Mrs. Colby supported her husband when, after his testimony about the family jewels, he was removed from office by President Gerald R. Ford. "It's a terrible thing to say, but sometimes I think I would have rather worked for him than be his son," Carl said. It was when Barbara came up to me, Shelton-Colby remembered. He 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.[10]. 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.". Web william colby daughter death. I think he'd had enough of this life.". "This was a shocker," Mr. Colby recounted in his 1978 memoir, "Honorable Men" (Simon & Schuster). 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. Ian Shapira is a features writer on the local enterprise team. His immediate predecessor, James R. Schlesinger, had vowed to tear the agency apart if necessary to "find out if there were questionable or illegal activities hidden in the secret recesses of our clandestine past that we didn't know about and that might explode at any time under our feet.". 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. She filled out several pages. After that posting, the family returned to the United States and William Colby went back alone to South Vietnam. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Woods, Distinguished Professor of History at the J. William Fulbright School at the University of Arkansas, published his biography of Colby, titled Shadow Warrior: William Egan Colby and the CIA. He was CIA station chief in Saigon from 1959-62, was deputy director of the CORDS program in 1968, andmost famously (or infamously)ran the controversial Phoenix program in 1969. In consonance with his long-held liberal views, Colby became a supporter of the nuclear freeze and of reductions in military spending. 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. 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. From 1968 to 1971, under the aegis of the Agency for International Development, Mr. Colby had run programs that included Operation Phoenix. In 1973, their daughter died at 23. He stopped in Mongolia to advise a mining company. The agency's clandestine officers called the list "the family jewels," or "the skeletons." Mrs. Colby found herself a beneficiary of that legislation when she and her husband, who had supported the campaign on behalf of the ex-spouses, were divorced. She wasnt forthcoming about any insights into his character, Carl said. William Colby died in 1996 in an apparent accidental drowning in the Wicomico River in Maryland. 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. He was given the Outstanding Achievement Award (Young Male Filmmaker) for his six-min Building trust: Jason Wallaces Strange Brew Pub welcomes all kinds. Mr. Colby cooperated, and the skeletons began tumbling out of the closet. My dads shoes were off when they found his body, usually a sign of a drowning victim fighting to live, he said. 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. But as the nation's chief spy, he helped reveal the Central Intelligence Agency's hidden history and confessed to its sins. After the hearings, conducted largely in private sessions, Mr. Colby was confirmed as the nation's 10th Director of Central Intelligence. 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. He drank some wine and ate some clams. 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. The couple met on a blind date and were married shortly after William Colby returned from service in Europe during World War II with the Office of Strategic Services. On the other, Carl admired his dads public service and seems most proud of his disclosures to Congress about the CIAs past misdeeds. 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. Though the topic remains open and controversial, some recent scholarship, including by Lewis "Bob" Sorley, supports Colby's arguments. 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.. 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. The Charles County Sheriff's office said Mr. Colby's body was found today, nine days after he set out for a solo canoe trip from his weekend home in Rock Point, Md., not far from where his canoe washed up on the shore of the Wicomico River about a quarter-mile from his house. "I would have been closer to him. William Colby died in 1996 in an apparent accidental In 1959 Colby became the CIA's deputy chief and then chief of station in Saigon, South Vietnam, where he served until 1962. His name appears on a note to Senator John Heinz dated July 5, 1989 as a "National Sponsor". She was his little sister. They are especially upset with the films suggestion that the former spymaster spent his retirement in deep regret and killed himself on a canoeing trip in the mid-1990s. 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 thereafter, William Colby married Sally Shelton, a former U.S. ambassador. But Mrs. Colbys own loyalty kept her from complaining or letting anything interfere with his work, he wrote. Shelton-Colby was in Houston, visiting her ailing mother. He was born September 2, 1946 in Huntington, Utah to Eldwin R. Colby and Zina Loree Marshall. In 1973, Catherine Colby, who had lived with her father in Saigon in the early '60s, died of He was born In 1992, she received a masters degree in humanities from Georgetown University. [2][3], Colby was for his entire life a staunch Roman Catholic. Enterprise reporter covering the Washington region and beyond. 