'I am on the president's agenda'

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AMERICA'S OTHER ARMY: Inside the Foreign Service

An occasional series

Colin L. Powell listened with growing but controlled anger.

He saw the question coming. After all, there is no charge against a secretary of state more serious than the one leveled by some members of his own Republican Party -- and even in the administration he serves.

They accuse him of leading a government agency that not only opposes President Bush's foreign policy, but also tries to undermine it.

His response came out in a single well-known barnyard expletive. Then, to emphasize the point, he added: "That's quotable."

"I can show you people in Washington who claim to be pushing the president's agenda, [but] who are not," Mr. Powell continued, sitting in his small inner office on the seventh floor of the State Department.

"People are fond of pointing out that I may not be on the president's agenda," he said. "I am on the president's agenda. I know what he wants. I see him many times a week -- in groups or alone. And the people who work for me respond to the direction that the president gives to me and I give to them."