Humbled Hatchet Man

Of all the men around former President Richard Nixon, probably none was more hated than Chuck Colson, top hatchet man and tireless inventor of dirty tricks. There was a sense of national satisfaction when he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and served seven months in jail. Now, in a book to be published in mid-February, Colson, 44, tells how, in embracing evangelical Christianity, he learned the error of his ways--and of his fallen chiefs. Born Again (Chosen Books, a religious publisher) is an uncomplaining and contrite testament to the belief, renewed each generation, that power corrupts.

Colson denies that he said he would run over his grandmother for Nixon. But he admits that he might as well have made the remark. His loyalty to Nixon was total. Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman once warned him: "Richard Nixon will use anybody. Remember that. When he doesn't need you, he'll discard you." But Colson thought he was somehow exempt from this treatment.

The Nixon portrayed by Colson is at once arrogant and vindictive, reflective and melancholy, and finally desperate and isolated. He is a man incapable of savoring his triumphs, for beyond them his enemies were still lurking. While his finger slowly circled the rim of a wineglass, Nixon told his aides: "One day we'll get them--we'll get them on the ground where we want them. And we'll stick our heels in, step on them hard and twist." His eyes darted to Kissinger. "Henry knows what I mean--just like you do in the negotiations, Henry--get them on the floor and step on them, crush them, show no mercy."

Colson reports that he eagerly agreed with Nixon. Kissinger "smiled and nodded," and Haldeman said nothing, but had a look "of hand-rubbing expectation. Only Ehrlichman, expressionless and often a lonely voice of moderation, jerked his head back and stared at the ceiling ... A Holy War was declared against the enemy ... The seeds of destruction were already sown--not in them but in us."

The Right Thing. For Colson, Nixon was at his best when he seemed to make a decision on principle. When the President ordered all-out bombing after the North Vietnamese offensive in the spring of 1972, Colson warned him that the action might cost him the election. "So what," snapped Nixon. "It's the right thing to do."

After Nixon's reelection, Colson left the White House to practice law. As the Watergate scandal unfolded, he was occasionally summoned to the Oval Office, where he observed a President in alarming decline. Nixon, ironically, feared that his office was being bugged by his enemies (it was his own bugging system that brought him down). "I don't think I can trust anybody, not even the secretaries."

It was about this time that Colson's thoughts, he reports, turned more frequently to God--with the aid of one of the White House's most notorious enemies, former Democratic Senator Harold Hughes. While Colson was in prison, Hughes, Congressman Al Quie and two other members of Colson's prayer group offered to serve out the rest of his term for him on the basis of an old statute they had unearthed. "For the first time," writes Colson, "I felt truly free, even as the fortunes of my life seemed at their lowest ebb."

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