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Our American Stories

Chuck Colson’s Road from Watergate to Redemption

Our American Stories

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.3737 Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode of Our American Stories, Chuck Colson once operated at the center of Washington power as Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon. Watergate brought that world crashing down, sending him into a federal prison and into a reckoning he never expected. In this final interview before his passing, Colson looks back on the scandal, the time behind bars, and the shift in faith that shaped the rest of his life.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This is an IHeart podcast.

0:02.3

Guaranteed Human.

0:13.9

And we continue with our American stories, often considered one of the smartest men to pass through Washington, D.C. political

0:22.5

culture, Chuck Colson, who served as special counsel to President Richard Nixon, served seven

0:28.9

months in the federal Maxwell prison in Alabama in 1974 as the first member of the Nixon

0:35.0

administration to be incarcerated for Watergate-related crimes.

0:39.6

This is that story and its subsequent fallout told by the man himself.

0:44.9

We'd like to thank Chuck Colson's dear friends at the Acton Institute,

0:48.9

who graciously provided us with this audio.

0:51.8

It was the last interview Chuck Colson granted any media organization

0:56.6

before passing at the age of 80. Let's begin with a montage of clips summarizing Carlson's

1:04.1

Watergate trial, followed by Chuck, sharing his story. I will say to you, Mr. Shore, what I've said publicly to others, and that is that I had no knowledge and no involvement in the Watergate incident of any kind.

1:28.3

That's, I think, all I should say might.

1:33.3

But no time that I engage in any unlawful or illegal act in connection with this matter.

1:40.3

There is much that the public has not been told about the circumstances surrounding this matter,

1:46.0

and a great deal more, I believe, will be revealed in the course of this proceeding.

1:51.0

Thank you.

1:53.0

There was an unexpected and important development today in the Watergate investigations.

2:01.6

Charles Colson has made an arrangement with the special prosecutor to tell all he knows about Watergate as a witness for the prosecution.

2:09.6

I have watched with a very heavy heart, the country I love, being torn apart by the most divisive and bitter controversy in our

2:19.3

nation's history.

2:20.3

If this is to be a government of laws and not of men, then those men entrusted with enforcing

...

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