November 25, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Chuck Colson once operated at the center of Washington power as Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon. Watergate brought that world crashing down, sending him into a federal prison and into a reckoning he never expected. In this final interview before his passing, Colson looks back on the scandal, the time behind bars, and the shift in faith that shaped the rest of his life.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Often considered one of the smartest men to pass through Washington,
d c. Political culture, Chuck Coulson, 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 Nixon administration to be incarcerated
for Watergate related crimes. This is that story and its
(00:37):
subsequent fallout, told by the man himself. We'd like to
thank Chuck Coulson's dear friends at the Acton Institute who
graciously provided us with this audio. It was the last
interview Chuck Coulson granted any media organization before passing at
the age of eighty. Let's begin with a montage of
(00:57):
clips summarizing Coulson's word to Gate trial, followed by Chuck
sharing his story.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I will say to you, mister Shore, what I've said
publicly to others, and that is that I had no
knowledge and no involvement of Watergate incident of any kind.
That's I think all I should say. But no time
did I engage in any unlawful or illegal act.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
In connection with this matter. There is much that the
public has not been told about the circumstances surrounding this matter,
and a great.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
Deal more I believe will be revealed.
Speaker 6 (01:45):
In the course of this proceeding.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Thank you.
Speaker 7 (01:52):
There was an unexpected and important development today in the
Watergate investigations. Charles Coulson has made an arrangement with a
special prosecutor to tell all he knows about Watergate.
Speaker 6 (02:03):
As a witness for the prosecutor.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
I have watched for the very heavy heart of 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 laws and not of men,
and those men entrusted with enforcing the laws must be
held to account for the natural consequences of their own actions.
(02:28):
Not only is it morally right that I plead.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
To this charge, but I fervently hope that this case
will serve to prevent similar abuses in the future.
Speaker 8 (02:53):
I did everything my way, and it crushed and bruned.
I was a driven guy. I had grown up in
the depression years, where I saw neighbors standing in breadlines.
I was going to get to the top no matter what,
(03:14):
no matter what, because I wasn't going to ever be
caught in the position that I saw my parents in it.
Speaker 6 (03:22):
I won't say I didn't have a conscience. I did.
I had.
Speaker 8 (03:26):
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 little
that I realized that my reward for being through an
alf is the way that I'd ended up in prison,
but I did. For me, going to prison was a shock.
(03:48):
You've thrown a pair of underpants with five numbers tencil
on him. I knew I was the sixth person to
get that pair of underpants. So it's very dehumanizing, and
I felt shame. I'd look out 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,
(04:08):
or they're behind bars, or they're violent people. There were
a lot of knights. When I wake up, it with
this cold chill come over me thinking, you know I
can get beaten up or abused. You know what prisons
are like. You know there's a lot of forced rape
in prisons. You going as a high profile form of
government official work, going to be you guys that want
to get to you.
Speaker 6 (04:30):
That's a big drop.
Speaker 8 (04:32):
You couldn't have made it without Christ in my life.
I know that, But and I couldn't made it if
there was in the back of my mind a belief
that God had a purpose for this. In the White House,
you're dealing 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 have broken
(04:53):
the law good enough for them, they belong in prison.
In prison, I discovered a lot of human beings who
who had committed crimes. You had a mix of people
for every kind of crime you could imagine, every stratter
of life, and I discovered they're all like I am.
(05:15):
I suddenly realized I'm not any different than these guys.
I'm not any better than these guys. I committed a
crime too. Mine was you know, nobody got killed, but
we both prisoners. We had that common identification. It was
a great eye opening experience for me. I knew them
(05:39):
to be as good people as I've known in my
life anyway. I mean, it could be my neighbors, could
be my closest friends.
Speaker 6 (05:46):
I felt a real.
Speaker 8 (05:47):
Burden for them because I saw them with nothing to do.
Most of them they lie in their bunks and they'd
stare into the emptiness and they're rotting and the souls
are corroding. And that's the worst part about prison, is
this feeling of you have no purpose, you are no meaning,
nobody cares about you. So I really found myself caring
(06:09):
for them as human beings.
Speaker 9 (06:13):
And while it was the most difficult experience in my life,
I can stand here to I'd and honestly say to
you that I thank God for it, because in prison,
I truly found freedom.
