February 28, 2023 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, this is the story of Chuck Colson's Watergate fallout—told by Chuck himself who served as Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon. We’d like to thank Chuck’s dear friends at the Acton Institute who graciously provided us with this September 2011 interview. It was the last interview Chuck Colson granted before passing at 80-years of age in 2012.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Often considered one
of the smartest men to pass through Washington, DC political culture,
Chuck Colson, who served as special counsel to President Richard Nixon,
served seven months in the Federal Maxwell Prison in Alabama
in nineteen seventy four, as the first member of the
(00:30):
Nixon administration to be incarcerated for Watergate related crimes. This
is that story and its subsequent fallout, told by the
man himself. We'd like to thank Chuck Colson's dear friends
at the Acting Institute who graciously provided us with this audio.
It was the last interview Chuck Colson granted any media
(00:51):
organization before passing at the age of eighty. Let's begin
with a montage of clips summarizing Carlson's order Gate trial,
followed by Chuck sharing his story. I will say to you,
(01:16):
mister Sherw, what I have said publicly to others, and
that is that I had no knowledge and no involvement
of water Gate incident of any kind. That's I think
all I should say. But no time did I engage
in any unlawful or illegal act in connection with this matter.
(01:36):
There is much that the public has not been told
about the circumstances surrounding this matter, and a great deal
more I believe will be revealed in the course of
this proceeding. There was an unexpected and important development today
in the Watergate investigations. Charles Coulson has made an arrangement
(01:59):
with the Special Prosecutor to tell all he knows about Watergate.
As a witnessed for the prosecutor, I have watched, for
the very heavy heart the country I love being torn
apart by the most divisive and bitter controversy in our
nation's history. If this is to be a government of
wars and not of men, and those men entrusted with
(02:21):
enforcing the laws must be held to account for the
natural consequences of their own actions. Not only is it
morally right that I plead to this charge, but I
fervently hope that this case will serve to prevent similar
abuses in the future. I did everything my way, and
(02:58):
it crushed and bruined. I was a driven guy. I
had grown up in the depression years, where I saw
a neighbor's standing in breadlines. I was going to get
to the top no matter what, no matter what, because
I wasn't going to ever be caught in the position
(03:18):
that I saw my parents in it. I won't say
I didn't have a conscience. I did. I had almost
a self righteousness about me. Self righteousness is the worst
enemy of all because you can't see your own sins.
I ended up going to prison because of that. A
(03:38):
little that I realized that my reward from being thrown
out hen's I'd ended up in prison, but I did.
For me, going to prison was a shock. You've thrown
a pair of underpants with five numbers sencil on him.
I knew I was the sixth person to get that
pair of underpants. So it's very dehumanizing, and I felt shamed.
(03:59):
I'd look out in midfield. I really have made a
mess of it. I'd always thought about prisons where they're
hardened convicts, and you know, they're breaking rocks, or they're
behind bars, or they're violent people. There were a lot
of knights. When I'd wake up with this cold chill
come over me. I think, you know I can get
beaten up or abused. You know what prisons alike. You
(04:21):
know there's a lot of fist rape in prisons. Are
you going as a high profile form of government official
looking to you guys that are going to want to
get to you. That's a big drop. I couldn't have
made it without Christ in my life. I know that.
But and I couldn't have made it if there wasn't
the back of my mind a belief that God had
a purpose for this. In the White House, you're dealing
(04:44):
with statistics and numbers and sizes of prisons, and you
see justice as something that has to be administered by
the state, and if these guys had broken the law
good enough for them, they belong in prison. In prison,
I discovered a lot of human beings who had committed crimes.
We had a mix of people from every kind of
(05:05):
crime you could imagine, every strata of life, and I
discovered they're all like I am. I suddenly realized I'm
not the different than these guys. I'm not the better
than these guys. I committed a crime too. Mine was
you know, nobody got killed, but we both prisoners. We
(05:28):
had that common identification. It was a great eye opening
experience for me. I knew them to be as good
people as I've known in my life anywhere. I mean,
it could be my neighbors, could be my closest friends.
