William Colby

For the first secretary of the Sierra Club, see William Edward Colby

William Egan Colby (January 4, 1920 – April 27, 1996) became Director of Central Intelligence on September 4, 1973, after James R. Schlesinger. It was Colby who launched the Accelerated Pacification Campaign during the Vietnam War. He later would reveal a large amount of information to Congress, such as CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro and the Assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

He was fired by President Gerald Ford and replaced with George H.W. Bush on January 30, 1976.

Early life

William Egan Colby was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1920. His father, Elbridge Colby, was a professor of English and Army officer who raised his son in a peripatetic manner, including a stint in Tientsin, China. William attended Princeton University, graduating in 1940 and entering Columbia Law School the following year.

Career

Office of Strategic Services

Colby volunteered for the Army in 1941 and served with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, parachuting behind enemy lines twice. First, he deployed to France as a Jedburgh commanding Team BRUCE, in mid-August 1944, until overrun by Allied conventional forces later that Fall. His second clandestine mission was leading the NORSO Group into Norway on a sabotage mission. After the war, Colby graduated from Columbia Law School, and then briefly practiced law in William Joseph Donovan's New York firm. Inspired by his liberal beliefs, he moved to Washington to work for the National Labor Relations Board.

Central Intelligence Agency

Shortly thereafter, an OSS friend offered him a job at CIA, and Colby accepted. Colby spent the next twelve years in the field, first in Stockholm, Sweden. There, he helped set up the stay-behind networks of Gladio, a covert paramilitary organization organized by the CIA to make any Soviet occupation more difficult, as he later described in his memoirs (see[1]).

According to a November 25, 1990 article by the Danish daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende, quoted by Daniele Ganser in his 2005 book on Gladio, a source named "Q" confirmed William Colby's revelations in his memoirs about the setting-up of stay-behind armies in Scandinavia:

Colby's story is absolutely correct. Absalon was created in the early 1950s. Colby was a member of the world spanning laymen catholic organisation Opus Dei, which, using a modern term, could be called right-wing. Opus Dei played a central role in the setting up of Gladio in the whole of Europe and also in Denmark... The leader of Gladio was Harder who was probably not a Catholic. But there are not many Catholics in Denmark and the basic elements making up the Danish Gladio were former [World War II] resistance people - former prisoners of Tysk Vestre Faengsel, Froslevlejren, Neuengamme and also of the Danish Brigade.

William Colby spent much of the 1950s based in Rome, where he led the Agency's covert political operations campaign to support moderate anti-Communist parties. Italy was the first example of a CIA covert operation to stop the Communists from legally taking power in postwar Europe. This strategy was later dubbed strategy of tension by the Italian press.

Vietnam

In 1959, Colby became the CIA's Chief of Station in Saigon, Vietnam, where he served until 1962, when he returned to Washington to become the Chief of CIA's Far East Division. In 1968, he returned to Vietnam as Deputy to Robert Komer, and shortly thereafter succeeded him as head of the U.S./South Vietnamese rural pacification effort. This was an attempt to quell the Communist insurgency in South Vietnam. Part of the effort was the controversial Phoenix Program - an initiative designed to identify and attack the "Viet Cong Infrastructure". There is considerable debate about the merits of the program, which included assassination and torture. However it does appear to have had some effect in reducing the level of insurgent strength--as opposed to North Vietnamese Army strength--in South Vietnam.

CIA Director

Colby returned to Washington in 1971 and became Executive Director of CIA. After long-time DCI Richard Helms was dismissed by President Nixon in 1973, James Schlesinger assumed the helm at the Agency. A strong believer in reform of the CIA and the Intelligence Community more broadly, Schlesinger had written a 1971 Bureau of the Budget report outlining his views on the subject. Colby, despite a career spent in the DDP, agreed with Schlesinger's reformist approach and Schlesinger appointed him head of the clandestine branch in early 1973. When Nixon reshuffled his agency heads and made Schlesinger Secretary of Defense, Colby emerged as a natural candidate for DCI--apparently based on the recommendation that he was a professional who would not make waves.

