# Richard Armitage Richard Lee Armitage (1945–2025) was [[Colin Powell]]'s deputy secretary of state and longtime ally — a barrel-chested former Navy officer who embodied the pragmatic, internationalist wing of the [[George W. Bush]] administration that consistently lost the internal arguments to the [[Neoconservatism]] hawks. He co-authored, with Powell, the private "[[Pottery Barn Rule]]" warning about invading Iraq, and he was later revealed as the inadvertent source of the leak at the center of the [[Valerie Plame Affair]]. ## Career A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Armitage served three combat tours in the [[Vietnam War]] as a riverine warfare advisor. He rose through Pentagon posts in the [[Ronald Reagan]] administration — Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs — and worked as an aide to Senator [[Bob Dole]]. In 2001 he became deputy secretary of state under Powell, his close friend, forming a State Department partnership skeptical of the rush to war. ## Iraq and the Pottery Barn Rule Armitage shared Powell's misgivings about the [[Iraq War]] and is credited as co-coiner of the "you break it, you own it" formulation — the [[Pottery Barn Rule]] — that captured their warning to Bush about the costs of occupation. Like Powell, he was overridden by the [[Dick Cheney]]–[[Donald Rumsfeld]] axis. ## The Plame Leak In 2003 Armitage disclosed CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity to columnist Robert Novak, whose July 2003 column exposed her — the act that triggered the [[Valerie Plame Affair]]. Armitage publicly admitted in 2006 that he was the original source, characterizing the disclosure as inadvertent gossip rather than a deliberate act of political retaliation. He was never charged, as prosecutors found no evidence he knew Plame's status was covert; the special-counsel investigation instead convicted Cheney aide Scooter Libby of obstruction. Armitage died in 2025 at 79. ## See Also - [[Colin Powell]] - [[Pottery Barn Rule]] - [[Valerie Plame Affair]] - [[Iraq War]] - [[Dick Cheney]]