I felt a real burden for them because I saw
(05:49):
them with nothing to do. Most of them they lie
on their bunks and they stare into the emptiness and
they're rotting in the souls of corroding. And that's the
worst part about prison, this feeling of you have no purpose,
you had no meaning, nobody cares about you. So I
really found myself caring for them as human things. And
(06:13):
while it was the most difficult experience in my life,
I can stand here tonight and honestly say to you
that I thank God for it, because in prison, I
truly found freedom. When I was released from prison, I
was forty two years old. I'd had a very successful
law firm. I knew how to make money practicing law.
I could have gone back and done it, but I thought,
this is a time in my life when I should
(06:34):
take stock. And it was during that period that I
woke up in the middle of the night with what
seemed to me a vision of what God wanted. Well,
in less than a month, Minnesota will join three other
states turning to the church for help and rehabilitating prisoners.
The Department of Corrections as teaming up with a Christian
group called Prison Fellowship. I came to love man. I
came to know them as brothers, men that before in
(06:56):
my life I'd have gone to any lengths to avoid
meeting or being with. But above all, I saw the
miracle of how God works in the life of man.
Inmates of a capacity for scoping you out faster than
any group of people ever. Remember, it's because they're con men,
(07:18):
many of them, and they've been calmed by the best,
and they look at everybody through their prison, through their
lens and if you're sincere, if you're sincere, they know
like that. People say to me, oh, well, you were
the law and order Nixon guy, and now you're soft
(07:39):
on crime. You're working with it. Mays know, I'm not
soft and crime. I want to stop crime, but I
want to stop it by the only way to ever
be stopped, and that's changing the human heart. The problem
is not education. The problem is not poverty, The problem
is not race. The problem is the breakdown of moral
values in American life. The criminal justice system can respond.
(07:59):
I've seen the moral louts to the criminal justice problem,
and I realize as a Christian what's causing it. I've
seen people broken in that prison experience and come out
understanding the incarnation better than people who haven't been to prison,
perhaps because they know what it is to be broken.
They know what Christ did for them on the cross,
they know what he took away. I've often thought back
(08:28):
about my time in the White House, and I can't remember.
I don't remember anybody ever coming to me and saying
what you did with the President? With all these big
decisions affected my life. That's what drew me into politics.
I thought I could transform people's lives, and I discovered
I couldn't do it. It's what we can accomplish as
we deal with people, and my greatest satisfaction, the greatest
(08:49):
thing I think about is things I've been able to
do for others. Mister Charles Coulson, what's the toughest of
the White House. Tough guys and believed by many to
be standard in the need of prayer as well as
a good defense lawyer. Mister Coulson has made page one
with the news of his conversion to religion. A good
many people here, anxious to believe in something, are quite
(09:11):
willing to take Courson's change of heart is real. I
have admitted my life to Jesus Christ. I can work
for the Lord in prison or out of prison. That's
how I want to spend my life. If there are
people in need, you've got to be meeting their needs,
if you really feel what they're going through, if you
(09:32):
can really identify with that, then you get a burden
for it. That's the root of compassion. You're living in
that person's world instead of your own. Now that is necessary.
You can identify with people with compassion without having had
to experience that en sharing in the suffering is what
gives you the common bond. But having been there, it
(09:53):
was indelpely impressed upon me. And a great job as
always to great Angler, and again a special thanks to
the Act and institute. We're providing us that audio of
a most extraordinary life and those words that he just said,
I can work for the Lord in prison and out
of prison. That's how I want to spend my life.
(10:14):
A lot of people were skeptical when Coulson announced that
he'd found God and wanted to serve his Lord. But boy,
after a lifetime of work, there were no cynics and
skeptics left, and all of prison reform, all of modern
day prison reform, all of the talk of compassion. It
started with a guy named Chuck Coulson. A real beauty,
(10:36):
A real beauty about God's grace. Here on our American stories.
