He feels his father left his wife isolated and eschewed real father-son bonds. "The worst thing I could have done was to sugarcoat my father and paint things as rosy.". She and other CIA wives modeled their campaign on earlier, more public efforts by former spouses of State Department employees. In Rome, where William Colby was posted from 1953 to 1958, Mrs. Colby immersed herself in the countrys language and religious and artistic heritage while her husband helped lead efforts to prevent a Communist victory in Italian elections. WASHINGTON (AP) _ William E. Colby was a professional spy and a man of contradictions. Carl said he didn't interview his siblings because he views the film as his memoir, not a biography. After an autopsy, Maryland's Chief Medical Examiner John E. Smialek ruled his death to be accidental. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence. Paul said the Vietnamese prisoner's killing was not part of Phoenix, that his dad wasn't even in Vietnam at the time of the shooting and that the footage is a "total smear of my father. PRICE William Edger Colby (AKA) Gummer, 74, passed away unexpectedly at his home in Price on December 31, 2020. Thousands of targets were killed, leading the media and much of America to call Phoenix an assassination program. The journal appeals to readers from a wide variety of disciplines, including American studies, international economics, American history, national security studies, and Latin-American, Asian, African, European, and Middle Eastern studies. 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. This interview is from August 8th 2004. Their dads legacy, they said, is something still worth defending. He answered a call for French-speaking volunteers and joined the Office of Strategic Services, the World War II American father of the CIA. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. That day, the Federal judge at the trial of Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department official charged with espionage after the Pentagon Papers, a secret history of the Vietnam War, were provided to The New York Times, disclosed that the office of Mr. Ellsberg's psychiatrist had been burglarized by White House operatives -- with technical assistance from the C.I.A. Shortly after arriving Colby succeeded Komer as head of the U.S./South Vietnamese rural pacification effort named CORDS. He married Barbara Heinzen (19202015) in 1945 and they had five children. The following is a transcript of the part of the interview that is available here as a streaming mp3 file: I don't understand why more people don't know about this. But Mr. Colby "got what he wanted: no President could put the C.I.A. Mrs. Colby served for many years on the CIAs Family Advisory Board, which represents the interests of agency family members, and in 2002 received the prestigious Directors Award from then-CIA Director George Tenet, recognizing her untiring efforts on the part of former Agency spouses and her constant concern for the welfare of Agency families., In a statement after Mrs. Colbys death, Tenet and his wife, Stephanie Glakas-Tenet, said that CIA Directors came and went, but Barbara was an indispensable foundation, serving the Agency for nearly 60 years.. I have come to a hard spent realization: Costco has my number. Mr. Colby's confirmation hearings that summer were excruciating, in part because of his past in Vietnam. COLBY, William H. "Colby" - Of Flint, age 60, died Saturday, August 4, 2007 at Hurley Medical Center. Quoting his book "Final Judgement" (pp353-357): "The August 20, 1996 issue of The Sun, As American involvement grew in Vietnam, Colby helped develop an unsuccessful strategic hamlet program and directed the organization of Montagnard tribesmen for service in the U.S. special forces. His father, a sensitive nonconformist who wrote and taught literature, became a career Army officer. Elbridge's father, Charles Colby, had been a professor of chemistry at Columbia University but had died prematurely, leaving his family largely without money. "I would have been closer to him. He stopped in Mongolia to advise a mining company. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. More broadly, along with Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) commander General Creighton Abrams, Colby was part of a leadership group that worked to apply a new approach to the war designed to focus more on pacification (winning hearts and minds) and securing the countryside as opposed to the "search and destroy" approach that had characterized General William Westmoreland's tenure as MACV commander. The film concerned a dead man shes still in love with. Seated in a Washington movie theater in October, she flipped open a notepad and, as the movie played, jotted down her thoughts. Seated in a Washington movie theater in October, she flipped open a notepad and, as the movie played, jotted down her thoughts. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. 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. [19][20], Colby's death triggered conspiracy theories that his death was due to foul play. It would have muddled the story.. From 1968 to 1971, under the aegis of the Agency for International Development, Mr. Colby had run programs that included Operation Phoenix. There, he oversaw Operation Phoenix, a program designed to root out Communist Viet Cong agents in South Vietnam and that ultimately killed more than 20,000 Vietnamese. 