Charles Colson warns Nixon of the Watergate cover-up

Charles Colson’s reported warnings to Richard Nixon became a test of what the President had been told about Watergate, and when. In April 1973, several sources told Bob Woodward that Colson had urged Nixon to act against aides implicated in the break-in and cover-up. Colson denied warning him. The Washington Post’s resulting account did not settle the dispute, but made the question of presidential foreknowledge impossible to separate from the emerging evidence about the cover-up.

The search for accounts

As the investigation widened, Woodward and Carl Bernstein sought associates of three central figures they had not yet heard from: Colson, H. R. Haldeman, and John Ehrlichman. Their inquiries took place amid a developing contest over John Dean’s credibility and cooperation. A Colson associate told Woodward that Dean had offered to implicate Colson if prosecutors granted him immunity. The associate rejected the suggestion that Colson was innocent of every wrongdoing, but insisted that he had not broken the law and had tried to uncover the truth about Watergate.

That defense led to a consequential claim. The associate said Colson had gone to Nixon as early as December and warned that people around the President were deeply involved in Watergate and were organizing a cover-up. In the account, Nixon replied that John Mitchell had denied involvement and asked for evidence. The associate further said Nixon had been urged by two other people to distance himself from Dean and Mitchell, but had not done so. These were allegations relayed by a source, not a public statement by Colson or Nixon.

Corroboration and denial

Woodward then contacted a White House source. That source said Colson had told Nixon on at least three occasions during the winter that some people around him should be removed because they were involved in Watergate. The warnings, the source said, focused chiefly on Dean and Mitchell. The repeated occasions mattered: the allegation was not merely that Nixon had received one vague alert, but that concerns about named aides had been brought to him more than once.

Woodward called Colson directly. Colson denied warning Nixon about Dean, Mitchell, or a cover-up. Asked what he had told the President about the matter, he declined to discuss private communications, not only with the press but also with the grand jury or the Senate committee. His refusal did not confirm the sources’ account; nor did it provide an alternative description of what he had told Nixon.

A second Colson associate called Woodward minutes later and urged him not to accept the denial. The associate also said Colson had explicitly told Nixon there was evidence that the President’s men were involved in both the bugging and the cover-up. The caller attributed Colson’s denial to two concerns: that acknowledging a warning would show Nixon had been forewarned, and that Dean might retaliate by implicating Colson before the grand jury. Those explanations, too, remained the associate’s account of Colson’s reasons, rather than a motive Colson admitted.

Publication and the unresolved question

The Washington Post made the allegation its lead story under the headline Nixon Alerted to Cover-up in December. The White House offered no comment. The headline gave the episode its sharpest implication: if the reported warning had reached Nixon in December, the later question was not only whether a cover-up existed, but what the President knew while it continued. The article’s claim rested on accounts from associates and a White House source, set against Colson’s denial and refusal to discuss private communications.

The dispute also unfolded as Dean’s allegations were gaining weight. The same reporting described Dean as having been a subordinate participant in the cover-up and as wanting to tell the grand jury everything if he could reach an agreement with prosecutors. Woodward and Bernstein were therefore weighing accounts offered amid legal and political pressures, not simply assembling an uncontested chronology. The evidence presented in this episode supports the fact that multiple sources attributed warnings to Colson; it does not resolve the contradiction between those sources and Colson’s denial.

Significance

The warning claim shifted attention upward, from the aides alleged to have managed the cover-up to the President who might have been informed about it. It also exposed the limits of what could be established through indirect testimony: the sources described Colson’s communications, while Colson invoked the privacy of his conversations with Nixon and declined to supply his own account. The resulting uncertainty was itself consequential. The story made the timing and content of Nixon’s knowledge a central question, without presenting the reported warnings as independently confirmed by either participant.