A former OSS commando during World War II who later headed up the controversial PHOENIXProgram in SOUTH- EAST ASIA, William Egan Colby is best known as the DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCEwho “too” willingly turned over the CIA’s FAMILY JEWELSto the CHURCH COM- MITTEEin 1975.
Colby was born January 4, 1920, in St. Paul, Min- nesota, to Elbridge Colby, a career Army officer and devout Roman Catholic, and Margaret Mary Egan Colby, a doting mother. Growing up in a military family, young Colby was widely traveled by the time he graduated from high school at age 16. Like his father, he decided to pur- sue a military career. He was too young to be accepted at West Point, so he enrolled in Princeton University. When he turned 17, he applied to West Point but was rejected because of nearsightedness. Undaunted, he remained at Princeton, joined the Army Reserve Officer Training
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Corps (ROTC), and attained the rank of cadet captain. In 1940, he graduated from Princeton.
In August 1941, four months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Colby was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Eager for combat duty, he vol- unteered for airborne training, and in the fall of 1942 he was sent to jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia. A broken ankle during his second jump put his dreams on hold, but only temporarily. In March 1943, he was briefly posted as a staff officer in the 462nd Parachute Artillery Battalion. But when presented with an opportunity to join the OFFICE OF STRATEGIC SERVICES(OSS), Colby immediately accepted.
The OSS, the World War II precursor to the CIA, was only two years old in 1943. But its growing reputation as a clandestine force of educated, physically fit young men seeking high adventure was a tremendous lure for sol- diers like Colby. Soon, Colby was at England’s Milton Hall, undergoing a rigorous program of weapons instruc- tion and special operations training led by British com- mandos and intelligence officers from the SPECIAL OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE (SOE). Once his training was completed, Colby was given command of one of the famous JEDBURGH teams and assigned a number of tasks involving parachuting into Nazi-occupied France; train- ing, arming, and leading resistance fighters; blowing up bridges and communications centers; ambushing enemy patrols; gathering intelligence; and generally doing what- ever needed to be done to disrupt German military opera- tions. He returned to London, where he was given command of an OSS operational group that was sent to Nazi-held Norway. There he led the group on numerous special-operations missions. By war’s end, he had won many decorations, including the Silver Star, the Croix de Guerre (France), and the St. Olaf’s Medal (Norway).
Colby returned to school in 1946, earning a law degree from Columbia University in 1947. He practiced law in New York from 1947 to 1949, and he served with the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., from 1949 to 1950.
Colby joined the CIA in 1950. His first post was in Stockholm, Sweden, where he was tasked with overseeing STAY-BEHIND NETS, networks of clandestine operatives who would remain in Scandinavia in the event of a Soviet attack on the West. Colby then served as the Agency’s CHIEF OF STATION (COS) in Rome from 1953 to 1958, and as the COS in Saigon from 1959 to 1962. In Saigon, he directed Operation PHOENIX, a controversial special project wherein Vietcong leaders were identified by intel- ligence officers and subsequently targeted by U.S. forces.
In 1963, he was promoted to the head of the Agency’s Far Eastern Division. He held that post until 1967. The following year, he was granted leave from the CIA to accept a position as director of civil operations and rural development support with the Agency for
International Development in Saigon (South Vietnam). He served in this capacity until 1971; his rank was equivalent to that of a full ambassador. He returned to the CIA in 1972. From March 2, 1973, until August 24, he served as deputy director for operations (concur- rently serving as executive secretary of the CIA’s Man- agement Committee).
On September 4, Colby was appointed director of cen- tral intelligence by President Richard Nixon. Unfortu- nately for Colby, much of his tenure was spent putting out the proverbial fires of scrutiny. While he was serving as DCI, the CIA supported opponents of Chilean presi- dent Salvador Allende, a Marxist who was later killed dur- ing an attempted coup d’état.
But Colby is perhaps best remembered for his disclo- sure of the “family jewels”—a list of over 300 “ques- tionable” CIA activities compiled by the Agency and publicly exposed during the U.S. Senate’s Church Com- mittee hearings in 1975. Colby was also directed to turn over classified meterial to the U.S. House of Representa- tive’s PIKE COMMITTEE. When he hedged on that order, the committee threatened to charge him with contempt of Congress. In late 1975, President Gerald Ford asked Colby for his resignation, purportedly for failure to obey a presidential order to destroy the Agency’s stock- pile of poisons. Colby stepped down on January 30, 1976.
His awards for military and civilian government ser- vice include the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, St. Olaf’s Medal (Norway), the Croix de Guerre (France), the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award, the Distin- guished Intelligence Medal, the National Security Medal, the Intelligence Medal of Merit, and the Career Intelli- gence Medal.
Among his published works are Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (1978) and Lost Victory (1989).
In retirement, Colby practiced law first at the Wash- ington, D.C.–based firm of Reid & Priest and then the Los Angeles firm of Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine. He also worked as a business consultant and a lecturer. In 1994, the former DCI signed with Activision, an enter- tainment and video-game publisher, to develop spy thriller video games.
On April 27, 1996, Colby disappeared while canoeing on the Potomac River. For nine days, law enforcement officers combed the shoreline, as speculation of foul play began to surface across the country. Eventually, his body was discovered in a tributary. An autopsy suggested that he had suffered a heart attack or a stroke before falling into the river and drowning.
Colby is considered to have been one of the last true “gentleman spies,” respected by friend and foe alike—a fact evident at his funeral, where one of the mourners was MAJOR GENERAL OLEG DANILOVICH KALUGIN, former head
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of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, the counterpart agency to the CIA.
Colby was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was 76.
See alsoCHILE, OPERATIONS IN.