Chuck Colson, one of the principals in the Watergate scandal which forced Richard Nixon to resign in 1974, died today.
I’ll shed no tears. He recruited Howard Hunt, Gordon Liddy and a bunch of Cuban thugs to burglarize Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office. He also suggested a fire at the Brookings Institution in an attempt to get the FBI into the think tank to “clean out its safe.”
He may have become a sincere evangelist after his prison term, but he was a political criminal first and he helped bring this country to the largest Constitutional crisis in its history.
Chuck Colson became a Christian gentleman and an effective leader for Prison Fellowship. He has become much more effective post-conversion than he was as Nixon’s “hatchet man”. For this redemptive work by way of Calvary’s cross, I say well done and Godspeed Chuck Colson!
Horrible person. And I’m always suspicious of those who suddenly “get religion” after getting caught doing something awful.