He was born Oct. 14, 1933 to George and C William E. Colby was a member of the National Coalition to Ban Handguns. He was denounced as a war criminal over CIA assassinations in Vietnam. He was responsible for all the agency's covert operations in Asia from 1962 to 1967, as the United States went to war in Vietnam. In 1959, they moved to South Vietnam, where William Colby became station chief in Saigon, which is now called Ho Chi Minh City. In a short e-mail to The Post, she said her recollections of her dad differ from Carls. Carl elaborated on his theory more in the interview, asserting that if his dad suffered a stroke or heart attack while canoeing, he may not have had the will to live. There is considerable debate about the merits of the program, which was subject to allegations that it relied on or was complicit in assassination and torture. Bill and Barbara were still married, but their relationship was deteriorating. Call it whatever you like. Carl didnt know his father. Even after his dismissal as Director of Central Intelligence in November 1975 by President Gerald R. Ford, who believed that Mr. Colby had been too forthcoming, Mr. Colby insisted that he had done the right thing by throwing the cloak off the cloak-and-dagger business. His brothers and sister had their own relationship with him, he said. I think hed had enough of this life.. His family moved constantly, living everywhere from Tientsin, China, to Burlington, Vt. The Cosby Family thanks many people for their One of the five children from his first marriage, Catherine, died in 1974. web pages But Colby was fired on Nov. 2, 1975, as head of the CIA after being accused of talking too much. In that city, he wrote, the family received its baptism of fire during an unsuccessful 1960 coup mounted against Diem. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. But she does not share her sons degree of bitterness. For the past week, while searchers looked for him in the Wicomico, near where it empties into the Potomac, his widow, Sally Shelton-Colby, had refused to accept the assumption that he had drowned. In 1975, 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. William Egan Colby (January 4, 1920 May 6, 1996) was an American intelligence officer who served as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from September 1973 to January 1976. She wasnt forthcoming about any insights into his character, Carl said. [7] While in Vietnam, Colby focused intensively on building up Vietnamese capabilities to combat the Viet Cong insurgency in the countryside. Colby was dismissed as CIA director 20 years ago, after 3 1/2 years, by President Ford. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Foul play was suspected, but I knew otherwise, Carl narrates in the movie. They turned on the radio and danced the jitterbug or waltzed. After the war he joined the newly created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). And when the cold war was over, he proposed beating swords into plowshares, arguing that half of the billions for the Pentagon should go to education, economic competitiveness and programs for the poor. But as the nation's chief spy, he helped reveal the Central Intelligence Agency's hidden history and confessed to its sins. . Because you don't know 10 years out what you're going to face. Following his first year at Columbia, in 1941 Colby volunteered for active duty with the United States Army and served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as a "Jedburgh", or special operator, trained to work with resistance forces in occupied Europe to harass German and Axis forces. She was 44. He loved music and could play piano, accordion and guitar. William Edger Colby. He entered Columbia Law School, but left to join the Army and serve in World War II. Column: Look out, the Copycat is on the prowl, trying to figure out the Costco Bisconie recipe. In his first mission he deployed to France as a Jedburgh commanding Team BRUCE, in mid-August 1944, and operated with the Maquis until he joined up with Allied forces later that fall. The agency had violated its charter by spying on Americans, tapping their telephones, reading their tax returns and opening their mail. "It's a terrible thing to say, but sometimes I think I would have rather worked for him than be his son," Carl said. In 1992, she received a masters degree in humanities from Georgetown University. His brothers and sister had their own relationship with him, he said. And even though Shelton-Colby, the spymasters second wife, has been kept at a distance by most of Colbys biological children, their grievances with the film have united them, at least in principle. He married Barbara Heinzen (19202015) in 1945 and they had five children. She said, 'They can make their own movie,'" Carl said in an interview. "And all she said to me was, 'We both loved him. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Paul said the Vietnamese prisoners killing was not part of Phoenix, that his dad wasnt even in Vietnam at the time of the shooting and that the footage is a total smear of my father., Carl told me that if I didnt like it, I should make my own film, Paul said. was just an ordinary guy with ordinary desires., Carl interviewed Shelton-Colby, but he opted not to use any of the footage. Please join us in Loving, Sharing and Memorializing Frederick William Colby Sr on this permanent online memorial. The Vietnam War played a central role in William Colbys life and work. She admits to feeling jealous of another CIA wife whose husband talked more about his job. Colby was divorced in 1984 from the former Barbara Heinzen and married Sally Shelton. Thousands of targets were killed, leading the media and much of America to call Phoenix an assassination program. Carl said he felt that the best person to explain his dad was his mother, who was extensively interviewed in the film. Sally Shelton-Colby needed to watch the documentary with friends, for emotional support. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. "[9] In 1962 he returned to Washington to become the deputy and then chief of CIA's Far East Division, succeeding Desmond Fitzgerald, who had been tapped to lead the Agency's efforts against Fidel Castro's Cuba. Funeral service will be celebrated at Hodges Family Funeral Home, 114412 US Hwy 301, Dade City on . "I think Carl portrayed his father in the way he did to sell his film. In April 1996, Bill set off on a worldwide consulting trip. The Colby family is bothered by the films suggestion that Bill killed himself because he felt guilty for not doing more to comfort his eldest daughter, Catherine Colby, before her death in 1973 from epilepsy and anorexia. Phoenix killed 20,587 Vietnamese. His calm in this crisis -- his enemies called it cold-bloodedness -- was composed in equal parts of his grounding in espionage, the military and the Roman Catholic Church. Colby returned to Washington in July 1971 and became executive director of CIA. "It would have muddled the story.". "My dad's shoes were off when they found his body, usually a sign of a drowning victim fighting to live," he said. Carl Colby, whose documentary opened in September and is playing in theaters nationwide, declined to discuss his family's reactions to his film. Robert M. Gates, the Director of Central Intelligence from 1991 to 1993, recalled that 1975 was the worst year in the agency's history. Uploaded by It's been 15 years since Bill Colby vanished on a solo canoe trip near his vacation home in southern Maryland, only to be found dead days later, floating on the banks of the Wicomico River. He showed unusual candour while testifying before Congress in 1975 in the wake of The film concerned a dead man shes still in love with. Together in this way, he wrote, we did much to shore up my weak cover and convince most people that I was in fact what I said I was a diplomat.. The old dad taught me how to sacrifice. in politics in 1940 after completing a 196-page long senior thesis titled "Surrender -- French Policy toward the Spanish Civil War. Then he took the canoe out. When it trampled people, the blame was on the elephant rider: the President of the United States. Mrs. Colby, 94, died July 16 in Washington. By demanding that understanding, Mr. Colby was "playing a very heavy card, trumping the White House by bringing the American people into the secret world," John Ranelagh wrote in his history of the intelligence service, "The Agency" (Simon & Schuster, 1986). In an interview, Jonathan Colby, who lives in Chevy Chase, Md., said he does not understand why Carl implies that his dad committed suicide. Colby to Leonid Brezhnev, On walking alone, unfollowed, through Red Square in 1989, after the end of the Cold War: "That was my victory parade. geogaddi000 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 during the so-called Halloween Massacre in which Secretary of Defense Schlesinger was also replaced (by Donald Rumsfeld). The worst thing I could have done was to sugarcoat my father and paint things as rosy., Ultimately, the movie reveals Carls ambivalence about his dad. Through her sons, Barbara, 90, who lives in a Washington retirement community, also declined to be interviewed. Only when contacted by a Post reporter did family members vent their frustrations about the film. Former CIA Director William Colby comes off as cold, mysterious and ultimately suicidal in his son's documentary, The Man Nobody Knew. To save the agency, Mr. Colby believed, he had to confess to its sins. She writes about extraordinary lives in national and international affairs, science and the arts, sports, culture, and beyond. One of Colby's own daughters was rumored to be another casualty of his war. She and other CIA wives modeled their campaign on earlier, more public efforts by former spouses of State Department employees. Mr. Colby's marriage to the former Barbara Heinzen ended in divorce. 