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If Colson actually performed half the various acts of which he has been accused, he was easily the least principled of all Nixon's associates. The long list of deceptive practices attributed to him−virtually all of which he denies−includes drafting scurrilous newspaper ads assailing "radic-libs" during the 1970 congressional campaigns; urging the use of $8,000 in Nixon campaign funds to buy copies of a pro-Nixon book and thus balloon it into a second printing; compiling a list of Nixon's political "enemies"; requesting an IRS audit of the tax returns of a Teamster official who opposed the President; dispatching someone to pose as a Gay Liberationist and donate money to Nixon's New Hampshire primary opponent, Paul McCloskey, then turn the donation receipt over to the Manchester Union Leader (an emissary was indeed sent but decided to pose as a Young Socialist Alliance member instead); hiring young men to pose as homosexuals supporting McGovern at the Democratic National Convention; engineering telephone and mail campaigns supporting Nixon's Viet Nam policies, even when unsolicited opinion was generally favorable. Explained one Colson acquaintance: "Chuck could never take a chance with the truth. He doesn't trust the truth."
Other, more serious acts of which Colson has been accused include ordering Hunt to fabricate a State Department cable that would make it appear that the Kennedy Administration was involved in the assassination of South Viet Nam's President Diem in 1963; urging that Washington's Brookings Institution be fire-bombed as a diversionary tactic to cover a raid to seize some politically damaging documents; leaking information to LIFE for a story in 1970 that helped defeat Maryland's Demoera tic Senator Joseph Tydings; proposing that demonstrators posing as antiwar activists disrupt the funeral services for J. Edgar Hoover in May 1972, which would have outraged Hoover's many supporters and hurt McGovern.
Now a Washington attorney with a $100,000 annual retainer from the Teamsters Union, the once accessible and ubiquitous Colson is no longer talking about his Watergate problems with newsmen. Born in Boston and educated at Brown and George Washington universities, Colson lives comfortably with his second wife, Patty, in their large Tudor house on two acres of wooded land in McLean, Va. One thing she enjoys about her husband, Patty has said, is that he is "so commanding"−he says hop and you hop." The key to Colson's personality, a former friend declares, is that the onetime Marine captain ("It was a great life; I loved it") is tough. Adds this intimate: "There were a lot of tough people at the White House. The two toughest were Nixon and Colson."