Speaker 8 (06:24):
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
the time in my life when I should take stock.
And it was during that period that I woke up
in the middle the night with what seemed to me
a vision of what God wanted.
Speaker 10 (06:40):
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 is teeming up with a Christian
group called Prison Fellowship.
Speaker 9 (06:52):
I came to love man. I came to know them
as brothers, men that before in 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.
Speaker 6 (07:04):
The life of man.
Speaker 8 (07:09):
Inmates of a capacity for scoping you out faster than
any group of people of a remote And it's because
they con then, many of them, and they've been conned
by the best, and they look at everybody through their prism,
through their lens, and if you're sincere, if you're sincere, they.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Know it like that.
Speaker 8 (07:35):
People say to me, oh, well, you were the law
and order Nixon guy, and now you're soft on crime.
Speaker 6 (07:39):
You're working with himmates. No, I'm not soft in crime.
Speaker 8 (07:42):
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.
Speaker 9 (07:46):
The problem is not education, The problem is not Coverty,
the problem is not race. The problem is the breakdown
of moral values in American life, and the criminal justice
system can't respond.
Speaker 8 (07:59):
I've seen the moral loots 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.
Speaker 6 (08:16):
They know what Christ did for them on the cross,
they know what he took away.
Speaker 8 (08:27):
I've often thought back 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.
Speaker 6 (08:47):
Greatest satisfaction, the greatest.
Speaker 8 (08:49):
Thing I think about is things I've been able to
do for others.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
Mister Charles Coulson wants the toughest of the White House
tough guys, and believed by many to be standing in
the need of prayer as well as a good defense lawyer.
Mister Kolshn has made page one with the news of
his conversion to religion. A good many people here, anxious
to believe in something, are quite willing to take Coulson's
change of heart is real.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
I 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.
Speaker 8 (09:26):
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 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 sharing and the suffering
(09:49):
is what gives you the common bond. But having been there,
it was the hopably impressed upon me.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
And a great job as always to Greg Hangler, and
again a special thanks to the Acting Institute for 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. A lot of people were
skeptical when Coulson announced that he'd found God and wanted
(10:19):
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, a real beauty about God's grace.
Here on our American stories.
And we continue with our American stories.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Often considered one of the smartest men to pass through Washington,
d c. Political culture, Chuck Coulson, 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 Nixon administration to be incarcerated
for Watergate related crimes. This is that story and its
(00:37):
subsequent fallout, told by the man himself. We'd like to
thank Chuck Coulson's dear friends at the Acton Institute who
graciously provided us with this audio. It was the last
interview Chuck Coulson granted any media organization before passing at
the age of eighty. Let's begin with a montage of
(00:57):
clips summarizing Coulson's word to Gate trial, followed by Chuck
sharing his story.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I will say to you, mister Shore, what I've said
publicly to others, and that is that I had no
knowledge and no involvement of Watergate incident of any kind.
That's I think all I should say. But no time
did I engage in any unlawful or illegal act.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
In connection with this matter. There is much that the
public has not been told about the circumstances surrounding this matter,
and a great.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
Deal more I believe will be revealed.
Speaker 6 (01:45):
In the course of this proceeding.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Thank you.
Speaker 7 (01:52):
There was an unexpected and important development today in the
Watergate investigations. Charles Coulson has made an arrangement with a
special prosecutor to tell all he knows about Watergate.
Speaker 6 (02:03):
As a witness for the prosecutor.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
I have watched for the very heavy heart of 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 laws and not of men,
and those men entrusted with enforcing the laws must be
held to account for the natural consequences of their own actions.
(02:28):
Not only is it morally right that I plead.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
To this charge, but I fervently hope that this case
will serve to prevent similar abuses in the future.
Speaker 8 (02:53):
I did everything my way, and it crushed and bruned.
I was a driven guy. I had grown up in
the depression years, where I saw neighbors standing in breadlines.
I was going to get to the top no matter what,
(03:14):
no matter what, because I wasn't going to ever be
caught in the position that I saw my parents in it.
Speaker 6 (03:22):
I won't say I didn't have a conscience. I did.
I had.
