Former Secretary of State Colin Powell barnstormed through L.A. last week, appearing on the “Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and then speaking before several thousand rain-soaked Angelenos at the Universal Amphitheatre.

In addition to lucrative speaking engagements, Powell is working for venture capital firms in Silicon Valley and also is promoting health savings accounts.

Yet he dispatched with diplomacy when he was defending his role in making the case to the United Nations that a U.S.-led coalition needed to invade Iraq.

Powell admits the nation’s intelligence agencies “got it wrong,” when it came to assessing Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

But when University of Judaism president Robert Wexler, who was moderating the event, asked him whether he should have checked further, Powell bristled.

“Rabbi, you’re implying that the intelligence community was lying intentionally,” he said. “There was no intent here. They simply had the wrong information; they relied on sources that proved to be questionable. Everybody assured me that their information was reliable. That’s why I had George Tenet sit behind me when I addressed the U.N.”

Of course, losing power has its many downsides. Powell said that as a private citizen, the thing he misses most is the State Department-issued jet for his personal use. He even told a story about flying a commercial airline and getting searched at the airport.

“The guard wanding me said, ‘How are you doing, General?’ and I shot back, ‘Since you know who I am, why aren’t you hunting over there for Osama bin Laden?’ That’s when I really missed having my own plane.”

—

If you’re trying to find a gloves-off assessment of the U.S. economy, look no further than bond market heavyweight Bill Gross, chief investment officer at Pimco, the giant bond house in Newport Beach.

In his monthly investment outlook titled “The Gang Who Couldn’t Talk Straight,” Gross chastizes President Bush for what he sees as misguided policies on education, Social Security, health care and the budget deficit.

These policies, he claims, should force investors to diversify, namely by parking their money overseas.

“Let’s talk turkey. Let’s shoot straight folks, without the requisite hyperbole that seems to define America’s modern age and current politics,” Gross writes. “If pensions, health care and defense are going to drain such an increasingly significant share of gross domestic product in future years, where does the money come from to promote economic growth?

*Staff reporter Howard Fine contributed to this article. Kate Berry can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 228, or at

[email protected]

.