And we continue with our American stories. Often considered one
of the smartest men to pass through Washington, DC political culture,
Chuck Colson, who served as special counsel to President Richard Nixon,
served seven months in the Federal Maxwell Prison in Alabama
in nineteen seventy four, as the first member of the
(00:30):
Nixon administration to be incarcerated for Watergate related crimes. This
is that story and its subsequent fallout, told by the
man himself. We'd like to thank Chuck Colson's dear friends
at the Acting Institute who graciously provided us with this audio.
It was the last interview Chuck Colson granted any media
(00:51):
organization before passing at the age of eighty. Let's begin
with a montage of clips summarizing Carlson's order Gate trial,
followed by Chuck sharing his story. I will say to you,
(01:16):
mister Sherw, what I have said publicly to others, and
that is that I had no knowledge and no involvement
of water Gate incident of any kind. That's I think
all I should say. But no time did I engage
in any unlawful or illegal act in connection with this matter.
(01:36):
There is much that the public has not been told
about the circumstances surrounding this matter, and a great deal
more I believe will be revealed in the course of
this proceeding. There was an unexpected and important development today
in the Watergate investigations. Charles Coulson has made an arrangement
(01:59):
with the Special Prosecutor to tell all he knows about Watergate.
As a witnessed for the prosecutor, I have watched, for
the very heavy heart the country I love being torn
apart by the most divisive and bitter controversy in our
nation's history. If this is to be a government of
wars and not of men, and those men entrusted with
(02:21):
enforcing the laws must be held to account for the
natural consequences of their own actions. Not only is it
morally right that I plead to this charge, but I
fervently hope that this case will serve to prevent similar
abuses in the future. I did everything my way, and
(02:58):
it crushed and bruined. I was a driven guy. I
had grown up in the depression years, where I saw
a neighbor's standing in breadlines. I was going to get
to the top no matter what, no matter what, because
I wasn't going to ever be caught in the position
(03:18):
that I saw my parents in it. I won't say
I didn't have a conscience. I did. I had almost
a self righteousness about me. Self righteousness is the worst
enemy of all because you can't see your own sins.
I ended up going to prison because of that. A
(03:38):
little that I realized that my reward from being thrown
out hen's I'd ended up in prison, but I did.
For me, going to prison was a shock. You've thrown
a pair of underpants with five numbers sencil on him.
I knew I was the sixth person to get that
pair of underpants. So it's very dehumanizing, and I felt shamed.
(03:59):
I'd look out in midfield. I really have made a
mess of it. I'd always thought about prisons where they're
hardened convicts, and you know, they're breaking rocks, or they're
behind bars, or they're violent people. There were a lot
of knights. When I'd wake up with this cold chill
come over me. I think, you know I can get
beaten up or abused. You know what prisons alike. You
(04:21):
know there's a lot of fist rape in prisons. Are
you going as a high profile form of government official
looking to you guys that are going to want to
get to you. That's a big drop. I couldn't have
made it without Christ in my life. I know that.
But and I couldn't have made it if there wasn't
the back of my mind a belief that God had
a purpose for this. In the White House, you're dealing
(04:44):
with statistics and numbers and sizes of prisons, and you
see justice as something that has to be administered by
the state, and if these guys had broken the law
good enough for them, they belong in prison. In prison,
I discovered a lot of human beings who had committed crimes.
We had a mix of people from every kind of
(05:05):
crime you could imagine, every strata of life, and I
discovered they're all like I am. I suddenly realized I'm
not the different than these guys. I'm not the better
than these guys. I committed a crime too. Mine was
you know, nobody got killed, but we both prisoners. We
(05:28):
had that common identification. It was a great eye opening
experience for me. I knew them to be as good
people as I've known in my life anywhere. I mean,
it could be my neighbors, could be my closest friends.
