Word: colsons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Ever since the Watergate breakin, many observers have wondered whether the CIA was involved in planning and carrying it out. Five of the seven burglars had been involved with the agency at one time or another, and they certainly used its methods, however ineptly. Former Presidential Counsel Charles Colson even went so far as to speculate that the CIA might have been responsible for the whole Watergate operation...
...Colson's monstrous plot, however, can scarcely be constructed from such shards. Why, then, did he unburden himself to Bast? One theory is that Colson wanted to make a last desperate try to get himself (and the President) off the hook. So why not blame Watergate on the CIA, which is already highly suspect to much of the public and in no position to defend itself. If this was indeed the scheme, then considering how battered American institutions are and how in need of support and not defamation, it was one of the dirtiest tricks that Colson has played...
...another explanation is that Colson has lost touch with reality. When he was talking to Bast, he appeared calm at times, at times quite agitated. At one point he remarked to the detective: "You might think I belong in an asylum." A Colson associate thinks that impending imprisonment may have weighed on him: "Look, you're going to jail. You get pretty desperate." In a sense, Colson's CIA fantasies are not that far removed from some of his previous schemes: fire-bombing the Brookings Institution, for instance, or forging cables linking President Kennedy to the assassination...
...licenses. Said Nixon: "The Post is going to have damnable, damnable problems out of this one." (This passage was not released by the White House, but it turned up in a fuller transcript leaked by sources on the Judiciary Committee.) On Feb. 28 Nixon mentioned the pressure that Charles Colson had attempted to bring on news executives, particularly the TV networks, and observed, "Well, one hell of a lot of people don't give one damn about this issue of suppression of the press." On March 27 Nixon advised Ziegler not to say much to White House reporters about Watergate...
...Nixon's cruelest antagonists, observed the traditional honeymoon accorded new Presidents by giving the man a decent shave. Nixon hardly reciprocated. He installed an arrogant press secretary who treated the press shabbily. He dispatched Spiro Agnew and other sappers to harass the enemy. Aides like Clay Whitehead and Charles Colson sought to stifle network commentary as unfair...