Prison Fellowship Founder Chuck Colson Dies
The Denver Post
WASHINGTON—He was described as the "evil
genius" of the Nixon administration, and spent the better part of a year
in prison for a Watergate-related conviction. His proclamations
following his release that he was a new man, redeemed by his religious
faith, were met with more than skepticism by those angered at the abuses
he had perpetrated as one of Nixon's hatchet men.
But Charles
"Chuck" Colson spent the next 35 years steadfast in his efforts to
evangelize to a part of society scorned just as he was. And he became
known perhaps just as much for his efforts to minister to prison inmates
as for his infamy with Watergate.
Colson died Saturday at age
80. His death was confirmed by Jim Liske, chief executive of the
Lansdowne, Va.-based Prison Fellowship Ministries that Colson founded.
Liske said the preliminary cause of death was complications from brain
surgery Colson had at the end of March. He underwent the surgery to
remove a clot after becoming ill March 30 while speaking at a
conference.
Colson once famously said he'd walk over his
grandmother to get the president elected to a second term. In 1972 The
Washington Post called him "one of the most powerful presidential aides,
variously described as a troubleshooter and as a 'master of dirty
tricks.'"
"I shudder to think of what I'd been if I had not
gone to prison," Colson said in 1993. "Lying on the rotten floor of a
cell, you know it's not prosperity or pleasure that's important, but the
maturing of the soul."
He helped run the Committee to
Re-elect the President when it set up an effort to gather intelligence
on the Democratic Party. The arrest of the committee's security
director, James W. McCord, and four other men burglarizing the
Democratic National Committee offices in 1972 set off the scandal that
led to Nixon's resignation in August 1974.
But it was actions
that preceded the actual Watergate break-in that resulted in Colson's
criminal conviction. Colson pleaded guilty to efforts to discredit
Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg. It was Ellsberg who had leaked the
secret Defense Department study of Vietnam that became known as the
Pentagon Papers.
The efforts to discredit Ellsberg included
use of Nixon's plumbers—a covert group established to investigate White
House leaks—in 1971 to break into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist
to look for information that could discredit Ellsberg's anti-war
efforts.
The Ellsberg burglary was revealed during the course
of the Watergate investigation and became an element in the ongoing
scandal. Colson pleaded guilty in 1974 to obstruction of justice in
connection with attempts to discredit Ellsberg, though charges were
dropped that Colson actually played a role in the burglary of Ellsberg's
psychiatrist's office. Charges related to the actual Watergate burglary
and cover-up were also dropped. He served seven months in prison.
Before
Colson went to prison he became a born-again Christian, but critics
said his post-scandal redemption was a ploy to get his sentence reduced.
The Boston Globe wrote in 1973, "If Mr. Colson can repent of his sins,
there just has to be hope for everyone."
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