“Colson was too much of a politician to believe that anything could be learned of value at the Democratic National Committee. His own intel- ligence net was far more effective – but he would
not share what he learned with anyone except Haldeman and Nixon.”‘ [emphasis added]
Intelligence Agent?
Who hired E. Howard Hunt, dispatched the “plumbers” to
Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, drew-up the infamous “enemies
list,” was instrumental in freeing former Teamster boss Jimmy
Hoffa from jail, masterminded over 30 secret missions against
the president’s “enemies?” Charles Colson, hired as a “Special
Counselor” to the President in November 1969, is the man to
whom all of the above acts, and more, can be traced. It was
Colson who built an elaborate intelligence network through his
“Attack Group,” which met every morning at 9:15 in his
White House office to plan sabotage against the Democrats and
the left.
The 41-year-old Bostonian has been called “King of the
White House Hard Hats,” “Super Loyalist,” “Cold Bastard,”
and “Hatchet Man.” However accurate these descriptions may
be, there is growing evidence that the paunchy lawyer might
be an intelligence agent of the highest order, either from the
CIA or the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). If this were
true, it might help in explaining one of the mysteries of the
Watergate conspiracy: Charles Colson alone is the only con-
spirator close to Nixon who has escaped the Senate Watergate
Committee.
Besides his association with E. Howard Hunt, which
stretches back at least to 1961-63 when both were officials of
the Brown University Alumni Association, there are other
factors that add credence to charges that Colson was more
than a “special counselor” to the president: First, there are
Colson’s close ties to the military – in addition to his
corporate/military links mentioned below: at the age of 22 he
was the youngest Marine Company Commander in Marine
Corps history and from 1955-56 he was assistant to the
Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Further, the nature of the
missions Colson planned and had carried out by his various
groups of agents, suggests that they could not have been
initiated by a novice. The choice of targets and the diversity of
tactics is strikingly similar to the way in which the CIA and
US. military agencies have been operating abroad for decades:
smear attacks, breaking and entering to gain evidence, forging
documents, manufacturing phony propaganda, and estab-
lishing front groups. (See accompanying box on Colson’s
Watergate acts.) Finally, a reliable source has told us that
Colson led a workshop at the University of Virginia titled:
“The Reorganization of Intelligence in the Military” which
was part of the on-going Inter-University Seminar on Armed
Forces and Society sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation.
After engineering Saltonstall’s re-election in 1960, despite a
Democratic sweep in Massachusetts, Colson became a partner
in the Boston law firm of Gadsby & Hannah. The Gadsby in
the name is the former chairman of the Securities and
Exchange Commission. When Colson joined the firm, it had 22
partners and specialized in “jungle law”–its clients were
mainly corporations that had problems with the federal
government’s regulatory agencies. Colson also lobbied for such
giants as Investor’s Diversified Services, the nation’s largest
mutual fund complex (see Nixon-Mitchell Law Firm); Uniroyal,
the giant rubber firm; Massachusetts Investors Trust; and
Grumman Aircraft, one of the Navy’s prime contractors and
builders of the F-14 fighter. He remained a Senior Partner in
the firm until Nixon appointed him “special counselor” in
November 1969.
In the wake of the spring 1973 Watergate revelations,
Colson resigned his “special counselor” post and quietly
slipped into his new Washington, D.C. law firm, Colson &
Shapiro. It was Colson who was the prime mover behind
former Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa’s release from prison. In
return, the Teamsters switched their $100,000 (annual) legal
account from Edward Bennet Williams’ Democratic law firm
to Colson’s.
Corporate Military Ties
Colson strengthened his links to the military during the
mid-’60s through his corporate directorships of the Specialty Electronics Development Corp. (Spedcor) and the Loral
Corporation. Colson was a director of Spedcor from 1964-68.
According to its 1969 prospectus, the firm made between 84%
and 97% of its sales through Defense Department contracts
during Colson’s last year as a director. Loral Corp., of which
Colson was also a director, is a New York-based firm special- izing in the production of electronic systems for the military.16
“Chief Ass Kicker Around the White House”
Colson once described his job as special counselor to the
President as being “chief ass kicker around the White House.”
One of his functions was as chief White House liason man with
outside groups, including Hard Hats, wildlife societies, the
League of Women Voters, homebuilders, Veterans, and an
assortment of labor groups. It is Colson who is most credited
with being the architect of Nixon’s ’72 campaign strategy that
molded a new GOP majority by winning over Democratic
constituencies: the coalition of ethnic-Catholic-Wallacite
groups that Nixon exploited through his appeals to racism and
super-patriotism.