Colby's tenure as DCI, which lasted two and a half tumultuous years, was overshadowed by the Church and Pike congressional investigations into alleged U.S. intelligence malfeasance over the preceding twenty-five years. Colby cooperated, not out of a desire for major reforms, but in the belief that the actual scope of such misdeeds--encapsulated in the so-called "Family Jewels"--was not great enough to cause lasting damage to the CIA's reputation.

Colby's time as DCI was also eventful on the world stage. Shortly after he assumed leadership, the Yom Kippur War broke out, an event that surprised not only American intelligence agencies, but Israelis as well. Meanwhile, after many years of involvement, South Vietnam fell to Communist forces in April 1975, a particularly difficult blow for Colby, who had dedicated so much of his life and career to the American effort there.

President Ford, advised by Henry Kissinger, dismissed Colby in late 1975 because he had become too politically damaging to the Administration. He was replaced by George H. W. Bush.

Post-CIA career

In later life, and in consonance with his long-held liberal views, Colby became a supporter of the nuclear freeze and of reductions in military spending. He practiced law and advised various bodies on intelligence matters.

Colby also lent his expertise and knowledge, along with Oleg Kalugin, to the Activision game "Spycraft: The Great Game", which was released shortly before his death. Both Colby and Kalugin played themselves in the game.

According to him, Gladio "stay-behind" secret NATO paramilitary organizations in Western Europe were "a major program".

He was contributing editor of Strategic Investments Newsletter at the time of his death.

Family

Colby was a staunch Roman Catholic (see [2]). He married Barbara Heinzen in 1945 and they had 5 children.

Death

On April 27, 1996, Colby died in a supposed boating accident near his home in Rock Point, Maryland. He reportedly did not mention any canoeing plans to his wife, nor was it normal for him to go boating at night. Colby had left his home unlocked, his computer on, and a partly eaten dinner on the table (see [3]).

Colby's body was eventually found, underwater, on May 6, 1996. The life jacket his friends said he usually wore was missing. The body was found 20 yards from the canoe, after the area had been thoroughly searched multiple times. The subsequent inquest found that he died from drowning and hypothermia after collapsing from a heart attack or stroke and falling out of his canoe. There is no evidence that Colby went canoeing. There is no evidence that Colby died on April 27, 1996. Colby disappeared April 27, 1996. His body was recovered on May 6, 1996. Hence, the date of Colby's death is somewhere between these two dates. The Internet Movie Database states Colby died on May 6, 1996 (see [4]). Colby was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery on May 13, 1996.

Theories about Colby's Death

Conservative reporter Christopher Ruddy (as part of the Arkansas Project) has claimed that President Clinton had Colby murdered because Colby was going to write about a conspiracy between Clinton and Vincent Foster (see [5]).

Dr.Dekov states that the former FBI Director Louis Freeh killed Colby. Dr.Dekov states that he is a witness. Dr.Dekov has alarmed President Bush, US Senators and the Supreme Court of the USA for the murder. In 2005, Dr.Dekov presented to the International Criminal Court at The Hague a set of documents concerning the killing of Colby by the FBI Director Louis Freeh. See * The Ames-Colby story.

Quotes

• "South Vietnam faces total defeat, and soon."
• "The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
• "We disbanded our intelligence [after both world wars] and then found we needed it. Let's not go through that again. Redirect it, reduce the amount of money spent, but let's not destroy it. Because you don't know 10 years out what you're going to face." — Newsweek interview, December 2, 1991

Sources

• http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/usa/william-colby/
• William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honourable Men: My Life in the CIA, London: Hutchinson & Co., 1978 extract concerning Gladio stay-behind operations in Scandinavia available here
• William Colby and James McCargar, "Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of Americas Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam", Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989
• John Prados , "Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby", Oxford University Press, 2003

External link

• Find-A-Grave profile for William Colby