Events in the arms-control field, Angola, Australia,[13] the Middle East, and elsewhere also demanded attention. The CIA women worked behind the scenes, as not to out the spouses still employed there. More than one interlocutor noted that when asked a question he did not care to answer, he would tilt back his head so light reflected off the lenses of his glasses, turning his eyes into blank white disks. COLBY, William H. "Colby" - Of Flint, age 60, died Saturday, August 4, 2007 at Hurley Medical Center. He feels his father left his wife isolated and eschewed real father-son bonds. 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. Mr. Colby spent most of his adult life as a cold warrior in his country's clandestine service, "a soldier-priest," as a colleague called him, on a covert crusade. ", 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, before her death in 1973 from epilepsy and anorexia. His brothers and sister had their own relationship with him, he said. Obsessed with a search for a Soviet spy inside the agency, Mr. Angleton had developed ornate theories of Soviet plots to subvert the United States. Press Release: Shelton-Colby was in Houston, visiting her ailing mother. The William E. Colby Military Writers Symposium, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Operations, Deputy Assistant For National Security Affairs, Learn how and when to remove this template message, United States Permanent Representative to NATO, "Surrender -- French Policy toward the Spanish Civil War", "Interview with William Egan Colby, 1981. 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. Anyone can read what you share. 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. John, Michael Collins Piper has some interesting things to say about Colby. Ultimately, the movie reveals Carl's ambivalence about his dad. As Prados was writing a career chronicle, not a [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. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. 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. When Bill's body was found, his wallet contained a photo of Catherine, Carl says. '", Tulsa Race Massacre survivors, 108 and 102, given Ghana citizenship at embassy event, Eli Lilly is capping consumer insulin costs at $35 for all, Biden set for first veto on Senate bill opposing climate-friendly investing, Police, fire crews investigate suspicious object at Conn College, Two Palestinians arrested in Connecticut mans killing in West Bank; third shot dead, November 26, 2011 11:00 pm And, most recently, a Salem teens film wins L.A. Indie Short Fest honors. | Credits on February 5, 2010. In the latter book, Colby argued that the U.S.RVN counterinsurgency campaign in Vietnam had succeeded by the early 1970s and that South Vietnam could have survived had the U.S. continued to provide support after the Paris Accords. Mr. Colby, the agency's director of covert operations, was left with a task that violated every precept of a secret agency: compiling a list of the deepest secrets. Then an OSS friend offered him a job at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Colby accepted. 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. Carl Colby, whose documentary opened in September and is playing in theaters nationwide, declined to discuss his family's reactions to his film. Christine Colby Giraudo of northwest Washington declined to be interviewed. It had conducted LSD experiments on unwitting human guinea pigs. Carl Colby, who recently released a documentary that chronicles the career of his father, former CIA director William Colby, stands next to his father's grave at Arlington National Cemetery. Smialek's r The film concerned a dead man she's still in love with. After that posting, the family returned to the United States and William Colby went back alone to South Vietnam. "It's a terrible thing to say, but sometimes I think I would have rather worked for him than be his son," Carl said. Colby returned to Washington in July 1971 and became executive director of CIA. Column: Look out, the Copycat is on the prowl, trying to figure out the Costco Bisconie recipe. This interview is from August 8th 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 [19][20], Colby's death triggered conspiracy theories that his death was due to foul play. 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. Survivors include four children, Jonathan Colby of Jupiter Island, Fla., Carl Colby and Christine Colby Giraudo, both of Washington, and Paul Colby of Alexandria, Va.; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. [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]. She recalled wondering, Who are we tonight?. 's station chief in Saigon from 1959 to 1962. 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, Then he took the canoe out. Earlier this year, when Paul was shown the film, he told Carl that it would be "unethical" to keep it as is. . WebCatherine Colby died in April 1973. In 1959 Colby became the CIA's deputy chief and then chief of station in Saigon, South Vietnam, where he served until 1962. Colby headed the CIAs Far East Division until he was named CIA director in 1973, a position he held until retiring in November of 1976. PRICE William Edger Colby (AKA) Gummer, 74, passed away unexpectedly at his home in Price on December 31, 2020. 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. Bill Cosbys daughter Ensa has died from renal disease, Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt told CNN. Only when contacted by a Post reporter did family members vent their frustrations about the film. Call it whatever you like. That assignment led to one in which he parachuted behind enemy lines in Norway to blow up a Nazi rail line. [4] He was often referred to as "the warriorpriest". [6] In 1984, he divorced Barbara and married Democratic diplomat Sally Shelton-Colby. In Saigon, she protected her young children during a coup mounted against their neighbor, President Ngo Dinh Diem. He drank some wine and ate some clams. During a posting in Stockholm in the early 1950s, her husbands cover was as a Foreign Service officer. Family and friends are welcome to send flowers or leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family. Carl paints his father as a mysterious family man more occupied with the agencys mission against communism and less concerned about his wife Barbara and their five kids. The apparent cause was a heart attack, said her son Paul Colby. 