Dan K. Thomasson: Despite later good works, Colson's Watergate role can't be ignored

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April 25, 2012

Dan K. Thomasson: Despite later good works, Colson's Watergate role can't be ignored

Dan K. Thomasson The Salem News Wed Apr 25, 2012, 04:45 AM EDT

WASHINGTON — Friendly observers of Charles Colson used to compare him to Paul on his way to Damascus — a man whose epiphany overturned a once-desolate spirit and led him to noble causes on behalf of his savior. It was a comparison that I am sure Colson relished.

But I was never too sure about the former dark eminence of the Nixon White House who died Saturday. It was difficult for me to believe that the creator of so many dirty tricks who had taken the worst in the art of politics to a nastier level could suddenly assume such a benevolent nature. At the news of his death, I could only recall those days when he played a leading role in pushing us into the worst constitutional crisis in the nation's history.

There was a time when Colson would and did use anything he could get his hands on to re-elect his hero, Richard Nixon, who not only admired his hubris but reportedly thought of Colson as the son he never had.

So thoroughly despicable was Colson, to those of us astounded by his unhealthy efforts to game the system in favor of his boss, that we regarded him as unredeemable long after he pleaded guilty to obstructing justice and spent seven months in a minimum-security "country club" facility. We weren't alone. Even the most prominent members of the Nixon staff — including, apparently, some of the president's top advisers — believed that he had appealed to Nixon's darkest instincts. He was, for a time at least, the face of everything wrong with that doomed administration.

My suspicion, admittedly cynical, always was that Colson read the tea leaves earlier than most and decided to get out before the roof totally collapsed. He put himself up for sacrifice, refusing family pleas that he not admit to any wrongdoing in the efforts to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon papers. He took his medicine. While it was a decidedly milder dose than it could have been, he nevertheless downed it with some dignity.

The infamous "enemies list" that Colson created in the long run was like being anointed by the Lord. It was a badge of respect to many of those included, especially among the press "honorees" who wore it as certification of their own incorruptibility and immunity to presidential persuasion and manipulation.

As one grows older, I suppose, it is easier to regard the unhappy experiences of life with less anger — to forgive and forget.

Most of those of us who watched this tragedy develop, and ultimately came to regard it as major immorality, have come to think of Colson as the burning bush of Watergate, although he was gone before that act of the Shakespearean drama. But his demise brought eulogies that, although conceding his reform, nevertheless centered on his role in contributing to a conclusion that needn't have been inevitable otherwise. For that, he is hard to forgive.

Yet Colson's dedication to prison reform was undisputed. There is ample evidence that he led a serious number of tortured souls into Christianity during his decadeslong campaign in behalf of the ideals of rehabilitation and decreasing recidivism. But the role of such men as Colson in the Watergate scandal should never be forgotten or excused.

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Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service. Contact him at thomassondan@aol.com.