren't found wanting, like we were with the Rwandan situation?

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah, this doesn't really compare to the Rwandan situation. It isn't that level of violence, but it's still a violent situation. What we have asked them to do and what they said they would do is no more restrictions on the humanitarian aid coming in, no more restrictions on giving visas to humanitarian workers, allow double the number of humanitarian workers into the country, and most importantly, use the Sudanese armed forces and the Sudanese police to go after the Jingaweit and these people who are causing such terror throughout the countryside.

And we also got the government to commit to enter into a political dialogue with the other side, with the opposition, with the rebel leaders. And then finally, we also got them to agree to allow the African Union Monitoring Force that is coming in to help monitor the situation to rapidly grow in size so they can do their job.

But we've had promises before from the Sudanese leaders. Now we want not just the promises they've made, we want the performance that they must give us, must give the international community before we can be satisfied. And if they don't do that, there will be other consequences. There is consideration being given now to a UN Security Council resolution.

MR. SMILEY: One more world affairs issue, if I might, then I want to move to talking about your wonderful story of recovery from prostate cancer.

Iraq, I'd be remiss to not ask you about that. There's so many things we could talk about. Let me just ask one question, and that is whether or not we underestimated the insurgency in that country and whether or not there is now a real plan to deal with counterinsurgency.

SECRETARY POWELL: We did not expect the level of insurgency that we are now facing. And we've got a new commander on the ground, General George Casey, a new ambassador, Ambassador John Negroponte, who is there now as an ambassador helping a government defend itself.

The big change now is that the Iraqis have a government of their own, their own leaders, their own president, their own prime minister, their own cabinet ministers. So these attacks that are coming, this insurgency, is now directed at their own government. And I think this will help get the Iraqi people to stand up and say, "Wait a minute, what's going on? Our government's trying to help us with health, with schools, with fixing the industry, the oil industry, with getting the power up so we all have electricity. Why should we tolerate this kind of activity within our society?"

We hope that with the transfer of power, we change the political dynamic so that we can get this insurgency under control. But they're not going away. They're still there. We lost a number of our wonderful Marines over the last 24 hours. Iraqis are dying. And we're just going to stick with it. We're not going to leave, Tavis, the stakes are too high, but more importantly, the Iraqi people deserve to have a government that they have chosen and not a government imposed upon them by an insurgency.

MR. SMILEY: I lied, forgive me. One more quickie. When you watch these Saddam Hussein hearings that we watch every day in this country, what runs through your mind?

SECRETARY POWELL: As I saw him being indicted the other day, if that's the right world, I saw a criminal who had destroyed his country, wasted the treasure of his country, gassed his own people, gassed his neighbors; and now he was standing before the bar of justice, the justice to be administered by his own people, by his own country. And I think that's the way it ought to be done.

MR. SMILEY: You're on this week because we invited you to come on and you accepted our invitation -- I'm thankful to you for that -- to talk about prostate cancer.

Let me just take you back a year or so ago. I had the scare of my life because an African-American man -- there are a number of folks who I look up to, who I've admired and respected for a number of years -- I looked up, all at once, and there were a bunch of African-American men who were of note who were all diagnosed with prostate cancer. There was Colin Powell on the list. There was the great neurosurgeon, Dr. Ben Carson. There was the great academic, Professor Cornel West; the motivator, Les Brown -- all African-American men. What's happening that so many African-American men in particular are contracting prostate cancer?

SECRETARY POWELL: We are at higher risk to prostate cancer than our white brothers. It's well known; it's documented. And for that reason. African-American men have to be more careful, have more regular exams, both the PSA blood test as well as a physical exam, on a regular basis to detect this disease as early as possible. That's just a fact of life. African-American men are at greater risk. That's why I've gotten monitored on a regular basis over many years.

And about six years or so ago, my PSA level went up and my doctors monitored that carefully. I had an exam every six months; I had two biopsies back in the late '90s. They did not discover any cancer but we watched it carefully. And finally this past summer, last August, my PSA was still elevated and they did a very intrusive biopsy and my very gifted surgeon out at Walter Reed Army Medical Center found the tumor. Out of 13 samples he took that day, one sample showed the cancer, and then further examination showed additional cancer. And then we went through all of the options -- radiation, surgery, other options that are now available -- and I elected to have surgery.

