Born Again

This memoir, first published in 1976 with a twentieth-anniversary edition, recounts the political career, spiritual transformation, and imprisonment of Charles W. Colson, a key adviser to President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.

The story opens on election night in November 1972. Colson, his wife Patty, and son Wendell attended a Victory Party at Washington's Shoreham Hotel to celebrate Nixon's historic landslide reelection, but the atmosphere was strangely lifeless, with donors and officials more interested in free drinks than celebrating. Summoned to Nixon's working office in the Executive Office Building, Colson found the President elated, toasting him for the strategy that delivered Catholic, union, and blue-collar voters, while chief of staff Bob Haldeman sat grimly tallying returns. The next morning, instead of thanking his staff, Nixon compared them to "exhausted volcanoes" and ordered resignation letters from everyone by Friday. Colson walked through the eerily silent White House sensing something deeply wrong, both in the administration and within himself.

Colson traces the roots of this emptiness through his life. Raised in Winthrop, Massachusetts, by a self-taught lawyer father, he absorbed a fierce work ethic and consuming pride. He turned down a full scholarship to Harvard out of resentment toward the Brahmin establishment, Boston's old upper-class social elite, choosing Brown University instead. After serving in the Marine Corps, he entered politics as chief assistant to Massachusetts Senator Leverett Saltonstall, co-founded a law firm, and married Patty Hughes, a Capitol Hill secretary. His bond with Nixon deepened through shared lower-middle-class origins. In late 1969, Colson joined the White House staff, feeling his entire life was about to be fulfilled.

Colson quickly earned Nixon's trust as a ruthless troubleshooter. The April 1970 invasion of Cambodia provoked massive domestic unrest; National Guard troops killed four students at Kent State University in Ohio, and over 150,000 demonstrators besieged the White House. A siege mentality took hold. When the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, leaked classified documents about American involvement in Vietnam, in June 1971, Nixon ordered Colson to discredit the leaker, Daniel Ellsberg, a former defense analyst. Colson recruited ex-CIA operative E. Howard Hunt, who joined a special White House unit known as "the plumbers" that burglarized the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist in Los Angeles. Colson learned of the break-in only afterward but acknowledges that the Nixon White House's culture made such abuses inevitable.

By 1972, Colson had earned the label of Nixon's "hatchet man." He orchestrated the Middle America strategy, targeting Catholic, blue-collar, and union voters to build the coalition behind Nixon's landslide. Then, on a Saturday in June, domestic adviser John Ehrlichman called about Hunt: Burglars connected to Hunt had been arrested at the Watergate office complex, headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Though Colson insists he had no foreknowledge, he acknowledges that Nixon's inner circle had "set in motion forces that would sooner or later make Watergate, or something like it, inevitable."

After the election, Colson returned to law practice but could not escape Watergate or a growing inner deadness. In March 1973, he visited Raytheon Company president Tom Phillips in Boston and found Phillips dramatically changed: radiant, serene, at peace. Phillips explained that he had "accepted Jesus Christ." Colson was baffled but intrigued. As Watergate accusations intensified, he kept remembering the look on Phillips's face.

In August 1973, Colson visited Phillips at home. Phillips read aloud from C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, specifically the chapter on pride, and Colson felt his entire life exposed: the ambition, the arrogance, the need to dominate. Phillips suggested that if the Nixon White House had placed its faith in God, the crisis could have been avoided. When Phillips asked if Colson wanted to pray, he could not fully commit. Driving away, Colson broke down in tears and prayed: "God, I don't know how to find You, but I'm going to try!" Over the following week at a Maine cottage, he read Mere Christianity and worked through his objections. By Friday morning, staring at the sea, he spoke the words: "Lord Jesus, I believe You. I accept You. Please come into my life."

Back in Washington, Colson built a network of Christian fellowship. Doug Coe, a leader in the Washington Prayer Breakfast movement, visited Colson's office and told him that hundreds of Christians in government were already praying for him. Coe arranged a meeting with Senator Harold Hughes of Iowa, one of Nixon's fiercest political enemies. After hearing Colson's story, Hughes declared: "I love you now as my brother in Christ." Hughes, Colson, Minnesota Congressman Al Quie, former Democratic Congressman Graham Purcell, and Coe began meeting every Monday for Bible study and prayer, forming bonds that contrasted starkly with the poisonous atmosphere of Watergate-era Washington.

That fall, at Nixon's request, Colson delivered the harsh message that led Vice President Spiro Agnew, who was facing bribery charges, to resign in October 1973. Colson's conversion became public in December after CBS reporter Dan Rather questioned a White House spokesman about Colson's attendance at a prayer breakfast where Hughes had spoken and Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns had presided. Nixon summoned Colson to the White House, appearing diminished and paranoid, and confessed: "I get on my knees every night and just pray to God." Colson failed to share his own faith, a silence that haunted him. He realized he could no longer serve as both Nixon's political lieutenant and a follower of Christ.

On March 1, 1974, Colson was indicted in the Watergate cover-up case along with Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and former Attorney General John Mitchell; a second indictment in the Ellsberg case followed. Prosecutors offered a plea bargain, but Colson's family told him to reject any deal requiring him to say something untrue; his 15-year-old daughter, Emily, insisted: "Well, then don't say you did it." When Nixon released White House transcripts, Colson discovered the President had known far more about the cover-up than he admitted. Colson decided to plead guilty to disseminating derogatory information about Ellsberg while Ellsberg was a criminal defendant. On June 21, 1974, Judge Gerhard Gesell sentenced him to one to three years and a $5,000 fine.

Colson surrendered on July 8 and was taken to Fort Holabird, a former Army base in Baltimore housing government witnesses. Nixon resigned on August 8 while Colson watched on a small television behind barbed wire. President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon but announced no further pardons. Colson's father died of a heart attack while packing to visit him. Reading the second chapter of Hebrews, Colson experienced a revelation: Just as God became human through Christ to understand His children, Colson had to become a prisoner to understand the suffering of incarcerated men.

Transferred to Maxwell Federal Prison Camp in Alabama, Colson refused special treatment and took a laundry assignment. With Paul Kramer, a young ex-Marine and former narcotics dealer who had accepted Christ, he started an informal prayer group that grew steadily. During a Bible study, he asked God to fill him with the Holy Spirit and experienced what he describes as a powerful spiritual infilling.

In mid-November, Colson returned to Holabird to testify at the Watergate trial. On January 8, 1975, fellow Watergate defendants John Dean, Jeb Magruder, and Herb Kalmbach, with whom Colson had grown close during their shared confinement, were released, but Colson, sentenced by a different judge, remained behind. The Virginia Supreme Court disbarred him, and his son Christian was arrested for marijuana possession. Quie offered to serve the remainder of Colson's sentence. On January 29, alone in his room, Colson made what he describes as a total surrender, thanking God for prison, for the loss of his law license, even for his son's arrest. Forty-eight hours later, Judge Gesell ordered his release due to family hardship. Walking out on January 31, 1975, Colson told a marshal: "He did it two nights ago," meaning his true liberation came not from the court's order but from his spiritual surrender.

Five days later, Colson returned to Maxwell to visit Kramer and the men in his fellowship, beginning what became a full-scale prison ministry. In 1976, he established Prison Fellowship with two staff members and three volunteers. By the book's twentieth-anniversary edition, the organization had grown into an international movement with ministries in 69 countries and over 45,000 volunteers in the United States. Colson reflects that God took his greatest defeat and used it for purposes he could never have imagined, concluding that "everything comes down in the end to God's calling and our simple obedience."