News Intelligence Analysis
Chuck Colson Still Swings a Mean Ax
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
From The
Oregonian
By Steve Duin
So much for the rumors that Chuck Colson has buried the hatchet.
Mark Felt's revelation that he was "Deep Throat," the invaluable source who helped Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein dig to the noxious roots of Watergate, prompted bitter and often hilarious indignation from such revisionist historians as Peggy Noonan and Pat Buchanan. Much more surprising -- to me, at least -- was the reaction of Colson, the self-styled hatchet man in the Nixon White House.
In the 33 years since the Watergate break-in, few of the felons and co-conspirators have worked harder to repair their image or recast their mission than Colson. Special counsel to the president, Colson was one of the first in the White House to be indicted by the federal grand jury investigating Watergate.
He eventually spent seven months in prison after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice in the Nixon administration's campaign to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers.
When the president ordered Colson to savage Ellsberg, Colson admits in his 1976 biography, "Born Again," "I needed no coaxing." Colson leaked damaging information from FBI files to a reporter, then helped enlist Howard Hunt in the campaign. Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy subsequently burglarized the office of a Los Angeles psychiatrist where Ellsberg had been a patient.
As his book title suggests, Colson had a spiritual awakening before his prison stint. After his release in 1975, Colson launched Prison Fellowship, which he bills as "the largest prison outreach and criminal justice reform organization in the world." He has done marvelous work, and that effort, rather than his evangelism for conservative causes was his calling card . . . until Felt came out of the shadows.
It may seem odd that Colson believes he has the standing to lecture anyone about the morality of Watergate, but he was relentless in his pursuit of a microphone (at least until I called him Wednesday, requesting comment).
Colson was "shocked" by Felt's resignation because he considered the FBI official "trustworthy." Leaking evidence of criminal conduct in the White House to Woodward and Bernstein was "dishonorable." Felt's moral imperative, Colson said, was to confront Nixon or resign. Applauding Felt, Colson told Christianity Today, is "terrible" because it teaches our children "Machiavellian ethics."
It gets worse. Colson's Web site enthusiastically links those looking for "a Christian perspective on today's news and culture" to a deplorable column by Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal in which Noonan argues that Felt "helped produce" a weakened president, the fall of Saigon, "the rise of a monster named Pol Pot" and "the butchering of children in the South China Sea."
Colson is willing to promote Noonan's gibberish because she annoints him as the real hero of Watergate: "Colson functioned in the Nixon White House as a genuinely bad man, went to prison and emerged a genuinely good man . . . He paid the price, told the truth, blamed no one but himself, and turned his shame into something helpful. Children aren't dead because of him. There are children who are alive because of him."
So much for humility before God.
Like Felt, Colson is cashing in on Watergate. His official statement on Deep Throat was attached to a promo for his new book, in which "Colson reflects on his own responsibility in Watergate and why he did not react more quickly to what he saw happening."
In the meantime, Colson regularly violates his own belief that "Christians should never get enmeshed in a partisan agenda." His commentaries in recent months barely mention the Gospels as they champion Bush, celebrate the godly war in Iraq, rage against the "unfit characters" who support the "constitutional travesty" of the filibuster, and offer a misleading, dishonest and vindictive argument in the Terri Schiavo case.
The "Hatchet Man," in other words, is still on a roll, reborn as just another political hack who describes himself as a "conservative Christian" and puts the emphasis on all the wrong syllables.
©2005 The Oregonian
Steve Duin: 503-221-8597; Steveduin@aol.com; 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201
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