Truth that transforms

High on a wall outside a conference room at the Washington Post building is a quotation from one of the newspaper’s previous executive editors: “The truth, no matter how bad, is never as dangerous as the lie in the long run.”

And in the early 1970s, Ben Bradlee joined others to characterize Charles Colson, a top adviser to President Richard Nixon, as “a high-profile hatchetman assistant to Nixon.” And Colson (in a speech to New England newspaper editors) called Bradlee and his pals “arrogant elitists” who rely on “third-hand information and gossip and rumor,” followed by Bradlee firing back that Colson’s speech “stands by itself as a monument to lying and general dishonesty.”

After such barbs and bewilderment during the Watergate era, Bradlee continued his legendary newspaper career. After spending time in prison, Colson continued to be gripped and grounded by “the truth that transforms,” a phrase generally attributed to a top adviser in evangelical circles, Billy Graham.

Wouldn’t I like to have been in heaven’s newsroom the day that Ben Bradlee (died 2014) interviewed Charles Colson (died 2012) about Colson’s book, Born Again: What Really Happened to the White House Hatchet Man (Chosen Books, 1976), as well as Colson’s post-prison role as founder and chairman of Prison Fellowship. And I’d like to imagine that Colson, in turn, graciously asked Bradlee about his book, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures (Simon & Schuster, 1995). LINDA L. SCISSON Little Rock