I felt a real burden for them because I saw
(05:49):
them with nothing to do. Most of them they lie
on their bunks and they stare into the emptiness and
they're rotting in the souls of corroding. And that's the
worst part about prison, this feeling of you have no purpose,
you had no meaning, nobody cares about you. So I
really found myself caring for them as human things. And
(06:13):
while it was the most difficult experience in my life,
I can stand here tonight and honestly say to you
that I thank God for it, because in prison, I
truly found freedom. When I was released from prison, I
was forty two years old. I'd had a very successful
law firm. I knew how to make money practicing law.
I could have gone back and done it, but I thought,
this is a time in my life when I should
(06:34):
take stock. And it was during that period that I
woke up in the middle of the night with what
seemed to me a vision of what God wanted. Well,
in less than a month, Minnesota will join three other
states turning to the church for help and rehabilitating prisoners.
The Department of Corrections as teaming up with a Christian
group called Prison Fellowship. I came to love man. I
came to know them as brothers, men that before in
(06:56):
my life I'd have gone to any lengths to avoid
meeting or being with. But above all, I saw the
miracle of how God works in the life of man.
Inmates of a capacity for scoping you out faster than
any group of people ever. Remember, it's because they're con men,
(07:18):
many of them, and they've been calmed by the best,
and they look at everybody through their prison, through their
lens and if you're sincere, if you're sincere, they know
like that. People say to me, oh, well, you were
the law and order Nixon guy, and now you're soft
(07:39):
on crime. You're working with it. Mays know, I'm not
soft and crime. I want to stop crime, but I
want to stop it by the only way to ever
be stopped, and that's changing the human heart. The problem
is not education. The problem is not poverty, The problem
is not race. The problem is the breakdown of moral
values in American life. The criminal justice system can respond.
(07:59):
I've seen the moral louts to the criminal justice problem,
and I realize as a Christian what's causing it. I've
seen people broken in that prison experience and come out
understanding the incarnation better than people who haven't been to prison,
perhaps because they know what it is to be broken.
They know what Christ did for them on the cross,
they know what he took away. I've often thought back
(08:28):
about my time in the White House, and I can't remember.
I don't remember anybody ever coming to me and saying
what you did with the President? With all these big
decisions affected my life. That's what drew me into politics.
I thought I could transform people's lives, and I discovered
I couldn't do it. It's what we can accomplish as
we deal with people, and my greatest satisfaction, the greatest
(08:49):
thing I think about is things I've been able to
do for others. Mister Charles Coulson, what's the toughest of
the White House. Tough guys and believed by many to
be standard in the need of prayer as well as
a good defense lawyer. Mister Coulson has made page one
with the news of his conversion to religion. A good
many people here, anxious to believe in something, are quite
(09:11):
willing to take Courson's change of heart is real. I
have admitted my life to Jesus Christ. I can work
for the Lord in prison or out of prison. That's
how I want to spend my life. If there are
people in need, you've got to be meeting their needs,
if you really feel what they're going through, if you
(09:32):
can really identify with that, then you get a burden
for it. That's the root of compassion. You're living in
that person's world instead of your own. Now that is necessary.
You can identify with people with compassion without having had
to experience that en sharing in the suffering is what
gives you the common bond. But having been there, it
(09:53):
was indelpely impressed upon me. And a great job as
always to great Angler, and again a special thanks to
the Act and institute. We're providing us that audio of
a most extraordinary life and those words that he just said,
I can work for the Lord in prison and out
of prison. That's how I want to spend my life.
(10:14):
A lot of people were skeptical when Coulson announced that
he'd found God and wanted to serve his Lord. But boy,
after a lifetime of work, there were no cynics and
skeptics left, and all of prison reform, all of modern
day prison reform, all of the talk of compassion. It
started with a guy named Chuck Coulson. A real beauty,
(10:36):
A real beauty about God's grace. Here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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