29 Facts About William Colby

William Egan Colby was an American intelligence officer who served as Director of Central Intelligence from September 1973 to January 1976.

William Egan Colby was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1920.

William Colby's 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, DC 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 William Colby, had been a professor of chemistry at Columbia University but had died prematurely, leaving his family largely without money.

William 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 US soldier based at Ft.

William Colby was for his entire life a staunch Roman Catholic.

William Colby married Barbara Heinzen in 1945 and they had five children.

William Colby spent the next 12 years in the field, first in Stockholm, Sweden.

In 1959 William Colby became the CIA's deputy chief and then chief of station in Saigon, South Vietnam, where he served until 1962.

William Colby was deeply critical of the decision to abandon support for Diem, and he believed this played a material part in the weakening of the South Vietnamese position in the years following.

In 1968, while William Colby was preparing to take up the post of chief of the Soviet Bloc Division of the Agency, President Lyndon Johnson instead sent William Colby back to Vietnam as deputy to Robert Komer, who had been charged with streamlining the civilian side of the American and South Vietnamese efforts against the Communists.

William Colby consistently insisted that such tactics were not authorized by or permitted in the program.

William Colby returned to Washington in July 1971 and became executive director of CIA.

William Colby, who had had a somewhat unorthodox career in the CIA focused on political action and counterinsurgency, agreed with Schlesinger's reformist approach.

William 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 US forces to DEFCON 3 and defusing the crisis.

In 1975, after many years of involvement, South Vietnam fell to Communist forces in April 1975, a particularly difficult blow for William Colby, who had dedicated so much of his life and career to the American effort there.

William Colby focused on internal reforms within the CIA and the intelligence community.

William Colby attempted to modernize what he believed to be some out-of-date structures and practices by disbanding the Board of National Estimates and replacing it with the National Intelligence Council.

William Colby mentioned a number of reforms intended to limit excessive classification of governmental information.

William Colby was offered the position of United States Permanent Representative to NATO but turned it down.

In consonance with his long-held liberal views, William Colby became a supporter of the nuclear freeze and of reductions in military spending.

William Colby practiced law and advised various bodies on intelligence matters.

William Colby lent his expertise and knowledge, along with Oleg Kalugin, to the Activision game Spycraft: The Great Game, which was released shortly before his death.

William E Colby was a member of the National Coalition to Ban Handguns.

William Colby's name appears on a note to Senator John Heinz dated July 5,1989 as a "National Sponsor".

William Colby's canoe was found the following day on a sandbar in the Wicomico River, a tributary of the Potomac, about 0.25 miles from his home.

Smialek's report said that William Colby was predisposed to having a heart attack or stroke due to "severe calcified atherosclerosis" and that William Colby likely "suffered a complication of this atherosclerosis which precipitated him into the cold water in a debilitated state and he succumbed to the effects of hypothermia and drowned".

William Colby's death triggered conspiracy theories that his death was due to foul play.

William Colby was the subject of a biography, Lost Crusader, by John Prados, published in 2003.