Speaker 8 (03:26):
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 little
that I realized that my reward for being through an
alf is the way that I'd ended up in prison,
but I did. For me, going to prison was a shock.
(03:48):
You've thrown a pair of underpants with five numbers tencil
on him. I knew I was the sixth person to
get that pair of underpants. So it's very dehumanizing, and
I felt shame. I'd look out 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,
(04:08):
or they're behind bars, or they're violent people. There were
a lot of knights. When I wake up, it with
this cold chill come over me thinking, you know I
can get beaten up or abused. You know what prisons
are like. You know there's a lot of forced rape
in prisons. You going as a high profile form of
government official work, going to be you guys that want
to get to you.
Speaker 6 (04:30):
That's a big drop.
Speaker 8 (04:32):
You couldn't have made it without Christ in my life.
I know that, But and I couldn't made it if
there was in the back of my mind a belief
that God had a purpose for this. In the White House,
you're dealing 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 have broken
(04:53):
the law good enough for them, they belong in prison.
In prison, I discovered a lot of human beings who
who had committed crimes. You had a mix of people
for every kind of crime you could imagine, every stratter
of life, and I discovered they're all like I am.
(05:15):
I suddenly realized I'm not any different than these guys.
I'm not any better than these guys. I committed a
crime too. Mine was you know, nobody got killed, but
we both prisoners. We had that common identification. It was
a great eye opening experience for me. I knew them
(05:39):
to be as good people as I've known in my
life anyway. I mean, it could be my neighbors, could
be my closest friends.
Speaker 6 (05:46):
I felt a real.
Speaker 8 (05:47):
Burden for them because I saw them with nothing to do.
Most of them they lie in their bunks and they'd
stare into the emptiness and they're rotting and the souls
are corroding. And that's the worst part about prison, is
this feeling of you have no purpose, you are no meaning,
nobody cares about you. So I really found myself caring
(06:09):
for them as human beings.
Speaker 9 (06:13):
And while it was the most difficult experience in my life,
I can stand here to I'd and honestly say to
you that I thank God for it, because in prison,
I truly found freedom.
Speaker 8 (06:24):
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
the time in my life when I should take stock.
And it was during that period that I woke up
in the middle the night with what seemed to me
a vision of what God wanted.
Speaker 10 (06:40):
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 is teeming up with a Christian
group called Prison Fellowship.
Speaker 9 (06:52):
I came to love man. I came to know them
as brothers, men that before in 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.
Speaker 6 (07:04):
The life of man.
Speaker 8 (07:09):
Inmates of a capacity for scoping you out faster than
any group of people of a remote And it's because
they con then, many of them, and they've been conned
by the best, and they look at everybody through their prism,
through their lens, and if you're sincere, if you're sincere, they.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Know it like that.
Speaker 8 (07:35):
People say to me, oh, well, you were the law
and order Nixon guy, and now you're soft on crime.
Speaker 6 (07:39):
You're working with himmates. No, I'm not soft in crime.
Speaker 8 (07:42):
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.
Speaker 9 (07:46):
The problem is not education, The problem is not Coverty,
the problem is not race. The problem is the breakdown
of moral values in American life, and the criminal justice
system can't respond.
Speaker 8 (07:59):
I've seen the moral loots 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.
Speaker 6 (08:16):
They know what Christ did for them on the cross,
they know what he took away.
Speaker 8 (08:27):
I've often thought back 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.
Speaker 6 (08:47):
Greatest satisfaction, the greatest.
Speaker 8 (08:49):
Thing I think about is things I've been able to
do for others.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
Mister Charles Coulson wants the toughest of the White House
tough guys, and believed by many to be standing in
the need of prayer as well as a good defense lawyer.
Mister Kolshn has made page one with the news of
his conversion to religion. A good many people here, anxious
to believe in something, are quite willing to take Coulson's
change of heart is real.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
I 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.
Speaker 8 (09:26):
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 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 sharing and the suffering
(09:49):
is what gives you the common bond. But having been there,
it was the hopably impressed upon me.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
And a great job as always to Greg Hangler, and
again a special thanks to the Acting Institute for 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. A lot of people were
skeptical when Coulson announced that he'd found God and wanted
(10:19):
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, a real beauty about God's grace.
Here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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