Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was briefly hospitalized early today after falling ill at a restaurant in Aspen, where he was dining with former President Clinton and others, police said. Aspen police Sgt. Bill Linn, who said he spoke with Powell while he was in the hospital under observation, said the four-star general told him it appeared to be a combination of altitude sickness and something he ate. “He is conscious and in very good spirits,” Linn said shortly before Powell was released from Aspen Valley Hospital at 1:45 a.m. Linn said Powell asked him to speak with reporters. “He asked me to pass along that this is not a cardiac event and that he thinks he’ll be fine,” Linn said. A nursing supervisor at the hospital, where former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay was rushed to and pronounced dead early Wednesday, refused to comment. Powell, 69, was in Aspen for the Aspen Ideas Festival, a conference in its second year that invites some of the world’s leading thinkers.