MR. SMILEY: You're a tough guy. Let me ask you, though, whether at any point in this process over the last year or the years preceding you were ever frightened at all.

SECRETARY POWELL: Sure. Nobody likes to have surgery. And believe it or not, even though I'm 67 years old, until that operation last December I had never spent one day or one night in a hospital. I've been in remarkably good health. And then suddenly to hear you're not in good health, you've got a cancer and we have to go in and remove it, sure, it's a little unnerving, shall we say.

But you put yourself in the hands of qualified surgeons, and there are so many across the country. This is a fairly standard operation. It has risks, as any operation does, but there are so many qualified people around the country who know how to deal with this. But you've got to face it. You've got to recognize that if you are an African-American male, or if you're a white male for that matter, regular examinations are essential. A physical digital exam, which is not the most pleasant thing in the world, as well as regular PSA tests, are an important part of preventative medicine to make sure that they catch it early. The last thing you want to do is catch it late when it has spread to other organs in the body and you have a far more serious problem. And all of the men you mentioned in the setup to this piece are all doing well and recovering.

MR. SMILEY: They are, indeed. This is -- the prostate cancer is a good news/bad news story. The good news is that, to your earlier point, if it's caught early it can be treated. And you mentioned just now, all the names I just mentioned are doing well. The bad news is that so many men, black and white, for that matter, do not go in and get treated -- do not go in and get tested, rather. I suspect that digital exam would turn anybody off, but what say we to men who are afraid or think it is not masculine to go in and to get tested to begin with?

SECRETARY POWELL: It isn't masculine to die young either, but that's what'll happen if you don't detect prostate cancer early. It will kill you. It will grow, it will continue to grow, and the younger you are, the more aggressively it will grow. You can make a judgment when you're in your '70s or early '80s as to whether or not it's necessary to have any treatment at that age.

But when you're a young man, that cancer will start to grow more aggressively and once it leaves the prostate gland and gets out into the surrounding tissue, then you will wish you had gone through the inconvenience and slight embarrassment of having a digital exam. A digital exam may be annoying and no one looks forward to it, but it could save your life.

MR. SMILEY: We've got about a minute and a half to go here. I promise no more political or policy questions. I'll stay on message, as we say, and ask you to come back at a later time to talk more about policy. But let me just ask you in the minute and a half I have left here whether or not this health challenge at all got you to thinking about your legacy in a uniquely different sort of way.

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about my legacy. My legacy is essentially, I hope, one of service. I've tried to serve my country in many different capacities: National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 35 years in the Army, and now as Secretary of State. We've done a lot over the last three and a half years of this Administration in foreign policy that we don't get enough credit for, frankly, in my judgment: a Millennium Challenge Corporation, the largest aid, development aid program since the Marshall Plan of the late '40s; helping developing nations, many of which are in Africa and in our hemisphere; what we have done with respect to HIV/AIDS and the amount of money that President Bush has put into that great health crisis that is existing throughout the world and is spreading throughout the world.

I don't think we get enough credit for what we have been able to do with respect to free trade, which brings economic opportunity to people who never had it before. We are working with our friends and allies, yet people think we tend to be unilateralists. But if you look at what we've done -- how we're dealing with the nuclear problem in Korea, how we're dealing with the nuclear problem in Iran, how we got Libya to give up its unconventional weapons -- we did this all through negotiations, through working with partners and friends, and through diplomacy, not just the use of force. But we've also been willing, when necessary, to use force to bring peace to Afghanistan and get rid of a despotic regime, and to do the same thing in Iraq. And I think when people see that Afghanistan has free elections and a government it can be proud of and the same thing happens in Iraq, people will say that we did the right thing and I'm sure that we did.

MR. SMILEY: Well, you did the right thing by coming on tonight to talk about prostate cancer and I'm glad you chose to do the right thing, Mr. Secretary, to come on. We'll do it again in the future, I hope. Thank you for coming on. All the best to you.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you, Tavis.

MR. SMILEY: My pleasure, nice to have you on.

SECRETARY POWELL: All right. Bye-bye.

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