Charles Colson was born on October 16, 1931 in Boston,
Massachusetts. As a kid, he would organize fundraising campaigns at
school for the war effort and even raised enough money to buy a jeep for the
Army. After working at a self-developed law firm, he became a Captain in
the Marines and once out in
1955, he was appointed as Special Counsel to President Nixon in 1969. Nixon called him his “hatchetman” as he would
make things happen. In an interview with Slate magazine writer David Plotz, Colson said he was “willing to be ruthless to get
things done” and he would “run over his own grandmother to re-elect Nixon.” Soon enough, he became even more radical
about his determination to keep Nixon in power that he hired thugs to beat up
anti-war demonstrators and proposed firebombing the Brookings Institution in
order to steal documents while the fire was being put out in another part of
the building.
Eventually, he and John Ehrlichman appointed E. Howard Hunt to special ops. aimed towards stopping leaks in the Nixon administration. So in order to stop war information from being leaked, they planned for Hunt to steal the Pentagon Papers which expresses the U.S.’s involvement in the Vietnam War. This was just the start of what would be known as Watergate, the biggest political scandal ever. After the scandal was uncovered, Colson admitted to leaking information from Ellsberg’s FBI file but denied all allegations that he was the one who told Hunt to leak the information. Later in a book he wrote in 2005, he “expressed regret” for trying to cover up his involvement in Watergate.
On March 10, 1973, 17 months before Nixon’s resignation, Colson resigned from special Counsel and returned to his law practice. Yet even though he was out of the White House, Nixon used him as a special consultant for many months. On March 1, 1974, he pleaded guilty and was convicted for “conspiring to cover-up the Watergate burglaries.” On July 9, 1974 Colson, along with six others known as the “Watergate Seven” were sentenced to jail in Alabama. He was the first person from the Nixon administration to be jailed for Watergate charges, and was the second to last to be released on January 30, 1975. Years after, a tape recording of a June 20, 1972 White House conversation between Nixon and Colson revealed that they were involved in Watergate.
In 1973,
Charles Colson was inspired by the words and writings of C.S. Lewis and became
a Christian. He wrote over 30 books and
became a public speaker. He also founded
“Prison Fellowship” in 1976 where he spread the Word to prisoners and their
families. He only recently died in 2012,
and worked with George W. Bush about war efforts. His mid-life turnaround was drastic and he was
soon being praised for his good works with Prison Fellowship and his books
rather than being scolded for Watergate.
General Watergate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal
Charles Colson:
"Charles Colson." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 2 Nov. 2013. Web. 8 Nov. 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Colson.
Dobbs, Michael. "Charles Colson, Nixon’s ‘dirty Tricks’ Man, Dies at 80." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 21 Apr. 2012. Web. 8 Nov. 2013. <http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-04-21/politics/35454160_1_dirty-tricks-minimum-security-prison-charles-w-colson>.
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