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ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz The Resurrection of Charles ColsonAs he moves from spiritual to political renewal, Watergate felon can't escape his pastDespite being named by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential evangelical Christians in America, having a Presidential Chair established in his Prison Fellowship Ministries claims an army of 100,000 volunteers, and takes a rather narrow approach to prison reform, believing that prisoners cannot be reformed without accepting the gospel In its cover story earlier this year, Time, a publication that cast doubts about Colson's post-Watergate/pre-prison religious conversion three decades ago, named him one of "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals In America." Under the headline, "Reborn and Rehabilitated," Time pointed out that Colson, the man who once advocated bombing the Brookings Institution, had found religion and founded Prison Fellowship Ministries "a $50 million organization that operates in all 50 states and 110 countries." The magazine also noted that Colson's "campaign for humane prison conditions helped define compassionate conservatism and served as a model for the faith-based initiatives that Bush favors." On May 19, the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Calvin Theological Seminary announced the Charles W. Colson Presidential Chair, which will fund the president's office of the Christian Reformed Church seminary for 10 years. According to the Grand Rapids Press, the $1.5 needed for the endowment came from a grant by the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation. While neither the Devos Foundation nor the seminary would divulge the exact amount given, the Rev. Cornelius Planting Jr., the seminary's president, told the local newspaper that it was the largest single gift the seminary had ever been given. At a donors' banquet, Colson told the attendees that, "The culture today desperately needs the kind of men and women you're going to send forth from this seminary. Men and women out of this seminary … can change not just this denomination, but this country." While the establishment of the Charles W, Colson Presidential Chair made local headlines, a few weeks later Colson was back in the national media spotlight as a guest on several news networks commenting about the revelation that W. Mark Felt, the 91 year-old former FBI deputy director, was "Deep Throat." The Vanity Fair story naming Felt ended a mystery that had lasted for more than 30 years, and it also brought out a coterie of Nixon remnants -- ex-convicts, bag men, and apologists for the disgraced president -- who were not so much out to defend Nixon, but more interested in excoriating Felt. Syndicated columnist Martin Schram observed: "Richard Nixon's ex-convicts - who did jail time for their crimes against democracy and then profited from their crimes by writing books and becoming celebrities…returned to work one more con. Nixon's former senior White House assistant, Charles Colson, and the Nixon team's burglar-in-chief, G. Gordon Liddy, worked the cable news circuit, expressing moral indignation" that Felt was Deep Throat. Colson, who had been chief counsel to President Nixon from 1969 to 1973, and was involved with the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), once famously boasted: "I'd walk over my own grandmother to re-elect Richard Nixon." According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, "At a CREEP meeting on March 21st, 1971, it was agreed to spend $250,000 on 'intelligence gathering' on the Democratic Party. Colson and John Erlichman appointed E. Howard Hunt to the White House Special Operations Unit (the so-called 'Plumbers'). Colson organized the Plumber's burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in September 1971. Colson hoped that revelations about Ellsberg could be used to discredit the anti-war left." [Ellsberg was the person who released "The Pentagon Papers," an internal Pentagon report on the war in Vietnam, to the New York Times that blew the lid off of the Pentagon's disinformation and misinformation.] In the immediate aftermath of the Vanity Fair story on Felt, Colson told MSNBC that he "was shocked because I worked with him closely…And you would think the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, you could talk to with the same confidence you could talk to a priest." Later, on CNN, Colson continued in shock mode: "I talked to him often and trusted him with very sensitive materials. So did the president. To think that he was out going around in back alleys at night looking for flowerpots, passing information to someone, it's…not the image of the professional FBI that you would expect." Colson also told Marvin Olasky's evangelical weekly World magazine's Mindy Belz that he was concerned that Felt would be treated as a hero: "The principle being taught today in a relativistic environment is getting young people to believe that this is a noble act that he did. He could not have done the right thing. He broke his oath of office. He broke the law. He snuck off cloak-and-dagger style to convey privileged information." Coincidentally, Colson's appearances on television and press interviews came shortly before the release of his new book, "The Good Life: Seeking Purpose, Meaning, and Truth in Your Life" (Tyndale House Publishers). Other of Colson's Watergate cronies also had their say: On CNN, G. Gordon Liddy told Paula Zahn: "I view him [Felt] as someone who violated the