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Chuck Colson was a wonderful mentor to me when I was in the worst possible trouble. I also think Chuck liked my biography of Nixon, which, when it came out, some people said it's a warts-and-all biography, but the consensus developed that it was probably the most accurate, balanced portrait of Richard Nixon. Chuck, I think, is understandably sensitive, perhaps overly sensitive about this or that colorful anecdote, but actually they are few and far between.

He had no editorial control over the project?

No, he didn't. He read it all, and he never objected. He said, "that's uncomfortable, that's painful," but he corrected things on the grounds of fact. He couldn't have been a better subject in terms of cooperating. He gave me an enormous amount of time, he opened up all his private papers and letters, he let me go and talk to members of his family and so on. I think we spent well over 100 hours together in talking and looking at drafts and taping.

How much did you rely on Colson's book Born Again?

Born Again is a wonderful book and wonderful source. But what I found very useful was to talk to people who were around at the time, because very often they have slightly different perspectives on what happened, though not any serious factual corrections. I then had masses of new material, for example Chuck's prison diaries are much richer than the material in Born Again.

Did anyone know he had prison diaries? I wasn't aware of that.

They're all there in his Wheaton archives. They were daily dictations and writings, sometimes in handwriting, sometimes in dictation. He let himself go on paper much more than he did in Born Again.

There are also things that turned up that are completely new. For example, if I were to ask any Christian audience who planted the first seed in Charles Colson, the answer almost certainly would be Tom Phillips, a chap who ministered to him in the driveway of his house in Massachusetts in 1973.

I learned that while Chuck was onboard the USS Mellette steaming toward Guatemala with a taskforce of Marines to invade Guatemala back in 1954 or something like that, there was a young lieutenant named Brad Allen. He was the same age as Chuck and subsequently became an Episcopalian minister who was killed in a car crash.

Chuck's letters from the USS Mellette are full of him saying, "Brad Allen really got to me about religion. I think we should have prayer in our house. I think we should say grace before meals. Brad Allen tells me if I don't start having a relationship with the Lord, I will just end up another successful executive, president of the Westchester County Golf Club, and then die of a heart attack at age 50." There's no doubt from these letters that Chuck was ministered to. The USS Mellette in the end did not invade Guatemala. It was called off. Chuck went back to his ways of hard drinking, hard living, and ambitious self-centeredness. Chuck had completely forgotten about this, and when he saw the letters that his first wife, Nancy, gave me, he said, "I suddenly recognized that Brad Allen did have a big impact on my spiritual development."

What new ground does your book break?

On the political side there is some new material on Watergate. There's one story about how the President wanted to appoint someone to a post in the White House, and this chap said he couldn't take the appointment because he got ulcers. Chuck was desperate to fulfill the President's wishes, and he called up the White House doctor and said, "Give him a medical examination, tell him there's nothing to worry about regarding his ulcers."

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August (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49