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. PRICE William Edger Colby (AKA) Gummer, 74, passed away unexpectedly at his home in Price on December 31, 2020. It was about 1982, Shelton-Colby recalled, and she met Bill Colby at the offices of International Business-Government Counsellors, a Washington consulting firm. [21][22] In his 2011 documentary The Man Nobody Knew, Colby's son Carl suggested that his father suffered from guilt over his failings as a father to one of his daughters and committed suicide. The pain and sadness of losing [my father] has now been intensified by my brother Carls inexplicable and unfounded attempt to debase the reputation and memory of a modest and decent man, a dedicated father, and an exemplary public servant., Carl kept the wrenching footage to bolster the films credibility, he said. He is survived by his wife, Sally Shelton-Colby, an assistant administrator for global programs at the Agency for International Development and a former Ambassador to Grenada, Barbados and eight other eastern Caribbean countries; his children from his first marriage, Jonathan, Carl, Paul and Christine, and six grandchildren. Shelton-Colby was in Houston, visiting her ailing mother. In some ways, The Man Nobody Knew is a quintessential Washington spook story, Michael OSullivan said in his Washington Post review of the film, told by a globe-trotting CIA brat who thought, for the longest time, that his father worked for the State Department., One of the most tenacious "what-ifs" of the Vietnam War is what John F. Kennedy would have done, Back in the late seventies or early eighties when I was working as a journalist in Washington, D.C.,, The documentary film Lioness takes a look at a group of female Army support soldiers, Thefifth annual San Francisco Veterans Film Festival, which will take place at Koret Auditorium at the main branch, Stay informed about the latest veteran news, 2023 Vietnam Veterans of America | All Rights Reserved, 8719 Colesville Road, Suite 100, Silver Spring, MD 20910 | 301-585-4000, Media Kit The disclosures in 1975, historians believe, saved the CIA from destruction when members of Congress were eager for its death, but they made Colby a pariah to CIA officers who believed such transparency imperiled the agencys mission and national security. He left Saigon in 1962 and returned in 1966, eventually taking charge of the Vietnamese pacification program and its Phoenix project, aimed at rooting out the Viet Cong, the communist guerrilla organization. Colby was offered the position of United States Permanent Representative to NATO but turned it down. She filled out several pages. Bill was working with newly Democratic elected parliaments in Eastern Europe to help them figure out how to assert authorities over spy agencies, Shelton-Colby said. One was titled Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA; the other, on Vietnam and his long involvement with American policy there, was called Lost Victory. She served with her husband and their family during his long CIA career in Sweden, Italy, Under diplomatic cover, he served at the U.S. embassies in Stockholm and Rome, and became the CIA station chief in Saigon in 1959. She wasnt forthcoming about any insights into his character, Carl said. In 1977 Colby founded a D.C. law firmColby, Miller & Hanes, with Marshall Miller, David Hanes, and associated lawyers, and worked on public policy issues. "The agency's survival," he wrote in his memoirs, "could only come from understanding, not hostility, built on knowledge, not faith.". He was given the Outstanding Achievement Award (Young Male Filmmaker) for his six-min Building trust: Jason Wallaces Strange Brew Pub welcomes all kinds. Emily Langer is a reporter on The Washington Posts obituaries desk. Now the pressure for a full Congressional investigation grew irresistible. It currently publishes more than 6,000 new publications a year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs more than 5,500 people worldwide. After the war, he returned to Columbia and received a law degree in 1947. experience and a deep antipathy to Fascism and Communism. Mrs. Colby was born Barbara Ann Heinzen in Springfield, Ohio, on Dec. 25, 1920. Colby said later that some of Fords advisers felt ``I was responding too willingly to Congress; I was giving them information when I should have stonewalled them and refused to give them information., The former CIA director maintained that it was necessary to own up about past CIA misdeeds, ``to get rid of them and to demonstrate that CIA, itself, had corrected those a year and a half before.. She also came to realize, after her husband asked her for a divorce, that she didn't know him as well as she thought. At headquarters, he took on desk jobs that led two years later to the directorship. The contradictions followed him to the end. on the Internet. Though the topic remains open and controversial, some recent scholarship, including by Lewis "Bob" Sorley, supports Colby's arguments. ", Carl kept the wrenching footage to bolster the film's credibility, he said. 