On this episode of Our American Stories, this is the story of Chuck Colson's Watergate fallout—told by Chuck himself, who served as Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon. This was the last interview Chuck Colson granted before passing at 80 years of age in 2012.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. 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
(00:33):
related crimes. This is that story and its 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
(00:54):
of eighty. Let's begin with a montage of clips summarizing
Coulson's word Agate trial, followed by Chuck sharing his story.
Speaker 2 (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 in the 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 in
connection with this matter. There is much that the public
(01:37):
has not been told about the circumstances surrounding this.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Matter, and a great.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Deal more I believe will be revealed in the course
of this proceeding.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
There was an unexpected and important development today in the
Watergate investigations. Charles Coulson has made an arrangement with this
prosecutor to tell all he knows about Watergate. As a
witness for the prosecutor.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
I have watched, for the very heavy heart 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.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Not only is it morally.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Right that I plead to this church, but I fervently
hope that this case will serve to prevent similar abuses
in the future.
Speaker 5 (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 a neighbor's 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.
I won't say I didn't have a conscience. I did.
I had 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
(03:36):
of that little that I realized that my reward for
being through nif way that I'd end up in prison,
but I did. For me, going to prison was a shock.
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
(03:58):
I felt shame out in 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, that
they're behind bars. Are 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.
(04:20):
You know there's a lot of forced rape in prisons.
Are you going as a high profile form of government
official working to you guys that want to get to you.
That's a big drop. You couldn't have made it without
Christ in my life. I know that. But and I
couldn't have 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
(04:45):
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 the law, good enough
for them, they belong in prison. In prison, I discovered
a lot of human beings who had committed crimes. You
had a mix of people for every kind of crime
(05:06):
you could imagine, every stratter of life, and I discovered
they're all like I am. 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
(05:29):
common identification. It was a great eye opening experience for me.
I knew them 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. I felt a
real burden for them because I saw them with nothing
(05:50):
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 had
no meaning, nobody cares about you. So I really found
myself caring for them as human things.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And while it was the most difficult experience of my life,
I can stand you tonight'd and honestly say to you
that I thank God for it, because in prison I
truly found freedom.
Speaker 5 (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 of the night with what seemed to
me a vision of what God wanted.
Speaker 6 (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 teaming up with a Christian
group called Prison Fellowship.
Speaker 2 (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 the life of man.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
Inmates have a capacity for scoping you out faster than
any group of people ever. Remember it's because they're con man,
many of them, and they've been conned by the best.
And they look at everybody through their prison through their
lens and if you're sincere, if you're sincere.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
They know like that.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
People say to me, oh, well, you were the law
and order Nixon guy, and now you're soft on crime.
You're working with inmates. No, I'm not soft in crime.
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 2 (07:47):
The problem is not education, The problem is not poverty,
The problem is not race. The problem is the breakdown
of moral values in American life. The criminal justice system
can respond.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
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.
They know what Christ did for them on the cross,
they know what he took away. I've often thought back
(08:28):
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 greatest satisfaction, the greatest
(08:49):
thing I think about is things I've been able to
do for others.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
Mister Charles Coulson on's the toughest of the White House
tough guys, believed by many to be standing in the
need of prayer as well as a good defense lawyer.
Mister coulshn 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 2 (09:15):
I have 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 5 (09:26):
If there are people in need, you've got to be
meeting in 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 indelibly 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. 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
(00:33):
related crimes. This is that story and its 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
(00:54):
of eighty. Let's begin with a montage of clips summarizing
Coulson's word Agate trial, followed by Chuck sharing his story.
Speaker 2 (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 in the 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 in
connection with this matter. There is much that the public
(01:37):
has not been told about the circumstances surrounding this.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Matter, and a great.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Deal more I believe will be revealed in the course
of this proceeding.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
There was an unexpected and important development today in the
Watergate investigations. Charles Coulson has made an arrangement with this
prosecutor to tell all he knows about Watergate. As a
witness for the prosecutor.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
I have watched, for the very heavy heart 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.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Not only is it morally.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Right that I plead to this church, but I fervently
hope that this case will serve to prevent similar abuses
in the future.
Speaker 5 (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 a neighbor's 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.
I won't say I didn't have a conscience. I did.
I had 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
(03:36):
of that little that I realized that my reward for
being through nif way that I'd end up in prison,
but I did. For me, going to prison was a shock.
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
(03:58):
I felt shame out in 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, that
they're behind bars. Are 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.
(04:20):
You know there's a lot of forced rape in prisons.
Are you going as a high profile form of government
official working to you guys that want to get to you.
That's a big drop. You couldn't have made it without
Christ in my life. I know that. But and I
couldn't have 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
(04:45):
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 the law, good enough
for them, they belong in prison. In prison, I discovered
a lot of human beings who had committed crimes. You
had a mix of people for every kind of crime
(05:06):
you could imagine, every stratter of life, and I discovered
they're all like I am. 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
(05:29):
common identification. It was a great eye opening experience for me.
I knew them 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. I felt a
real burden for them because I saw them with nothing
(05:50):
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 had
no meaning, nobody cares about you. So I really found
myself caring for them as human things.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And while it was the most difficult experience of my life,
I can stand you tonight'd and honestly say to you
that I thank God for it, because in prison I
truly found freedom.
Speaker 5 (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 of the night with what seemed to
me a vision of what God wanted.
Speaker 6 (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 teaming up with a Christian
group called Prison Fellowship.
Speaker 2 (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 the life of man.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
Inmates have a capacity for scoping you out faster than
any group of people ever. Remember it's because they're con man,
many of them, and they've been conned by the best.
And they look at everybody through their prison through their
lens and if you're sincere, if you're sincere.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
They know like that.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
People say to me, oh, well, you were the law
and order Nixon guy, and now you're soft on crime.
You're working with inmates. No, I'm not soft in crime.
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 2 (07:47):
The problem is not education, The problem is not poverty,
The problem is not race. The problem is the breakdown
of moral values in American life. The criminal justice system
can respond.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
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.
They know what Christ did for them on the cross,
they know what he took away. I've often thought back
(08:28):
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 greatest satisfaction, the greatest
(08:49):
thing I think about is things I've been able to
do for others.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
Mister Charles Coulson on's the toughest of the White House
tough guys, believed by many to be standing in the
need of prayer as well as a good defense lawyer.
Mister coulshn 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 2 (09:15):
I have 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 5 (09:26):
If there are people in need, you've got to be
meeting in 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 indelibly 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.
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