Born again, again: a new biography of Charles Colson is yet another cover-up

Washington Monthly, July-August, 2005 by Max Blumenthal

Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed By Jonathan Aitken WaterBrook Press; $24.95

In March, 1972, the disclosure of a memo written by Dita Beard, a lobbyist from the telecommunications firm ITT, set in motion the events that would lead Mark Felt to become the source known as Deep Throat. The Beard memo revealed that a $400,000 donation to President Richard Nixon's reelection campaign had prompted the Justice Department to scrap an antitrust suit against the company. In an effort to erase this inconvenient truth, White House special counsel Charles Colson ordered the FBI to declare the memo a forgery. Unfortunately for Colson, the veteran FBI agent assigned to the task was Felt who, after reviewing lab results, refused to issue Colson's desired conclusion. An enraged Colson berated Felt on the telephone, subjecting him to "partisan instructions and pressure," according to Felt's memoirs. The incident taught Felt that the Nixon White House would stop at little in the name of politics. It wasn't long before he was looking for a red flag in the flower pot on Bob Woodward's balcony.

This Charles Colson, the one whose name is commonly preceded by "hatchet man," is a thing of the past, according to Colson's friends, supporters, and now his biographer, Jonathan Aitken. Perhaps the most famous born-again Republican after George W. Bush, Colson has spent the three decades since Watergate working with Prison Fellowship, a penal reform organization he founded, and burnishing his credentials as an evangelical leader. He has become, in the words of Peggy Noonan, one of the "heroes of Watergate." Indeed, Noonan wrote in The Wall Street Journal just days after the disclosure of Felt's identity as Deep Throat that Colson "has devoted his life to helping prisoners and their families. He paid the price, told the truth, blamed no one but himself, and turned his shame into something helpful."

And as if on cue, along comes an authorized biography, Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed. The former Watergate felon tapped Aitken to write this account of his metamorphosis from White House hack to man of God, and it is an inspired choice. Aitken himself is a disgraced former Tory cabinet minister who went to prison in 1999 for perjury in a bungled libel suit against The Guardian, which had run a series of articles detailing his illicit dealings with Saudi arms traders. He met Colson in the course of writing a glowing biography of Nixon, and Colson ministered to Aitken during his seven-month prison term. Under Colson's influence, Aitken became, as they say in Britain, a "Christer" and a board member of Colson's Prison Fellowship International.

Just before he launches into a description of Colson as "America's best-known Christian leader after Billy Graham," Aitken assures readers that his book "is not religious, political, or personal hagiography." But it's hard to know what else to call a book that hyperbolizes up an impressive enough conversion tale, selectively presents key characters, omits inopportune facts, and glosses over the subject's more politically incorrect views. The Charles Colson who appears in Aitken's narrative is a stock character, a humble and forgiving man who is too busy helping prisoners to be embroiled in the hot-button issues of the day. The evidence to the contrary makes it impossible to dismiss this adoring portrait as merely neglectful. Something else is going on. In Charles W. Colson, Aitken and Colson--the two veteran con-men--have conspired to commit yet another cover-up.

Come to Jesus

No conversion story can be told without first recounting the wretched deeds and failings of the fallen sinner. With Colson, it's a rich lode. There was the time in 1972, for example, when Colson arranged for a Gary Hart impersonator to place a rude phone call to former AFL-CIO chief George Meany (Hart was then George McGovern's campaign manager), resulting in the union's refusal to endorse the Democratic nominee. Then there's the story of how Colson diverted $8900 of Nixon campaign funds to purchase copies of a book that purported to document the "anti-Nixon bias" of the television networks during the 1968 campaign. (Through these bulk sales, the book made The New York Times' bestseller list.) And who can forget the tale of how Colson masterminded the break-in of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, a crime which would eventually land him in prison?

After the sins must come the change of heart. Colson's come-to-Jesus moment occurred with the Watergate trial at its height, In the summer of 1973, with the prosecution preparing its case against him and the press corps circling like sharks, Colson knelt on the floor of the office of Raytheon CEO Tom Phillips. While Colson fought back tears in an embarrassed state of silence, Phillips prayed for him and for his soul. As he drove home, "tears of relief" finally burst from his eyes and, Colson tells Aitken, he felt the spirit of Christ for the first time. Colson was eventually convicted for his part in the Ellsberg break-in; during his seven months in prison, he studied the Bible obsessive.