Powell partly faults Gates

General Colin Powell, one of the nation's most prominent African-American leaders, put some of the blame on Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. for the confrontation that has become a raging controversy.

Asked in an interview airing on CNN's "Larry King Live" tonight whether Gates was wrong to confront Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley before being arrested in his own home, Powell replied, "I'm saying that Skip, perhaps in this instance, might have waited a while, come outside, talked to the officer, and that might have been the end of it.

"I think he should have reflected on whether or not this was the time to make that big a deal. But, he's just home from China, just home from New York. All he wanted to do was get to bed," added Powell.

The former secretary of state was then asked about whether the incident is part of a long history of blacks being unfairly targeted by police, as President Obama suggested last week.

"That may well be the case," Powell said, according to excerpts released by CNN. "But I still think that it might well have been resolved in a different manner if we didn't have this verbal altercation between the two of them.

"So, my first teaching point for young people, especially, not for Dr. Gates, that the young people, especially, is, when the police are looking into something, and if you're involved in it in one way or another, cooperate. Don't make the situation more difficult. And I think in this case, the situation was made more difficult,".

"And you could part on the part of the Cambridge Police Department. Once they felt they had to bring Dr. Gates out of the house and to handcuff him, I would have thought at that point some adult supervision would have stepped in and said, 'OK, look, it is his house. Come on, let's not take this any further. Take the handcuffs off. Goodnight, Dr. Gates.' "

In the interview, Powell also said he has been the victim of racial profiling -- and that sometimes angered him.

In one instance, Powell said, he went to meet someone at Reagan National Airport "and nobody thought I could possibly be the national security adviser to the president. I was just a black guy. And it was only when I went up to the counter and said, 'Is my guest here who's waiting for me?' did somebody say, 'Oh, you're General Powell.' It was inconceivable to him that a black guy could be the national security adviser."

Asked how he dealt with it, Powell answered, "You just suck it up. What are you going to do? It was a teaching point for him. Yes, I'm the national security adviser, I'm black. And watch, I can do the job.

"Do you get angry? Yes. Do you manifest that anger? You protest, you try to get things fixed, but it's kind of a better course of action to take it easy and don't let your anger make the current situation worse," he added.