Charles Colson, Nixon’s ‘dirty tricks’ man, dies at 80

Defying convention

Born Oct. 16, 1931, in Boston, Charles Wendell Colson was the only child of Wendell Colson and Inez “Dizzy” Colson.

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Charles Colson was the tough-as-nails special counsel to President Nixon who went to prison for his role in a Watergate-related case, and became a evangelical Christian helping inmates.

Hard work and upward striving were central to the family ethic. His father got a job at the Securities and Exchange Commission by attending law school at night, which in turn made it possible to send his son, Chuck, to attend the Browne & Nichols prep school in Cambridge, Mass.

Although he was educated alongside the children of New England’s elite, the young Charles Colson took delight in defying convention. He claimed that he refused a full scholarship to Harvard, a decision an admissions officer told him no one had ever made before.

He went to Brown University, where he became a champion debater and a leader of the Young Republicans, and he later received a law degree from George Washington University.

In June 1953, immediately after graduating with distinction from Brown, Mr. Colson joined the Marine Corps and married Nancy Billings. They divorced in 1963, leaving her with custody of the two younger children, Christian and Emily. The eldest child, Wendell, stayed with Mr. Colson.

In 1964, Mr. Colson married Patricia Ann Hughes, a secretary on the staff of Leverett Saltonstall, the senior senator for Massachusetts. There were no children from this marriage, which lasted until Mr. Colson’s death. Besides his wife, survivors include his three children and five grandchildren.

A moderate Republican, Saltonstall gave Mr. Colson his first big break in politics, hiring the young lawyer as his administrative assistant in 1956. Working for Saltonstall provided Mr. Colson with opportunities to meet then-Vice President Nixon.

In an oral history interview for the Nixon library, Mr. Colson said he was impressed by Nixon’s conservative ideals and “wonderful mind.”

“I was dazzled by the man,” he said.

The rising political operative was also in regular touch with the junior senator from Massachusetts, Democrat John F. Kennedy, who “showed me some of the tricks of the trade.” During the 1960 election, Mr. Colson set up a bogus committee that urged voters to elect “Kennedy and Saltonstall,” rather than the Republican ticket of “Nixon and Saltonstall.”

It proved to be an effective strategy: After starting way behind, Saltonstall was reelected.

“We mailed every Irish name we could find in the phone book,” Mr. Colson recalled. “That was my introduction to politics. It was baptism by fire.”

He switched his allegiance back to Nixon in 1964, writing a long memo that described how the defeated Republican candidate of 1960 could make a political comeback. Nixon responded by inviting Mr. Colson to New York for a strategy session. Although he eventually decided not to run in 1964, he viewed Mr. Colson as “fresh blood” and invited him to join the 1968 campaign.

‘I was the loose cannon’

Mr. Colson moved to the White House after Nixon’s election victory as special counsel to the president and a counterweight to the “Berlin Wall” of H.R. Haldeman, the chief of staff, and John Ehrlichman.

Mr. Colson’s primary job was to form ties with outside groups, going around the mainstream media to assemble a “new populist majority,” but Nixon came to rely on the former Marine captain to cut through the bureaucracy and get things done.