In a recent Village Voice article (“How’s Charles Colson’s
Grandmother These Days,” October 4, 1973), Martin Nolan
gives an insight into how much power Colson exerted within
the White House:
Colson also swallowed-up the empire of Herb Klein,
another long-time Nixon chum. Klein was dis-
patched to make speeches at Sigma Delta Chi
luncheons while Colson took direct charge of
communications and Klein’s staff…. He … hired
Ken Clawson of the Washington Post to become
director of communications, theoretically under
Klein but in reality lieutenant to Colson’s com-
mand in 1972 of the Attack Group….
Clawson is reportedly the one who fabricated a letter to the
editor of the Manchester Union Leader (N.H.) contending that
Sen. Edmund Muskie condoned a slur on Americans of
French-Canadian descent in which they were called “canuks.”
The letter was one of the factors that led to Muskie’s
politically-damaging crying speech outside the newspaper’s
offices.
Colson vs. Mitchell: No Contest
However, one series of incidents helps illustrate the “ass
kicking” Colson did around the White House: the battle he
waged against former Attorney General John Mitchell. Their
rivalry and friction centered around a common problem in the
Nixon White House: competition between aides for the Presi-
dent’s ear. However, there is evidence to suggest that the
Colson-Mitchell tug-of-war was more complicated. When John
Mitchell resigned as Attorney General and took over the job as
chief of CREEP, he reportedly laid down two conditions: first,
that Kleindeinst be appointed his successor as Attorney
General; and second, that Colson be kept out of his way.
The first request was simple; the second out of the
question. Part of the reason Mitchell hated Colson so much
may have been that they ran competing intelligence oper-
ations. Judging from the quote at the beginning of this article,
it appears that Colson viewed CREEP’s operations as ama-
teurish, and thought that his Attack Groups were much more
effective in destroying Nixon’s “enemies.” A friend of
Mitchell’s tells the story: “Normally, John [Mitchell] could
call the President directly about anyone, and if John didn’t
like the guy, he would be gone the next morning. Not with
Colson, though. Colson was there to stay.”‘
Stu Bishop
Footnotes
1. Theodore White, The Making of the President, 1972 (N.Y.:
Atheneum, 1973), p. 293.
2. White, op. cit., p. 292.
Colson vs.the People
The following Watergate acts are directly attributable to Colson’s Attack Groups and plumbers. They are interesting not
only for the acts themselves, but also for what they indicate about the way in which the Nixon administration operated. They
help show how Watergate and the Indochina war are inseparable dynamics and how Nixon, though re-elected by a landslide,
felt so insecure about his political position as to manufacture grassroots support for his domestic and foreign policies.
Although the testimony of the Senate Watergate Hearings has credited Colson with being the architect of over thirty secret
missions in the course of the conspiracy, we have chosen the ones that best illustrate the objectives and methods of operation
of Nixon’s far-reaching campaign of sabotage and espionage against his opposition.
— Colson was responsible for the drafting of the
“Enemies List” which contained the names of 200
Nixon critics.
-E. Howard Hunt testified at the Senate Watergate
Hearings that it was Colson who mapped out and put
into motion “Operation Gemstone,” the code word for
actions against Nixon’s enemies.
— Colson ordered a group of Cuban exiles, led by
Bernard Barker, to attack Daniel Ellsberg and other
demonstrators at J. Edgar Hoover’s funeral in
Washington, D.C.
-Colson played a key role in the commutation of two
prison sentences: former Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa
and Florida builder Calvin Kovens. At the suggestion of
former Senator George Smathers (see section on J. J.
Wilson), Colson arranged Kovens’ release in the hope of
winning more of Florida’s Jewish vote for Nixon; in
return for Hoffa’s release, Nixon not only garnered the
Teamster endorsement, but later Colson’s new
Washington, D.C. law firm received the Teamster’s lucra-
tive legal account.
-Colson planned the plumber’s mission that broke into
Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office.
-Colson and Nixon accepted $300,000 in Teamster
Union funds and unreported campaign contributions to
expedite the release of Angelo “the Gyp” DeCarlo from
a New Jersey Prison. DeCarlo is one of the key figures in
the National Crime Syndicate.
