Politics has more controversial celebrities than any other field of activity, but there are only a bunch of names that have raised the focus Charles Colson has. Charles Colson, better known as Nixon’s dirty tricks master died this Saturday at 80 years.

This Saturday, Nixon’s most dedicated political strategist, Charles Colson died at Inova Fairfax Hospital, at 80 years. According to reports and statements from the family, Colson’s death was caused by a brain hemorrhage. Jim Liske, chief executive of the Prison Fellowship Ministries based in Lansdowne, said the “preliminary cause of death was complications from brain surgery Colson had at the end of March”.

Charles Colson is a name that will lead to intense debates. The abuses he made during the Nixon administration are still enough to anger people even today. Often described as the evil genius behind the Nixon administration, Colson was indeed a remarkable political strategist that many politicians today would love to have by their sides.

The Washington Post praised Colson’s controversial genius back in 1972, when a reporter wrote that he was “one of the most powerful presidential aides, variously described as a troubleshooter and as a master of dirty tricks”.

However Colson remains in the public view as Nixon’s hatchet man, so committed to having President Richard M. Nixon reelected even if that meant to walk over his own grandmother. For his involvement in the Watergate affair, Colson was rewarded with years behind bars. He was convicted for obstruction of justice, a sentence that Charles Colson explained it was “a price I had to pay to complete the shedding of my old life and to be free to live the new”.

Although most media coverage regarding Charles Colson is linked strictly to his involvement in the Watergate affair, the political strategist helped change prisoners’ life. During his time in prison, Charles Colson found his faith and had soon conversed to evangelical Christianity after a life committed to doing the dirty laundry of the Nixon administration.

Biographer Jonathan Aitken wrote that Charles Colson “transferred his huge drive, intellect and maniacal energy from the service of Richard Nixon to the service of Jesus Christ”.