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 In The Man Nobody Knew, Carl, the narrator, traces his fathers career as an intelligence operative in World War II to his tenure as CIA director. In the documentary, Carl Colby said that his mother did everything for the mission., She hadnt signed up for this, he said, But she did it.. On the other, Carl admired his dads public service and seems most proud of his disclosures to Congress about the CIAs past misdeeds. The coroners report listed the cause of death as a drowning, brought on by a stroke or heart attack. Senior agency officers called him a traitor. During this period he also wrote two books, both of which were memoirs of his professional life combined with discussions of history and policy. "I think Carl portrayed his father in the way he did to sell his film. WebObituary of William Michael Colby. Mrs. Colby jumped into the job of the junior diplomats wife with her typical enthusiasm and charm, William Colby wrote in his 1978 memoir Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA, crediting her also with maintaining a normal family life. Redirect it, reduce the amount of money spent, but let's not destroy it. That assignment led to one in which he parachuted behind enemy lines in Norway to blow up a Nazi rail line. Colbys body was found washed up Monday on a sandbar of the Wicomico River not far from his southern Maryland vacation home, eight days after his empty canoe was found nearby. Why Was Former CIA Director William Colby Assassinated? For these missions, he earned the Silver Star and the French Croix de Guerre. On the other, Carl admired his dad's public service and seems most proud of his disclosures to Congress about the CIA's past misdeeds. After the war, Colby graduated from Columbia Law School and then briefly practiced law in William J. Donovan's New York firm, Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine. Sally Shelton-Colby needed to watch the documentary with friends, for emotional support. 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. In 1943, answering a call for officers who could speak fluent French, he became a member of the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime American espionage agency. Colby participated in the National Security Council meetings that responded to apparent Soviet intentions to intervene in the war by raising the alert level of U.S. forces to DEFCON 3 and defusing the crisis. did business with the legislative branch in those days. Even though the movie shows Bill testifying before Congress, saying that he issued an order against assassination, Paul, the youngest brother, said he still believes the film slams their father as a "mass assassin." His brothers and sister had their own relationship with him, he said. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. in a Time of Upheaval, https://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/07/us/william-e-colby-76-head-of-cia-in-a-time-of-upheaval.html. | Veteran Collectibles 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. 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. The apparent cause was a heart attack, said her son Paul Colby. "And all she said to me was, 'We both loved him. In 1945, he commanded a squad of saboteurs who blew up German rail lines in the snows of northern Norway. Benning. Through her sons, Barbara, 90, who lives in a Washington retirement community, also declined to be interviewed. He was born September 2, 1946 in Huntington, Utah to Eldwin R. Colby and Zina Loree Marshall. Before the vote, he decided to share the family jewels with a few select members of Congress. The new dad . Tasked by CIA with supporting the government of Ng nh Dim, Colby established a relationship with President Diem's family and with Ng nh Nhu, the president's brother, with whom Colby became close. Foul play was suspected, but I knew otherwise, Carl narrates in the movie. . His name appears on a note to Senator John Heinz dated July 5, 1989 as a "National Sponsor". Last Updated: November 23, 2011 8:25 pm. View The Obituary For Frederick William Colby Sr of Dade City, Florida. He was born Oct. 14, 1933 to George and C Request Permissions, Review by: William E. Colby: A Highly Suspicious Death This was Saturday, April 27, 1996. Naturally, the CIA directors death on a canoe ride triggered murder conspiracy theories. in a bottle and throw it away.". In April 1996, Bill set off on a worldwide consulting trip. He loved music and could play piano, accordion and guitar. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. ``The Cold War is over, and the military threat is now far less, he said in a 1992 ad. Sally Shelton-Colby, pictured in Washington, the second wife of former CIA director William Colby, disputes a documentary produced about her late husband. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. He drank some wine and ate some clams. Colby then spent much of the 1950s based in Rome, under cover as a State Department officer,[7] where he led the Agency's covert political operations campaign to support anti-Communist parties in their electoral contests against left wing, Soviet Unionassociated parties. Column: Look out, the Copycat is on the prowl, trying to figure out the Costco Bisconie recipe. 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. Carl didnt know his father. He was having a ball.. The Colby family is bothered by the film's suggestion that Bill killed himself because he felt guilty for not doing more to comfort his eldest daughter, Catherine Colby, As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. They are especially upset with the film's suggestion that the former spymaster spent his retirement in deep regret and killed himself on a canoeing trip in the mid-1990s. In April 1945, he led the NORSO Group Operasjon Rype into Norway on a sabotage mission to destroy railway lines, in an effort to hinder German forces in Norway from reinforcing the final defense of Germany.[7]. Two months after the firing, Ford honored Colby with the National Security Medal, citing his ``outstanding contribution in the field of intelligence.. Its a terrible thing to say, but sometimes I think I would have rather worked for him than be his son, Carl said. "Let me be very blunt," said Shelton-Colby, 67, a foreign policy professor at American University. 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. 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