William Colby

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William Egan Colby (January 4, 1920 – April 27, 1996) was an American intelligence officer who served as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from September 1973 to January 1976. During World War II Colby served with the Office of Strategic Services.

After the war he joined the newly created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Before and during the Vietnam War, Colby served as chief of station in Saigon, chief of the CIA's Far East Division, and head of the Civil Operations and Rural Development effort, as well as overseeing the Phoenix Program.

After Vietnam, Colby became director of central intelligence and during his tenure, under intense pressure from the United States Congress and the media, adopted a policy of relative openness about U.S. intelligence activities to the Senate Church Committee and House Pike Committee.

Colby served as DCI under President Richard Nixon and President Gerald Ford until January 30, 1976 after which time he was succeeded by George H.W.Bush.

Early life and family

William Egan Colby was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1920. His father, Elbridge Colby, who came from a New England family with a history of military and public service, was a professor of English, an author, and a military officer who served in the Army and in university positions in Tientsin, China; Georgia; Vermont; and Washington, D.C. Though a career officer, Elbridge Colby's professional pursuits focused less on strictly military activities and more on intellectual and scholarly contributions to military and literary subjects. Elbridge's father, Charles Colby, had been a professor of chemistry at Columbia University but had died prematurely, leaving his family largely without money. William's mother, Margaret Egan, was from an Irish family in St. Paul active in business and Democratic politics. With his Army father, William Colby had a peripatetic upbringing before attending public high school in Burlington, Vermont. He then attended Princeton University and graduated with an A.B. in politics in 1940 after completing a 196-page long senior thesis titled "Surrender -- French Policy toward the Spanish Civil War." He then studied at Columbia Law School the following year. Colby recounted that he took from his parents a desire to serve and a commitment to liberal politics, Catholicism, and independence, exemplified by his father's career-damaging protest in The Nation magazine regarding the lenient treatment of a white Georgian who had murdered a black U.S. soldier also based at Ft. Benning.

Colby was for his entire life a staunch Roman Catholic. He was often referred to as "the warrior–priest". The Catholic Church played a "central role" in his family's life, with Colby's two daughters receiving their First Communion at St. Peter's Basilica.

He married Barbara Heinzen (1920–2015) in 1945 and they had five children. His daughter, Christine, was presented as a debutante to high society in 1978 at the International Debutante Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. In 1984, he divorced Barbara and married Democratic diplomat Sally Shelton-Colby.

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Career

Colby, who started at Columbia in 1941, served with the United States Army as a "Jedburgh," or special operator, trained to work with resistance forces in war-occupied Europe to harass German and Axis forces. He chuted behind enemy lines twice during World War II and was rewarded with the Silver Star, as well as accolades from Norway, France, and Great Britain. In his first mission, he deployed as a Jedburgh commanding Team BRUCE in France in mid-August 1944 and continued with the Maquis until he joined Allied forces later this fall. He led the NORSO Group Operasjon Rype into Norway in April 1945, preventing German forces in Norway from reinforcing Germany's last defense.

Colby graduated from Columbia Law School and then briefly practiced law in William J. Donovan's New York firm, Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, after the war. Inspired by the practice of law and inspired by his liberal convictions, he migrated to Washington to work for the National Labor Relations Board.

Colby accepted a job at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Colby spent the next 12 years in industry, first in Stockholm, Sweden. As he later described in his memoirs, he helped establish Operation Gladio, a clandestine paramilitary group formed by the CIA, to make any Soviet occupation more difficult.

Colby spent most of the 1950s in Rome, undercover as a State Department officer, where he headed the Agency's clandestine political affairs campaign to help anti-Communist groups in their electoral contests against left-wing, Soviet Union-associated parties. Several primary elections in the 1950s were won by the Christian Democrats and allies, preventing the Communist Party from gaining control. Colby was a vocal ambassador for the CIA and the US government for involving the non-Communist left wing parties in order to establish larger non-Communist regimes capable of governing a turbulent Italy; this position brought him first into conflict with James J. Angleton.

Colby, who served in 1959-59, became the CIA's deputy chief and then chief of station in Saigon, South Vietnam, where he served until 1962. Colby, who was given by the CIA to assist the government of Ngô Dizm, began a friendship with President Diem's family and with Ngô nh Nhu, the president's brother, with whom Colby became close. Colby spent time in Vietnam developing Vietnamese capabilities to combat the Viet Cong insurgent in the countryside. "The war in Vietnam was the primary to the conflict," he said. He returned to Washington in 1962 to lead the Far East Division's Fidel Castro's Cuban efforts. Colby was instrumental in Washington's East Asian policies, particularly in regards to Vietnam, as well as Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and China. He was highly critical of the decision to withdraw support for Diem, and he believed that it played a significant role in the South Vietnamese position's decline in the years that followed.

