Now here’s a powerful figure

They call him President Bush’s strongman, a hulk masquerading as a diplomat. His arms are so massive they threaten to ripple out of his suit jackets. Even Imus has noticed.

“He looks like the Michelin Man in a suit,” said Don Imus, host of “Imus in the Morning,” a nationally syndicated radio talk show that is simulcast on MSNBC.

As a 57-year-old former Navy officer who bench-presses 330 pounds, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage is more than a walking advertisement for the bulked-up set. At an estimated 5 feet, 10 inches and more than 250 pounds, the No. 2 diplomat at the State Department is the highest-ranking official in the administration -- at least outside the Oval Office -- who is a devoted iron jock.

“He is incredibly committed to his physical regimen,” said a woman who works out at the same suburban Washington gym as Armitage, during the same predawn hours. “He soaks through his sweatshirt, he really pushes it, he’s not going through the motions. He’s a gym rat.”

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Actions, not words

Armitage does not like to talk about his gym routine or any aspect of his personal life. A combat officer who did three tours of duty in Vietnam as an ambush team advisor, he prefers to do, not talk. He declined an interview for this story. And at a recent hearing on Iraq, he ignored several senatorial references to his heft, including one from Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), who teased Armitage that it wasn’t necessary to push the microphone through the table to turn it on.

Friends say that for Armitage, the joy of powerlifting is in the thing itself.

“It’s a matter of discipline for him,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who went to the Naval Academy with Armitage, and remembers him working out even then. Asked whether they ever exercised together, McCain said, “I never reached the degree of insanity required to be within 100 yards of him as he pursues his regimen.”

Health experts say that lifting weights confers medical benefits, and the promise of fighting the aging process. But hard-core powerlifters tend to grunt for more than endorphins. “The fanatic does it because he really enjoys the power,” said Jim Stoppani, science editor for Muscle & Fitness magazine. “It’s a high to know you can lift that much. There’s a confidence that transcends into other aspects of your life.”

In a town where power is transitory -- dependent on popular elections and fickle swings of public opinion -- that feeling of control over one’s destiny may be part of the appeal. “It’s just achievement against odds, no matter what anybody says,” said Paul Becker, founder of TrulyHuge.com, a Web site that bills itself as “devoted to drug-free trainees (with or without good genetics for bodybuilding or weightlifting), and is intended to help them reach their ultimate size and strength potential.”

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Basketball workouts

Armitage is nothing if not driven.

This is a man who built a lighted basketball court in his backyard. Weather permitting, games begin at 10 a.m. on Saturday mornings and sometimes on Wednesday nights at 7:30 p.m.

“It’s his court, so he is permitted to engage in illegal tactics, like holding,” joked Craig Esherick, men’s basketball coach at Georgetown University, who plays in the Armitage games. “I’m not dying to recruit him.”

Does it hurt to play basketball against a barrel-chested man with a neck the size of a small town in Afghanistan and the physique of an NFL lineman? “Only when you run into him,” Esherick said.

The other equipment in the backyard: four chin-up bars, at different heights and widths.

In addition to being the most muscle-bound man in the administration, Armitage is known for his blunt and pithy language, often delivered in a raspy voice more suited to the grunt-filled gym than the hushed halls of diplomacy. Once, asked during a Senate committee hearing to define diplomacy, he came up with: “Some people say it’s a way of saying ‘Nice doggy, nice doggy’ until you can find a big stick.”

And several years ago, the Israeli Embassy invited him to be the keynote speaker marking Israel’s Independence Day. Armitage got up. He noted that the State Department had opposed the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. He said he hoped the department was doing better by Israel these days. After a few more sentences, he sat down.

Behind the bravado and the brawn is a gentle instinct. During his years in Southeast Asia, where he became fluent in Vietnamese, Armitage and his wife, Laura, were touched by the plight of war orphans. As a result, they have eight children, six adopted. They have provided a foster home to at least 40 other children. According to a friend, she home-schools some of them. A visitor described dinner as a crowd scene. But the Armitages turned down an award from a pro-adoption group, explaining that they did not want to bring attention to their good works.

When he was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the Reagan administration, Armitage used to work out at the Pentagon Athletic Club (where dues-paying military types go to exercise). He opened his Pentagon regimen with a series of sit-ups he learned from a colleague in the Israeli Defense Forces. There are eight forms of sit-ups, each done 30 times, in a total of 20 minutes.

“You do that for 10 days and you’ll see real results,” said Chris Paul, an aide to McCain who learned it from Armitage. “It separates you a bit from the pack.” And distinguishing oneself from the pack is part of what attracts men to weightlifting. That appeal has helped make weightlifting the country’s most popular exercise activity, according to SGMA International, the trade association for the sports equipment industry. Some 45 million Americans lift weights, surpassing the 41 million who use a treadmill, according to the association’s 2001 annual survey of sports participation.

“It’s the most male thing you can do,” said Mark Chaillet, who works at the Weightlifting Hall of Fame in York, Pa., and runs the International Powerlifting Assn. “It’s primitive, it’s power, you cannot take it away from me.”

Lately, the size of the deputy secretary’s biceps is stirring some attention. Photographs show his neck bulging against his shirt collar. Friends speculate he may have put on a few pounds eating all those late-night dinners favored by the diplomatic set. Others just wish he’d buy better-fitting clothes.

“He looks goofy,” Imus said. “I mean come on, it’s fine if the guy wants to work out, but calm down.”

Experts say it’s not the clothes, or even drugs, it’s just the physique.

Competitive weightlifters tend to have long torsos and tall builds. Theirs is an Olympic sport. But powerlifters like Armitage, resting between lifts, burn fewer calories. With a regular regimen of bench presses, squats and dead lifts, the endeavor tends to attract a different body type. Call them the barrel chests.

“Look, a Woody Allen type is never going to look like this guy, but it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s taking drugs,” Becker said.

As fierce at working as he is at working out, the deputy secretary of State is usually in his office six days a week. Eschewing the chauffeur-driven cars normally arranged for officials at his level, he drives his own, usually a Jeep, to work. He shies away from television appearances. Staffers guard his privacy, refusing to disclose his neck size (although McCain’s office says he wears 17 1/2) or where he buys his clothes.

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Partners with Powell

His relationship with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is storied. The secretary has said that he would trust Armitage with the fate of his wife and children. Armitage explains that as the son of a Massachusetts cop, and a military man, he bonded quickly and completely with Powell, the son of a working-class family in the Bronx.

“I had a chip on my shoulder and he had one on his, so it worked out just fine,” he has said.

The State Department historian’s office says Armitage is the first official with an office there to bench-press 330 pounds.

At his peak, when he was younger, Armitage could make 440 pounds. President Bush, who revels in his fitness program, bench-presses 205 pounds. He once asked Armitage if any president had ever bench-pressed more. Being a diplomat, Armitage said he didn’t think any president ever had, no sir.

Powell actually hesitated at first in making Armitage his deputy, worried they were too close. But the two have formed a remarkable bond -- “I’m inside, the secretary’s outside,” Armitage explains of their division of labors between the public figure and the guy who makes the trains run on time.

So faithfully has Armitage served Powell that there’s a new story making the rounds about their partnership.

Powell, an eloquent speaker, international traveler and general bon vivant, takes great pleasure in a hobby little known outside Washington -- fixing Volvo engines.

The joke: Armitage got this big holding up the engines as the secretary repaired them.