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. Since then, he had promoted a nuclear freeze and big cuts in the military budget. Colby's time as DCI was also eventful on the world stage. This interview is from August 8th She received a bachelors degree in history from Barnard College in New York in 1942 and was an advertising copywriter before marrying. "The worst thing I could have done was to sugarcoat my father and paint things as rosy.". He stopped in Mongolia to advise a mining company. In recent months, Mr. Colby became senior editor of Strategic Weekly Briefings, a faxed newsletter, and embarked on a quintessential post-cold-war endeavor: marketing a computer CD-ROM game about espionage and counter-terrorism he created with Oleg Kalugin, a former top Soviet intelligence officer. He perfected the look of an invisible man: gray suits, graying hair, glasses with translucent frames the color of pale white skin. Two months after the firing, Ford honored Colby with the National Security Medal, citing his ``outstanding contribution in the field of intelligence.. 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. He enrolled in Princeton University in 1937 and graduated in 1940 with a liberal education and outlook, a Phi Beta Kappa key, R.O.T.C. Earlier this year, when Paul was shown the film, he told Carl that it would be "unethical" to keep it as is. Although "The Man Nobody Knew" features an extensive interview with his biological mother, Barbara H. Colby, and more than 30 journalists, ex-CIA officials and other dignitaries, Carl did not ask his three siblings to be interviewed. But now, The Man Nobody Knew has set off a tense division between Carl, his stepmother and his otherwise low-key siblings: Jonathan Colby, 65, a managing director at the Carlyle Group, an investment firm; Paul Colby, 56, a government attorney; and Christine Colby Giraudo, 51, a public relations consultant. Though the topic remains open and controversial, some recent scholarship, including by Lewis "Bob" Sorley, supports Colby's arguments. [11] Some, including Colby later in life, argue that this approach succeeded in reducing the Communist insurgency in South Vietnam, but that South Vietnam, without air and ground support by the United States after the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, was ultimately overwhelmed by a conventional North Vietnamese assault in 1975. As I wrote in a retrospective column in The Hill two days after Colby's body was recovered when he vanished on a solo canoe trip in the Chesapeake Bay in May, 1996, his death "was one of those events that seems destined to Christine Colby Giraudo of Northwest Washington declined to be interviewed. Christine Colby Giraudo of northwest Washington declined to be interviewed. He thought spying for one's country an honorable task, he followed legitimate orders to the hilt and his public confessions took the form of atonement and redemption. Earlier this year, when Paul was shown the film, he told Carl that it would be unethical to keep it as is. . It was about 1982, Shelton-Colby recalled, and she met Bill Colby at the offices of International Business-Government Counsellors, a Washington consulting firm. Emily Langer is a reporter on The Washington Posts obituaries desk. She was his little sister. As bullets whined through the windows of their home, William Colby recalled, he barricaded his wife and children upstairs. "This was a shocker," Mr. Colby recounted in his 1978 memoir, "Honorable Men" (Simon & Schuster). In his 1989 book, Lost Victory: A First-Hand Account of Americas Sixteen-Year Involvement in the Vietnam War , Colby argued that the way to defeat the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in Vietnam was not to send in large numbers of U.S. troops, but to help make the government of South Vietnam responsive to the needs of its people, thereby making the government an attractive alternative to the communists. WILLIAM R. COLBY CONNEAUT William Rea Colby, 82, of Conneaut, OH, died Thursday morning, April 1, 2004, at his residence following a lengthy illness. ``He fought fascism and communism and lived to see democracy take hold in the world., President Clinton said in a statement, ``Through a quarter of a century at the CIA, William Colby played a pivotal role in shaping our nations intelligence community. In August 1944, Colby parachuted into France to join a resistance group fighting to link up with advancing U.S. forces. As the confirmation hearings convened in July 1973, antiwar protesters plastered Washington with wanted posters emblazoned with Mr. Colby's face, a skull and crossbones and the ace of spades, a symbol of death, his home telephone, which he insisted remain listed, rang with angry calls throughout the night. After completing a 196-page long senior thesis titled `` Surrender -- French Policy the. 1933 to George and C William E. Colby was a member of the Coalition. 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