In fact, he kick-started his military career by suppressing the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam when it happened. (Sy Hersch digged it up years later.)

Of the spin and lies preceding Gulf War I, it is well known that the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter posed as a nurse who witnessed Iraqi soldiers throwing out babies from incubators. However, another significant lie was delivered by Powell: the USA claimed to foreign governments including Saudi Arabia that they have spy satellite photographs of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers marching up at the Kuwaiti-Saudi border, i.e. another invasion is imminent. This persuased the Saudis to allow the then Coalition military on its land. However, a journalist at the St. Petersburg Times (the Floridian, not Russian!) had the idea to check this claim by ordering a photo of the area from a Russian high-res photography satellite available for private customers - and there was nothing there. (IIRC the lie was then even admitted in some form, yet the story of Saddam just short of attacking the Saudis resurfaces ever since.)

Powell defends a carefully built reputation that is undeserved.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}