In his eyes and in the eyes of many historians, he kept the agency from destroying itself or being destroyed by outsiders. Let me be very blunt, said Shelton-Colby, 67, a foreign policy professor at American University. ``Its time to cut our military budget by 50 percent and to invest that money in our schools, our health care and our economy. . The film: The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby.. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. 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. COLBY--Barbara Heinzen, died peacefully Thursday, July 16 at the age of 94. Died: April, 1973 (Complications from epilepsy and anorexia) Mini Bio (1) Catherine Colby died in April 1973. Press Release: [21][22], Colby was the subject of a biography, Lost Crusader, by John Prados, published in 2003. Soon, she began courting him. Colby also focused on internal reforms within the CIA and the intelligence community. ", For histories on the CIA's role in Vietnam and on the pacification effort more broadly, see foia.cia.gov, For further information on Colby's leadership of the Intelligence Community, see cia.gov, "William E. Colby, 76, Head of C.I.A. Column: Look out, the Copycat is on the prowl, trying to figure out the Costco Bisconie recipe. Schlesinger appointed him head of the clandestine branch in early 1973. William E. Colby was a member of the National Coalition to Ban Handguns. 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. Mr. Colby spent the year testifying before Congressional committees, and the essence of his testimony became public: the assassination plots, the coups and the spying on Americans. Carl says in the movie that two weeks before the canoe trip his dad called him "seeking absolution for his not doing enough when Catherine was so ill.". 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). At headquarters, he took on desk jobs that led two years later to the directorship. "The agency's survival," he wrote in his memoirs, "could only come from understanding, not hostility, built on knowledge, not faith.". 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, Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Bill was initially reluctant, but he soon joined in the relationship. Both Colby and Kalugin played themselves in the game. Carl paints his father as a mysterious family man more occupied with the agency's mission against communism and less concerned about his wife Barbara and their five kids. In the 1980s, Mrs. Colby helped lead a successful effort to win legislation guaranteeing shares of lifetime benefits, survivor benefits and health insurance for former spouses mainly wives of CIA employees. 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. Former CIA Director William Colby comes off as cold, mysterious and ultimately suicidal in his son's documentary, The Man Nobody Knew. 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. Bored by the practice of law and inspired by his liberal beliefs, he moved to Washington to work for the National Labor Relations Board. For the Colby family, the movie is yet one more turbulent moment stemming from the career of their patriarch, The CIAs 10th director was best known for revealing the family jewels. He entered Columbia Law School, but left to join the Army and serve in World War II. He made tough decisions when necessary _ and he was always guided by the core values of the country he loved., CIA Director John Deutch said, ``He faced up to severe challenges with openness and integrity., Colby was perfectly cast as a spy: colorless, soft-spoken, precise and thin. Web william colby daughter death. Colby returned to Washington in July 1971 and became executive director of CIA. 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. The Christian Democrats and allied parties won several key elections in the 1950s, preventing a takeover by the Communist Party. In the film, Carl wonders whether his friends were right when they called his dad a murderer for running the notorious Phoenix Program a CIA operation in the Vietnam War sought to ferret out Viet Cong agents in South Vietnam. Two months after the firing, Ford honored Colby with the National Security Medal, citing his ``outstanding contribution in the field of intelligence.. "This was a shocker," Mr. Colby recounted in his 1978 memoir, "Honorable Men" (Simon & Schuster). [6] In 1984, he divorced Barbara and married Democratic diplomat Sally Shelton-Colby. Request Permissions, Review by: His son, Carl Colby, released a documentary on his father's professional and personal life, The Man Nobody Knew, in 2011. The contradictions followed him to the end. ", "The more we know about each other the safer we all are." Those cuts are slowly becoming a reality in the 1990's. When you are distraught, you do unreasonable, illogical things.. killed himself on a canoeing trip in the mid-1990s. She served with her husband and their family during his long CIA career in Sweden, Italy, He perfected the look of an invisible man: gray suits, graying hair, glasses with translucent frames the color of pale white skin. 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. William Colby died in 1996 in an apparent accidental drowning in the Wicomico River in Maryland. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. His brothers and sister had their own relationship with him, he said. Anyone can read what you share. She accompanied him on a road trip in Scandinavia, purportedly to visit castles but in fact so that he could supply anti-communist operatives with radio devices hidden in the cars trunk. Colby was born Jan. 4, 1920, in St. Paul, Minn., the son of a career Army officer. Then an OSS friend offered him a job at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Colby accepted. There are four Colby children, three of them grown (a daughter, Catherine, died of anorexia nervosa and epilepsy in April 1973), a mother and father in their 80s who live in Washington. Naturally, the CIA director's death on a canoe ride triggered murder conspiracy theories. In 1973, Catherine Colby, who had lived with her father in Saigon in the early '60s, died of The day after he returned, he went to his southern Maryland home. Ian Shapira is a features writer on the local enterprise team. Mr. Colby left Saigon and returned to Washington in 1971, in part to care for his eldest daughter, Catherine, who was slowly dying of anorexia nervosa. . [2][3], Colby was for his entire life a staunch Roman Catholic. Few outsiders understood them -- "possibly because Angleton's explanations were impossible to follow, or possibly because the evidence just didn't add up," Mr. Colby wrote in his memoir. In consonance with his long-held liberal views, Colby became a supporter of the nuclear freeze and of reductions in military spending. I think he'd had enough of this life.". William Edger Colby. He was nominated to be CIA director on May 10, 1973, by President Nixon, then struggling to extricate himself from the Watergate scandal. 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. The film concerned a dead man shes still in love with. In Saigon, she protected her young children during a coup mounted against their neighbor, President Ngo Dinh Diem. 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. After Vietnam, Colby became director of central intelligence and during his tenure, under intense pressure from the Congress and the media, adopted a policy of relative openness about U.S. intelligence activities to the Senate Church Committee and House Pike Committee. Sally Shelton-Colby, William Colby's second wife and a foreign policy professor at American University, is unhappy with the way her late husband is portrayed in her stepson's film. Norwich University hosts an annual writers symposium named in his honor. William Colby died in 1996 in an apparent accidental drowning [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. | Resources, New Doc on the Mysterious Death of William Colby, VVA Launches Campaign Addressing Aging Veterans Healthcare, Veterans Incarcerated and in the Justice System, Vietnam War post-traumatic stress disorder, Leadership Conference & Planning Committee. During World War II Colby served with the Office of Strategic Services. Call it whatever you like. His brothers and sister had their own relationship with him, he said. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. But she does not share her sons degree of bitterness. He was born Oct. 14, 1933 to George and C Mrs. Colby was born Barbara Ann Heinzen in Springfield, Ohio, on Dec. 25, 1920. WebColby's daughter Catherine suffered from depression, was upset by Phoenix, and died from complications of anxiety in 1973. Bill and Barbara were still married, but their relationship was deteriorating. [25], His grandson, Elbridge A. Colby, served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Planning from 2017 to 2018 and is co-founder of the Marathon Institute.[26]. When Nixon reshuffled his agency heads and made Schlesinger secretary of defense, Colby emerged as a natural candidate for DCIapparently on the basis of the recommendation that he was a professional who would not make waves. He was born May 2, 1921, in Amboy, OH, and was a son of Earl L. and Dorothy L. (Frary) Colby. 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]. He drank some wine and ate some clams. 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. Woods: William E. Colby and the CIA", William E. Colby Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Oral History Interviews with William Colby, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Coroner's Report on William E. Colby's Death, National Coalition to Ban Handguns Letter to Sen. John Heinz, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Colby&oldid=1134763619, United States Army personnel of World War II, Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency, People of the Office of Strategic Services, Recipients of the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles needing additional references from April 2017, All articles needing additional references, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, "We disbanded our intelligence [after both world wars] and then found we needed it. When you are distraught, you do unreasonable, illogical things.". She was 44. 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. ", This page was last edited on 20 January 2023, at 14:13. WebFor five years, Nancy Cruzan was kept alive by artificial means, though she showed no signs of recovery from the coma she had been in since the accident. Steven Greer (from disclosureproject.org) reveals to Art Bell the circumstances surrounding William Colby's death. One of Colby's own daughters was rumored to be another casualty of his war. 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. RHODRI JEFFREYS-JONES. The agency's clandestine officers called the list "the family jewels," or "the skeletons." Mrs. Colby, 94, died July 16 in Washington. william colby daughter death. He was born September 2, 1946 in Huntington, Utah to Eldwin R. Colby and Zina Loree Marshall. 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