BREA : Ex-Nixon Counsel to Skip Library’s Debut

Charles W. Colson, the former special counsel to Richard M. Nixon who served time in federal prison for his part in the Watergate scandal, won’t be attending the opening of Nixon’s library and birthplace this week, but not for lack of an invitation.

Colson, 58, is founder and chairman of the interdenominational Prison Fellowship Ministries, which puts furloughed federal prisoners to work repairing the homes of elderly or inner-city residents. Although he said he received an invitation to Nixon’s celebration this week, Colson declined because of a speaking engagement in Colorado for the fellowship.

Colson was in Orange County Monday, three days before the Nixon library opening, inspecting work being done on a home in Brea by 10 inmates from Lompoc and Boron federal prisons. That, he said, was more important than witnessing the dedication of a monument to a former president.

“These workers are living monuments of Christ in their lives, and that gets me more excited than the opening of libraries,” he said.

Colson paid a $5,000 fine and served seven months of a one- to three-year sentence for obstruction of justice in connection with the Watergate scandal.

After serving his sentence, Colson founded the prison ministry. He also has written several books, including his best-selling autobiography, “Born Again,” and “Life Sentence.”

Inside the house at 415 E. Fir St., where Thelma Elsie, 82, and Glen K. Goes, 81, have lived since 1955, ministry workers furiously hammered, painted and sawed. They installed a sit-down shower and carpeting and tile.

“It’s the most therapeutic and positive thing a prisoner can do,” said Jeff Vale, 49, from Orange, who is nearing the end of a six-year sentence for wire fraud and filing a false financial statement. After the project is completed, he will return to Boron.

“All the prison system is doing right now is breaking a prisoner’s ego, taking their personal possessions and leaving them with a broken family,” he said.

Colson, who talked to many of the prisoners while they worked, said that other prison systems will soon be forced to institute similar programs because of overcrowding or that they will have to let many of the current prisoners out without rehabilitation.

Although Colson won’t attend the library opening, he said he thinks that his former boss deserves the attention and respect he is getting now. One of Nixon’s more remarkable legacies will be opening foreign markets with his visit to China, Colson said.

He also asserted that Watergate wasn’t as large a scandal as the savings and loan crisis of today.

“I think people publicly are putting (Watergate) behind them. It may have been the granddaddy, but its grandchildren are getting bigger than the grand-daddy,” he said. “The rip-off of hundreds of millions of people in the S&L; industry, to me, makes Watergate insignificant.”