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. I preferred the old dad, not the new, he said. Sally Shelton-Colby needed to watch the documentary with friends, for emotional support. WebNancy Beth Cruzan was injured seriously in a one-car accident on January 11, 1983, on an isolated country road in southwest Missouri. She admits to feeling jealous of another CIA wife whose husband talked more about his job. Among those interviewed in the film are former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, the journalists Seymour Hersh (who broke the My Lai story) and Bob Woodward, and former Defense Secretaries Robert Gates and Donald Rumsfeld. ), Paul, who lives in Alexandria, Va., also hates how the movie splices images of their dad with violent archival footage - rows of Vietnamese corpses and a notorious clip of a Vietnamese prisoner being shot in the head. The others are Jonathan, Carl, Paul and Christine. 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. 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. He 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. In a short email to The Post, she said her recollections of her dad differ from Carl's. To save the agency, Mr. Colby believed, he had to confess to its sins. [17] On May 6, Colby's body was found in a marshy riverbank lying face down not far from where his canoe was found. The film is about the oldest question: Who are your father and mother? The day after he returned, he went to his southern Maryland home. 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. But Mrs. Colbys own loyalty kept her from complaining or letting anything interfere with his work, he wrote. William Colby died in 1996 in an apparent accidental drowning in the Wicomico River in Maryland. WebObituary of William Michael Colby. 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. 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. Last Updated: November 23, 2011 8:25 pm. He moved from post to post, eventually graduating from Princeton University with a Phi Beta Kappa key in 1940. Vet documentarian Carl Colbys ambitious, decades-spanning film about his CIA spymaster father delves deeply into historical events William Colby helped to shape, from his OSS days during WWI 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. In 1984, Bill and Barbara divorced. Menu. William E. Colby: A Highly Suspicious Death This was Saturday, April 27, 1996. He married Barbara Heinzen (19202015) in 1945 and they had five children. The secrets did not keep. Mrs. Colby, 94, died July 16 in Washington. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. She wasnt forthcoming about any insights into his character, Carl said. [14] In a speech from 1973 addressed to NSA employees he emphasised the role of free speech in USA and moral role of CIA as defender, not preventer of civil rights, an attempt to rebut the then emerging revelations of CIA and NSA domestic spying. What do they mean to you?. After an autopsy, Maryland's Chief Medical Examiner John E. Smialek ruled his death to be accidental. 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. 2004 Oxford University Press Bill and Barbara were still married, but their relationship was deteriorating. ", Carl kept the wrenching footage to bolster the film's credibility, he said. During a pause in the fighting, and with her husband by then occupied at the embassy, Mrs. Colby escorted her children to a safer location. "The coroner's report listed the cause of death as a drowning, brought on by a stroke or heart attack. Benning. 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. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Died: April, 1973 (Complications from epilepsy and anorexia) Mini Bio (1) Catherine Colby died in April 1973. His family moved constantly, living everywhere from Tientsin, China, to Burlington, Vt. Carl said he felt that the best person to explain his dad was his mother, who was extensively interviewed in the film. Let me be very blunt, said Shelton-Colby, 67, a foreign policy professor at American University. William's mother, Margaret Egan, was from an Irish family in St. Paul active in business and Democratic politics. She also came to realize, after her husband asked her for a divorce, that she didn't know him as well as she thought. She admits to feeling jealous of another CIA wife whose husband talked more about his job. I would have been closer to him.. 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. Ian Shapira is a features writer on the local enterprise team. Colby was divorced in 1984 from the former Barbara Heinzen and married Sally Shelton. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. 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. . 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. Colby was a vocal advocate within the CIA and the United States government for engaging the non-Communist left wing parties in order to create broader non-Communist coalitions capable of governing fractious Italy; this position first brought him into conflict with James J. Angleton. 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. 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. He was nominated to be CIA director on May 10, 1973, by President Nixon, then struggling to extricate himself from the Watergate scandal. 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. 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. (In his memoir Honorable Men, Bill wrote that the vast majority of Phoenix deaths occurred in combat actions with Vietnamese and American military forces. Shes just a coda.. He was an avid outdoorsman but he died, apparently by drowning, while canoeing on a familiar river. Note: This article is a review of another work, such as a book, film, musical composition, etc. 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. He practiced law and advised various bodies on intelligence matters. Carl seemed less intrigued by his dad after he left the CIA in 1976. And the movie was made by someone she rarely ever speaks to. One of the five children from his first marriage, Catherine, died in 1974. [16][18] After an autopsy, Maryland's Chief Medical Examiner John E. Smialek ruled his death to be accidental. 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. [7][23] In May 2013, Randall B. Bill moved out of the family home in July 1983 to write a sequel to his memoir, Shelton-Colby said. in a bottle and throw it away.". It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing program that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and academic journals. This transformation began on April 27, 1973, 12 days before Mr. Colby learned that President Richard M. Nixon, then deeply enmeshed in the Watergate scandal, was about to nominate him as Director of Central Intelligence. This interview is from August 8th 2004. The day after he returned, he went to his Southern Maryland home. The new documentary, The Man Nobody Knew , produced by the spymasters son Carl Colby, looks at the odd circumstances surrounding his fathers death, as well as his long career in intelligence. They turned on the radio and danced the jitterbug or waltzed. 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