 He was a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and spent twenty years as a journalist for the "Los Angeles Times".He spent long stretches of his tenure with the "Times" as a foreign correspondent in Africa, based in Nairobi from 1980 to 1986, and as Eastern European Bureau Chief from 1986 to 1991, during which time he lived in Warsaw.Powers lived in Bennington, Vermont for the last five years of his life.