On the morning of Feb. 5, 2003 I was in my office, an old radio booth overlooking the Trusteeship Council at UN Headquarters in New York, when I decided to walk over one chamber towards the Security Council. I entered a corridor on the left, high above the council, and went into an empty interpreter’s booth. I looked down on the scene below.
The space was packed, the first time I’d seen the public gallery full in the 13 years to that point that I had covered the UN. The palpable tension in the air was what one might expect before a bullfight.
I could see the then U.S. secretary of state, Colin Powell, in the crowd near his seat at the council’s horseshoe table, conversing with other diplomats. I then went back to my office to watch the UN feed as the proceedings commenced.
The secretary of state put on a performance punctuated by a photograph that went around the world and which I immediately dubbed Powell’s “vile display.” It showed him at the Security Council table holding up what he said was a model vial of anthrax, a deadly biological weapon that Powell claimed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had an ample supply of.