High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Charles "Chuck" Wendell Colson (October 16, 1931 – April 21, 2012) was a Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973 and later a noted Evangelical Christian leader and cultural commentator. Once known as President Nixon`s "hatchet man," Colson gained notoriety at the height of the Watergate affair for being named as one of the Watergate Seven, and pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for attempting to defame Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg. He became a Christian in 1973, and the following year served seven months in the federal Maxwell Prison in Alabama as the first member of the Nixon administration to be incarcerated for Watergate-related charges.