-Colson and Nixon, through then Attorney General
Kleindienst, had fraud charges dropped against Richard17
Fitzsimmons, son of Teamster president Frank Fitzsimmons.
-Colson dispatched the plumbers to a Las Vegas pub- lisher’s office, not to obtain evidence that would “blow Muskie out of the water,” as reported, but to retrieve potentially dangerous papers summarizing Nixon’s San
Clemente land deals in which he utilized $350,000 of
campaign funds and $300,000 of Syndicate money.
-Colson ordered Hunt to Milwaukee to break into Arthur Bremer’s apartment in an attempt to link
Wallace’s accused assailant to the left. Colson thought evidence could be obtained in the apartment that
would substantiate such a link, thus discrediting the left.
-Colson suggested the break-in and firebombing of the “liberal” Brookings Institution as a diversionary tactic
for breaking into Leslie Gelb’s Brooking’s office to try to locate the source of the Pentagon Papers leak. His
subordinate, John Caulfield, refused to carry through
the plan.
-When Nixon ordered the mining of Haiphong, tele- grams running 6 to 1 in the president’s favor began
pouring into the White House. However, there was one
small catch: the favorable telegrams were sent by
CREEP’s November Group which was another of
Colson’s ideas.
-Colson dispatched E. Howard Hunt in disguise to a
hospital to visit the ailing Dita Beard. Beard was the ITT
lobbyist who broke the story that ITT and Nixon had
reached a settlement on an anti-trust action in which the
GOP would receive $400,000 to help finance its 1972
convention in San Diego. Colson wanted Hunt to get a
confession that her allegations were false.
-Colson doctored up a photograph that showed
McGovern standing with what looked like a group of
“weirdo, longhairs” as part of the campaign tactic to
link the Democrats with the “extremist left.”
-When members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the
War (VVAW) were peacefully demonstrating in
Washington, D.C., Colson quickly established a phony
front group called “Veterans for a Just Peace.”
-Colson attempted to influence the Securities & Ex-
change Commission by placing a law partner of his, King
Mallory, in a key SEC post. The scheme fell through.
-Colson worked closely with other government agencies
in their operations against Nixon enemies. One was the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which audits tax
returns. Colson implied to the IRS that Teamster vice-
president Harold Gibbons’ returns might be out of order.
Gibbons was a McGovern supporter. Colson also at-
tempted to do the same to chief McGovern fundraiser Henry Kimmelman.
Sources:
The principal sources for this article include:
“-“How’s Charles Colson’s Grandmother Doing These
Days?” Village Voice, October 4, 1973. -“Charles Colson: President’s liaison with the outside
world,” National Journal, August 8, 1970.
-“Reputed Dirty Tricks Man Colson Finds Career on
the Line,” Washington Post, September 25, 1973.
— “Political Aide for Nixon is Tough, Loyal,” Los
Angeles Times, December 13, 1972.
“–“The White House, the Teamsters and the Mafia,”
Miami Herald, June 3, 1973.
“-“Nixon Aide Allegedly Wrote Ad Backing Haiphong
Mining,” Washington Post, April 27, 1973.
“–“Two Aides Say Colson Pressed for Bugging,”
Washington Post, April 30, 1973.
“-“Nixon and the Funds,” A 1968 Evans and Novak
column.
“-“Colson: Nixon’s Go-Between,” Washington Post,
February 28, 1971.
“-“Colson Firm Tried to Influence SEC,” Miami Herald,
May 23, 1973.
“–“Nixon’s Secret Weapon,” San Francisco Chronicle,
December 17, 1972.
“-“Colson: Power Mechanic,” Washington Post,
December 5, 1972.
— Ex-Counsel to Nixon Is Sought as Lawyer,” New
York Times, March 29, 1972.
— “Nixon, Colson and the Teamsters,” The Real Paper
(A Boston underground publication), August 8, 1973.
“-“E. Howard Hunt’s Testimony in The Watergate
Hearings by The New York Times (N.Y. Bantam
Books, 1973), pp. 651-669.
E, HOWARD HUNT
COLSON’S BRAZILIAN CONNECTION
Is it possible that Charles Colson is a linguist in addition to his other various talents? In 1967 he became vice-chairman of the Brazilian-American Cultural Devel- opment Institute, a non-profit organization which claims to teach Portuguese and English to U.S. and Brazilian businessmen. We do not know much about this group and would appreciate hearing from readers who have more Information.
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