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 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. Shelton-Colby, a former U.S. ambassador, was disturbed by her stepson's take on her dead husband, and, as it turns out, so is the rest of the Washington-based Colby clan. The apparent cause was a heart attack, said her son Paul Colby. Posing as a diplomat, Mr. Colby served in Stockholm from 1951 to 1953; in Rome from 1953 to 1958; and, fatefully, as the C.I.A. The day after he returned, he went to his southern Maryland home. In 1944, he parachuted behind German lines to link up with a French resistance group. Steven Greer (from disclosureproject.org) reveals to Art Bell the circumstances surrounding William Colby's death. Ive come to think that Colby gave me so much of his time because it gave him a chance to be back in the game, if only for a morning. '", 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 On the one hand, Carl comes off as bitter that his father was so immersed in his work. The Cosby Family thanks many people for their He was 76 and lived in the Georgetown section of Washington. The new dad . On April 27, 1996, Colby set out from his weekend home in Rock Point, Maryland, on a solo canoe trip. Smialek's r 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. ), 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. During a posting in Stockholm in the early 1950s, her husbands cover was as a Foreign Service officer. At Bill's funeral the next month, Shelton-Colby, who wears on her left arm the watch she gave Bill as a wedding present, remembers one moment more than most. "It would have muddled the story.". 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. The film: "The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby." I asked my mother, What if [others in the family] all object? She said, They can make their own movie, Carl said in an interview. She drew attention to the particular problems, including high divorce rates, that are shouldered by couples who must contend with the rigors of clandestine life. That assignment led to one in which he parachuted behind enemy lines in Norway to blow up a Nazi rail line. There, he helped set up the stay-behind networks of Operation Gladio, a covert paramilitary organization organized by the CIA to make any Soviet occupation more difficult, as he later described in his memoirs.[8]. . Mrs. Colby, 94, died July 16 in Washington. She was Ambassador of the United States to Barbados, Grenada and Dominica as well as Minister to St Lucia, and Special Representative to Antigua, St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla, and St. Vincent from 1979 to 1981, under Jimmy Carter. Discharged in 1945 with the rank of major, Colby got his law degree from Columbia, then practiced two years with a New York law firm headed by his former OSS commander, William J. Donovan. Died: April, 1973 (Complications from epilepsy and anorexia) Mini Bio (1) Catherine Colby died in April 1973. She received a bachelors degree in history from Barnard College in New York in 1942 and was an advertising copywriter before marrying. 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 He loved music and could play piano, accordion and guitar. Ten years ago, when Jason Wallace opened his Strange Brew Pub live music room in Norwich, he had zero idea that, ultimately, some of his most popular events would be the Wednesday Themed Trivia Nights Film co-produced by Waterford woman tells story of art rescued from Nazis. Barbara had no real voice in their relationship anymore, Carl said. 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. 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. Webapartments in dallas that allow airbnb Uncovering hot babes since 1919. 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. Trivia (1) Daughter of 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. VVA Launches Campaign Addressing Aging Veterans Healthcare. Mr. Schlesinger ordered all agency employees and veterans who knew about such activities to report them -- and then departed to become Defense Secretary. Mr. Colby told Congress in 1971 that these deaths included "illegal killing." 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. After the war he joined the newly created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Colby died in a boating Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. [21][22] Carl's step-mother and siblings, as well as Colby's biographer Randall Woods, criticized Carl's portrayal of Colby and rejected the allegation that the former CIA director killed himself, saying it was inconsistent with his character. experience and a deep antipathy to Fascism and Communism. After long-time DCI Richard Helms was dismissed by President Nixon in 1973, James Schlesinger assumed the helm at the Agency. William Colby, a former directorof the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, was alone at his weekendhouse across from Cobb Island, Maryland, 60 miles south of Washington,D.C. (Courtesy of the Colby family). It had conducted LSD experiments on unwitting human guinea pigs. The Catholic Church played a "central role" in his family's life, with Colby's two daughters receiving their First Communion at St. Peter's Basilica.[5]. He showed unusual candour while testifying before Congress in 1975 in the wake of And the movie was made by someone she rarely ever speaks to. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. The coroners report listed the cause of death as a drowning, brought on by a stroke or heart attack. In that city, he wrote, the family received its baptism of fire during an unsuccessful 1960 coup mounted against Diem. 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