Nixon Administration
In 1968, Colson served as counsel to Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon's Key Issues Committee.
On November 6, 1969, Colson was appointed as Special Counsel to President Nixon.
Colson was responsible for inviting influential private special interest groups into the White House policy-making process and winning their support on specific issues. His office served as the President's political communications liaison with organized labor, veterans, farmers, conservationists, industrial organizations, citizen groups, and almost any organized lobbying group whose objectives were compatible with the administration's. Colson's staff broadened the White House lines of communication with organized constituencies by arranging presidential meetings and sending White House news releases of interest to the groups.
In addition to his liaison and political duties, Colson's responsibilities included: performing special assignments for the president, such as drafting legal briefs on particular issues, reviewing presidential appointments, and suggesting names for White House guest lists. His work also included major lobbying efforts on such issues as construction of an antiballistic missile system, the president's Vietnamization program, and the administration's revenue-sharing proposal.
Slate magazine writer David Plotz described Colson as "Richard Nixon's hard man, the 'evil genius' of an evil administration." Colson has written that he was "valuable to the President ... because I was willing ... to be ruthless in getting things done". This is perhaps complimentary when read in comparison to the descriptions of Colson which pepper the work of Rolling Stone National Affairs' Political Correspondent, Hunter S. Thompson during the period.
Colson authored the 1971 memo listing Nixon's major political opponents, later known as Nixon's Enemies List. A quip that "Colson would walk over his own grandmother if necessary" mutated into claims in news stories that Colson had boasted that he would run over his own grandmother to re-elect Nixon. In a February 13, 1973, conversation, Colson told Nixon that he had always had "a little prejudice." Plotz reported that Colson sought to hire Teamsters thugs to beat up anti-war demonstrators. Colson also proposed firebombing the Brookings Institution and stealing politically damaging documents while firefighters put the fire out.
Colson's voice, from archives from April 1969, is heard in the 2004 movie Going Upriver deprecating the anti-war efforts of John Kerry. Colson's orders were to "destroy the young demagogue before he becomes another Ralph Nader." In a phone conversation with Nixon on April 28, 1971, Colson said, "This fellow Kerry that they had on last week...He turns out to be really quite a phony."
Read more about this topic: Charles Colson
Famous quotes containing the word nixon:
“The Washington press corps thinks that Julie Nixon Eisenhower is the only member of the Nixon Administration who has any credibility—and, as one journalist put it, this is not to say that anyone believes what she is saying but simply that people believe she believes what she is saying ... it is almost as if she is the only woman in America over the age of twenty who still thinks her father is exactly what she thought he was when she was six.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)