Charles Colson

Charles Colson enters the book as a White House operative implicated in the controversy over the restriction that barred Jimmy Hoffa from union activity after his release from prison. Hoffa accused Colson of engineering the language to serve political and union interests; Colson denied that account. The dispute remained contested, but its consequences were tangible: after leaving the White House, Colson received a lucrative legal contract from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and later became a Christian prison visitor carrying a Bible.

White House Power and the Enemy List

As special counsel to Richard Nixon, Colson was identified with the administration’s hard-edged political machinery and was described as the man in charge of Nixon’s enemy list. His name becomes especially significant through John Dean’s testimony about the treatment of Harold Gibbons, the only member of the Teamsters executive board who had not voted to endorse Nixon for reelection. Dean testified that Colson asked him to initiate an IRS investigation into Gibbons’s finances. A memo from Colson to Dean requesting the audit called Gibbons an “all-out enemy.” The episode links White House political retaliation to the leadership struggle inside the union: the proposed scrutiny concerned not an outsider but a prominent labor figure whose vote had broken with the administration’s preferred position.

That record also provides the background to Colson’s later role in the Hoffa commutation dispute. The book presents him not simply as a lawyer handling paperwork, but as a political aide whose relationship with union leaders was itself part of the controversy. Still, the account distinguishes accusation from proof: the evidence described makes Colson’s involvement a substantial suspicion, not an established finding that he personally devised the restriction.

The Commutation Restriction Dispute

After Hoffa challenged the restriction on his release, he blamed Colson for its inclusion. In a deposition, Hoffa said, “I blame one man [for the restriction on my pardon]…Charles Colson.” He later expanded the charge in a television interview, asserting that Colson had been the architect of the language, had acted to ingratiate himself with Fitz, and had thereby obtained the Teamsters’ legal business. Hoffa further alleged that Fitz had used Colson to preserve his own presidency of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. These were Hoffa’s claims, advanced as part of a lawsuit and a public dispute, rather than neutral findings about the men’s motives.

Colson’s account was different. He said that he advised Fitz the day before Hoffa’s release that the release would be subject to conditions considered in the interests of the labor movement and the country, but denied telling him what the restrictions were. In response to Hoffa’s charge that he had engineered the provision, Colson said, “That’s just plain malarkey….” He also took the Fifth Amendment on the subject during the Watergate hearings, although he acknowledged discussing the pardon with Fitz before it was granted. That combination—denial, a limited admission, and refusal to answer further questions—left the book’s account deliberately unresolved rather than presenting a single uncontested explanation.

Hoffa’s lawsuit alleged that the restriction had not come through a regular clemency procedure, but had been added by Colson pursuant to an agreement and conspiracy. Judge John H. Pratt ruled against Hoffa on July 19, 1974. The court held that even if the alleged Colson–Fitz conspiracy were proven, the president’s signature on the restriction remained effective; improper motives by those involved did not invalidate the signed act. The ruling disposed of the factual challenge at that level, leaving Hoffa to appeal on constitutional grounds. It did not settle the underlying dispute about who had proposed the wording or why.

The Union Contract and Watergate

The book places Colson’s departure from the White House within the gathering Watergate crisis. He left for private practice before going to prison, at a moment when Nixon’s circle was under mounting pressure and the administration’s political authority was weakening. The timing matters to Hoffa’s effort to challenge the restriction: the union president announced his intended legal challenge in April 1973, when Nixon was consumed by Watergate and no longer offered Fitz the same dependable presidential backing.

Colson’s subsequent connection to the union sharpened the appearance of reciprocal benefit that Hoffa had alleged. After Colson returned to private practice, Fitz took the lucrative International Brotherhood of Teamsters legal contract away from Edward Bennett Williams and gave it to Colson. The contract secured Colson a retainer of at least $100,000 a year. This later award does not by itself establish that Colson had arranged the restriction to obtain union work, but it gives concrete form to Hoffa’s accusation that political assistance and legal business had become entangled. The account’s irony rests in that gap: the suspected bargain was disputed, while the valuable contract was not.

Prison, Repentance, and Narrative Contrast

Colson’s public identity changes in the book’s final portrait. After serving prison time, he founded a Christian organization that sponsored prison visits and encouraged inmates to pursue spiritual redemption. The narrator encountered him at Delaware’s largest prison, where Colson was leaving after visiting inmates, Bible in hand. The scene is brief, but it places the former White House operative inside the very institution through which the book repeatedly measures punishment, release, and the possibility of change.

That later work does not erase the earlier political record or resolve the allegations about Hoffa’s commutation. Instead, the contrast makes Colson a figure of two overlapping narratives: first, a powerful aide whose alleged intervention joined presidential authority to union succession; later, a former prisoner who addressed other prisoners in the language of redemption. The book leaves both images in view. Colson’s role in the restriction remains disputed, while his later prison ministry is presented as a concrete change in the public direction of his life.