President Lyndon Johnson sent Colby back to Vietnam as deputy to Robert Komer, who had been charged with streamlining the civilian aspects of the American and South Vietnamese struggles against the Communists in 1968, as Colby was preparing to take over the head of the Soviet Bloc Division of the Soviet Bloc Division of the Agency. Colby returned shortly after arriving in Vietnam as the head of CORDS, the South Vietnamese rural peace initiative. The Phoenix Project, which was part of the campaign, was part of the initiative to find and destroy the "Viet Cong Infrastructure," according to the campaign. There's a lot of controversy over the program's legitimacy, which was subjected to allegations that it relied on or was complicit in assassination and torture. Colby, on the other hand, has consistently stated that such tactics were not authorized or permitted in the scheme.

Colby, as well as Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) commander General Creighton Abrams, was part of a leadership group that attempted to take a new approach to the war that was supposed to emphasize pacification (winning hearts and minds) and securing the countryside, rather than the "search and kill" strategy that had defined General William Westmoreland's tenure as MACV commander. Some, including Colby later in life, believe that this approach succeeded in reducing South Vietnam's Communist insurgency, but that South Vietnam, which was also lacking air and ground cover by the US after the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, was eventually overwhelmed by a modern North Vietnamese attack in 1975. In the 2000s in Iraq and Afghanistan, the CORDS model and its approach influenced US policy and research on counterinsurgency.

Colby returned to Washington in July 1971 and became the CIA's executive director. After long-serving DCI Richard Helms was fired by President Nixon in 1973, James Schlesinger took over the Agency. Schlesinger, a strong believer in the reform of the CIA and intelligence services, had written a 1971 Bureau of the Budget paper laying out his views on the issue. Colby, who had had a somewhat unorthodox career in intelligence, sympathied with Schlesinger's transitionist strategy. In early 1973, Schlesinger appointed him as the head of the clandestine branch. Colby, a natural candidate for DCI after Nixon reshuffled his company heads and named Schlesinger secretary of defense as a natural candidate for DCI, despite the fact that he was a professional who would not make waves. Colby was known as a media-friendly CIA chief. His time as DCI, which spanned two and a half years, was dominated by the Church and Pike congressional probes into suspected US intelligence malfeasance over the preceding 25 years, including 1975, the so-called Year of Intelligence.

On the international stage, Colby's time as DCI was also memorable. The Yom Kippur War broke out shortly after he assumed control, shocking not only the American intelligence services but also the Israelis. Colby's image with the Nixon administration was apparently damaged by this intelligence revelation. Colby was one of the participants in the National Security Council meetings that reacted to apparent Soviet intentions to intervene in the war by raising the alert level of US forces to DEFCON 3 and defusing the crisis. South Vietnam fell to Communist forces in April 1975, a devastating blow for Colby, who had devoted so much of his life and career to the American effort there. Angola, Australia, the Middle East, and other events in the arms-control field drew our interest.

Colby also concentrated on internal improvements within the CIA and intelligence agencies. He attempted to modernize what he felt to be some outdated schemes and practices by disbanding the Board of National Estimates and replacing it with the National Intelligence Council, which he believed to be some out-of-date information and activities. In a speech to NSA employees from 1973, he stressed the importance of free expression in the United States and the cultural role of the CIA as defender, not preventer of civil rights, in an attempt to respond to the then-emerging rumors of CIA and NSA domestic spying. He also outlined a number of measures that might reduce excessive classification of government data.

President Ford was advised by Henry Kissinger and others concerned about Colby's unbridled openness to Congress and distance from the White House when he replaced Colby with George H. W. Bush late in 1975, when Defense Schlesinger was also replaced (by Donald Rumsfeld). Colby was invited to serve as the United States Permanent Representative to NATO but turned down the post.

Colby, Miller & Hanes, along with Marshall Miller, David Hanes, and associate attorneys, formed a D.C. law firm in 1977 and concentrated on public policy issues. Colby, in keeping with his long-serving liberal views, became a supporter of the nuclear freeze and reduced military spending cuts. He served law and supervised various agencies on intelligence matters.

He also wrote two books during this period, both of which were memoirs of his professional life as well as historical and policy studies. Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA was one of two series; the other, on Vietnam and his long involvement in American politics, was called Lost Victory. Colby wrote in the second book that the US-RVN counterinsurgency war in Vietnam had succeeded by the early 1970s and that South Vietnam may have survived if the US continued to provide aid after the Paris Accords. Despite the fact that the topic remains open and controversial, some new research, led by Lewis "Bob" Sorley, supports Colby's claims.

Colby and Oleg Kalugin also contributed to the Activision game Spycraft: The Great Game, which was announced shortly before his death. Both Colby and Kalugin participated in the game.

William E. Colby was a member of the National Coalition to Ban Handguns. Senator John Heinz's name appears on a note from him on a "National Sponsor" note published on July 5, 1989.

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