WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday praised Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens’ sense of honor at his trial on corruption charges, calling his reputation for honesty and integrity “sterling” in the quarter-century they have known each other.
“As we say in the infantry, this is a guy you take on a long patrol,” said the retired four-star Army general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Federal prosecutors have accused Stevens of trying to hide more than $250,000 in renovations to his Alaska cabin and other gifts from Bill Allen, former head of the oil services company VECO Corp.
But when defense attorney Brendan Sullivan asked Powell to describe Stevens’ reputation for honesty and integrity, Powell’s answer was simple: “In a word, sterling.”
“There was never any suggestion that he would do anything that was improper,” said Powell, who told jurors he knows Stevens “extremely well” after having worked with him on military appropriations issues for decades.
It was not clear whether Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator and patriarch of Alaska politics for generations, would take the stand in his own defense.
But he is calling some of his famous friends to vouch for him in the court case that has put his Senate seat in jeopardy.
He has languished in the federal courtroom as a Democratic opponent back home mounts a strong challenge to the seat he has held for 40 years.
Stevens says he was too busy in Washington to pay close attention to the renovation of the home near Anchorage, which his wife oversaw. His attorneys also say their client assumed that the $160,000 the Stevenses paid to other local contractors covered the work to convert the modest A-frame cabin into a two-story home with wraparound decks, new electricity and plumbing, a sauna and a master-bedroom balcony.
Real estate appraiser Gerald B. Randall Jr. estimated in 2000 that the renovated house would be worth $270,000 before the work was done but never saw the completed chalet or the additions of a steel deck and stairs, a backup power generator or a second-floor escape ladder.
