Charles Colson

Charles Colson was born on October 16, 1931 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA as Charles Wendell Colson.

He graduated from Browne & Nichols private school in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1948. He went to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island with a scholarship from the Navy Reserve Officer Training Program. He graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in 1953 and joined the United States Marines.

Attended Brown University on a Navy ROTC Scholarship, graduated with honors in 1953, then was a Marine Corps officer from 1953 to 1955, retiring as a Captain.

In 1956, he went to Washington D.C. as an administrative assistant to senator Leverett Saltonstall, a Massachusetts Republican.

Earned his J.D., with honors, from George Washington University Law School in 1959.

He was sent to prison after pleading guilty to obstructing justice in one of the criminal plots that undid President Nixon's administration. He was a 38 year old Washington Attorney when joined the Nixon White House in 1969. He hired E. Howard Hunt, a veteran covert operator for the Central Intelligence Agency, to spy on President Nixon's opponents for the 1972 election. Their plots of crimes and misdemeanors became known as the Watergate scandal.

The subterfuge began to unravel after Hunt and five other C.I.A. and F.B.I. veterans were arrested in June 1972 after a botched burglary and wiretapping operation at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Office Complex in Washington D.C.

On June 21, 1974, he was sentenced to prison and fined $5,000. Nixon resigned seven weeks later. He served seven months in prison. In July 1971, he approved Hunt's plan to steal files from the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Ellsberg was the former National Security Council consultant..

In 1976, he founded the Prison Fellowship Ministries. In 1983, he established the Justice Fellowship. In 1993, he won the $1 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion and donated it to his ministries. He retired in October 2006. In 2008, President Bush awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal.

He was a writer, known for Born Again (1978), Maclear (1974) and Faith in the Big House (2011). He was married to Patricia Ann Hughes and Nancy Billings.

In 2000, Gov. Jeb Bush restored his right to practice law, vote, and serve on a jury since he lost those rights with his felony conviction.

He died from complications of a brain hemorrhage at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia. He had brain surgery to remove a clot on March 30, 2012 after becoming ill while speaking at a conference. He lived in Naples, Florida and Leesburg, Virginia.