ethics of the law enforcement profession." Over at MSNBC, Liddy acknowledged plotting the break-in at the Democratic Party's Watergate offices and admitted that he "planned the Brookings [Institution] break-in, which wasn't carried out because it was 'too expensive.'" Not to be outdone, the third member of Team Nixon's Axis of Apologia, Pat Buchanan, the president's former speechwriter, went straight for the jugular, saying that he thinks Felt is "a snake." The three amigos -- Colson, Liddy and Buchanan -- have all prospered since Watergate. Buchanan has run for the presidency, been a host and co-host of several cable news network television programs, penned a number of books and columns, and has been a high-profile political figure for more than three decades. Liddy, always considered the loopiest of the three, hosts a very popular radio talk show and is also regularly called upon by the cable news networks. Emerging from the depths of the Watergate ScandalIn 1974 Charles Colson pleaded nolo contendre (no contest) to obstruction of justice in the Ellsberg case. Although he was sentenced to a one-to-three year term in prison, he served only seven months at the Maxwell Correctional Facility in Alabama. Shortly before sentencing, Colson became an evangelical Christian. Wikpipedia points out that "Editorial comics in several U.S. newspapers, as well as Newsweeek and Time, ridiculed his religious conversion, claiming that it was a ploy to reduce his sentence." Later, seemingly profoundly affected by doing time, Colson reinvented himself and founded an organization called Prison Fellowship Ministries (website), which aims to reform prison inmates through their acceptance of Jesus Christ as their saviour. Colson on Deep Throat: "He could not have done the right thing. He broke his oath of office. He broke the law. He snuck off cloak - and - dagger style to convey privileged information." After decades of relative obscurity, Colson has recently re-emerged onto the political scene. In early 2002, when one of the religious right's favorite Jews, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, the president of the Toward Tradition, got together with longtime Christian right leader Gary Bauer to found the American Alliance of Jews and Christians (AAJC), Colson signed on as a member of the group's Board of Advisers. On October 3, 2002, Colson signed on to The Land Letter, which laid out "theological support for a just war pre-emptive invasion of Iraq," according to Wikipedia. Written by Richard D. Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the letter was also co-signed by Bill Bright, then chairman of Campus Crusade for Christ, D. James Kennedy, president of Coral Ridge Ministries, and Carl D. Herbster, president of the American Association of Christian Schools. Time magazine pointed out that Colson had "helped cobble together an alliance of Evangelicals and Catholic conservatives, advised Karl Rove on Sudan policy and put his prestige behind an anti-gay-marriage lobbying body called the Arlington Group." The Arlington Group, which first met at an apartment complex in suburban Virginia, in July 2003, according to the Washington Post, brought together "the heads of almost every major political advocacy organization on the Christian right." Arlington Group participants included James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of American Values, Bill Bennett of Empower America, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Sandy Rios of Concerned Women for America and Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation. Their primary project: Advocating for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage." (For more on The Arlington Group, see here.) Deadlocked on language for the proposed constitutional amendment, Colson played a key role in hammering out a compromise at an October 15, 2003, meeting: An added sentence that he proposed read: "Neither the federal government nor any state shall predicate benefits, privileges, rights or immunities on the existence, recognition or presumption of non-marital sexual relationships." According to the Washington Post, Colson claimed, "[the] wording…would bar the creation of any form of 'substitute marriage' specifically for gays. He said state legislatures still could establish civil unions, but only if they conferred the same benefits on 'any two people who live together,' such as 'an unmarried heterosexual couple or two old spinsters.'" At an October 15, 2004, "Mayday for Marriage" gathering on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Colson spelled out his support for Covenant Marriage, telling the crowd that it was not "going to be a one-year, or a two-year, or a three-year fight. It will be fought until we prevail. He urged the crowd not to "quit" and not to "despair… [because] despair is a sin because it denies the Sovereignty of God." Reinvention, Reform and Religion: Colson's Prison Fellowship MinistriesWhile Charles Colson will always be associated with Watergate, he has followed a different path than either G. Gordon Liddy or Pat Buchanan; a path made up of reinvention, reform, religion and support from a number of conservative foundations. After serving time in prison, Colson founded the Prison Fellowship Ministries (PFM), an organization dedicated to a Christian-centered approach to prisoner rehabilitation. During the period from 1998 through 2003, Prison Fellowship Ministries received nearly $4 million in grants from conservative foundations including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the