<p> Charles Colson, the tough-as-nails special counsel to President Richard Nixon who went to prison for his role in a Watergate-related case and became a Christian evangelical dedicated to helping inmates, has died.<br /><br /></p>.<p>He was 80.Colson's death was confirmed by Jim Liske, the chief executive of the Lansdowne, Virginia-based Prison Fellowship Ministries that Colson founded. Liske said the preliminary cause of death is complications from brain surgery Colson had at the end of March.<br /><br />Colson, with his trademark horn-rimmed glasses, was known as the "evil genius" of the Nixon administration who once said he'd walk over his grandmother to get the president elected to a second term.<br /><br />"I shudder to think of what I'd been if I had not gone to prison," Colson said in 1993. "Lying on the rotten floor of a cell, you know it's not prosperity or pleasure that's important, but the maturing of the soul."<br /><br />The Washington Post described him in 1972 as "one of the most powerful presidential aides, variously described as a troubleshooter and as a 'master of dirty tricks.'"<br /><br />He helped run the Committee to Re-elect the President when it set up an effort to gather intelligence on the Democratic Party. The arrest of CREEP's security director, James W. McCord, and four other men burglarizing the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate building complex in 1972 set off the scandal that led to Nixon's resignation in August 1974.<br /><br />But it was actions that preceded the actual Watergate break-in that resulted in Colson's criminal conviction. Colson pleaded guilty to efforts to discredit Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg. It was Ellsberg who had leaked the secret Defense Department study of Vietnam that became known as the Pentagon Papers. <br /></p>
<p> Charles Colson, the tough-as-nails special counsel to President Richard Nixon who went to prison for his role in a Watergate-related case and became a Christian evangelical dedicated to helping inmates, has died.<br /><br /></p>.<p>He was 80.Colson's death was confirmed by Jim Liske, the chief executive of the Lansdowne, Virginia-based Prison Fellowship Ministries that Colson founded. Liske said the preliminary cause of death is complications from brain surgery Colson had at the end of March.<br /><br />Colson, with his trademark horn-rimmed glasses, was known as the "evil genius" of the Nixon administration who once said he'd walk over his grandmother to get the president elected to a second term.<br /><br />"I shudder to think of what I'd been if I had not gone to prison," Colson said in 1993. "Lying on the rotten floor of a cell, you know it's not prosperity or pleasure that's important, but the maturing of the soul."<br /><br />The Washington Post described him in 1972 as "one of the most powerful presidential aides, variously described as a troubleshooter and as a 'master of dirty tricks.'"<br /><br />He helped run the Committee to Re-elect the President when it set up an effort to gather intelligence on the Democratic Party. The arrest of CREEP's security director, James W. McCord, and four other men burglarizing the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate building complex in 1972 set off the scandal that led to Nixon's resignation in August 1974.<br /><br />But it was actions that preceded the actual Watergate break-in that resulted in Colson's criminal conviction. Colson pleaded guilty to efforts to discredit Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg. It was Ellsberg who had leaked the secret Defense Department study of Vietnam that became known as the Pentagon Papers. <br /></p>