William Colby

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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.

He served under President Richard Nixon and President Gerald Ford and was replaced by future President George H.W. Bush on January 30, 1976.

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[edit] Early life

William Egan Colby was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1920. His father, Elbridge Colby, was a professor of English and an Army officer who served in Army and university positions in Tientsin, China; Georgia; Vermont; and Washington. The younger Colby attended public high school in Burlington, Vermont and then Princeton University, graduating in 1940 and entering Columbia Law School the following year.

[edit] Career

[edit] 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 overtaken by Allied 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.

[edit] 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]).

Colby then 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 among the first examples of a CIA covert operation to help stop the Communists from taking power in postwar Europe. This strategy, which involved extensive cooperation with like-minded Italians, was later dubbed the strategy of tension by the Italian press.

[edit] Vietnam

In 1959, Colby became the CIA's Deputy Chief and then Chief of Station in Saigon, Vietnam, where he served until 1962. In 1962 he returned to Washington to become the Deputy and then Chief of CIA's Far East Division. During these years he was deeply involved in Washington's policies in East Asia, particularly with respect to Vietnam as well as Indonesia. In 1968, President Johnson sent Colby back to Vietnam as Deputy to Robert Komer, who had been charged with streamlining the civilian side of the American efforts against the Communists. Shortly after arriving Colby succeeded Komer 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 has been alleged to have involved 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. Some authors, including Colby himself in his book "Lost Victory, have argued that the tripartite leadership of U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, U.S. COMUSMACV General Creighton Abrams, and Colby performed ably and, in effect, accomplished their objective of securing South Vietnam. According to this argument, the South Vietnamese successfully outlasted the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army's big offensive of 1972, but were overwhelmed after the withdrawal of American support after 1973.

[edit] 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 believed that the CIA had a moral and practical obligation to cooperate with the Congress.

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 the American intelligence agencies, but also the Israelis'. 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 and others concerned by Colby's controversial openness to Congress and distance from the White House, replaced Colby late in 1975 with George H. W. Bush.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Family

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

[edit] Death

On April 27, 1996, Colby died in a boating accident near his home in Rock Point, Maryland.

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.

[edit] Quotes

  • "South Vietnam faces total defeat, and soon."
  • "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
  • "The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."

[edit] Sources

[edit] External link


Preceded by
James R. Schlesinger		 Director of Central Intelligence
September 4, 1973 - January 30, 1976		 Succeeded by
George H. W. Bush
Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency Seal of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States
Souers • Vandenberg • Hillenkoetter • Smith • Dulles • McCone • Raborn • Helms • Schlesinger • Colby • Bush • Turner • Casey • Webster • Gates • Woolsey • Deutch • Tenet • Goss • Hayden
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