William E. Simon Foundation, and the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation. Former Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley, who lost the Virginia gubernatorial race to Mark R. Warner, is the organization's current president, but Colson is the heart and soul behind what the Virginian-Pilot called "the nation's largest religious outreach to inmates." According to the Virginian-Pilot, PFM claims "an army of 100,000 volunteers," and takes a rather narrow approach to prison reform, believing that "prisoners cannot be reformed without accepting the gospel." "A person isn't going to change simply because he's spent time in prison," Earley told the Virginian-Pilot in November 2004. "Something has to change their heart. We believe one of the ways to change hearts is for someone to come into a relationship with God." According to the Virginian-Pilot, PFM's InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI - website) was launched in Texas in 1997 "with the goal of reducing recidivism through acceptance of 'the life-transforming power of Jesus Christ.'" According to the IFI website, the initiative "is a revolutionary, Christ-centered, Bible-based prison program supporting prison inmates through their spiritual and moral transformation beginning while incarcerated and continuing after release." George W. Bush, then a governor busy executing death row prisoners at an unprecedented clip, "agreed to provide a prison, guards and basic operating services at taxpayer expense. The ministry promised to pay for all prisoner programs and religious training." InnerChange prisons also exist in Iowa, Kansas and Minnesota, and services about 1,200 inmates. "Each of these states pays about a third of costs for programs, which is about $250,000 each." InnerChange contracts "call for the ministry to pay for all religious guidance and for the states to pay for other programs such as vocational training and high school equivalency courses." While Colson's commitment to prisoners and their families is certainly admirable, and while some believe PFM provides a beacon of light in the dark and hopeless world of prisons, there are numerous critics of Colson's faith-based approach. Colson's faith-based projects -- Christian-centered as they are -- do not appear interested in servicing participants that are either uninterested in religion or affiliated with other religions. In a June 2002 Wall Street Journal column, Colson specifically took aim at Muslims in prison, especially those who made jailhouse conversions to Islam. Colson claimed that he had witnessed a "growing Muslim presence" in prisons and these "alienated, disenfranchised people are prime targets for radical Islamists who preach a religion of violence, of overcoming oppression by jihad." Colson also claimed that al-Qaeda training manuals "specifically identify America's prisoners as candidates for conversion because they may be 'disenchanted with their country's policies'." Colson also pointed out "terrorism experts fear these angry young recruits will become the next wave of terrorists. As U.S. citizens, they will combine a desire for 'payback' with an ability to blend easily into American culture." The best way to prevent conversions to radical Islam would be for prison officials to "deny radical imams access to inmates," Colson argued. In February 2003, Americans United for Separation of Church and State charged in a pair of lawsuits that "a government-backed program that seeks to rehabilitate Iowa prison inmates by converting them to fundamentalist Christianity violates the U.S. Constitution." According to an AU Press Release, the organization claimed "that InnerChange constitutes a merger of government with religion… [and] indoctrinates participants in religion, discriminates in hiring staff on religious grounds and gives inmates special privileges if they enroll." On April 30 of this year, the Associated Press reported that a federal judge in Des Moines ruled that the AU lawsuit would "proceed to trial." In addition to these issues, one of the biggest questions raised by PFM's programs is whether they actually are successful. In the Time magazine story, Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries is praised for successfully reducing recidivism rates among prisoners. The magazine cited a "University of Pennsylvania study [which] found that graduates of the prison program were 60% less likely to be reincarcerated than was the average con." It appears, however, that Time did not examine the record as closely as Mark Kleiman of Slate -- the online magazine -- did in his August 2003 piece. Kleiman's investigation into the InnerChange Freedom Initiative found that participants actually performed somewhat worse than the control group and were slightly more apt to be re-arrested and re-imprisoned. The Penn study employed "selection bias" or "creaming," Kleiman pointed out, allowing InnerChange to ignore participants that dropped out or were kicked out of the program, or who, for some other reasons, never finished the program. sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
Reader CommentsCharles Colson in no man of god. He is a criminal who has discovered the ultimate scam - religion. He is still a scalawag and a flim flam man. He ought to still be in prison. --- thomas r arnold | 7-7-2005 | 12:48 am
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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism' On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
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