Paul said the Vietnamese prisoners killing was not part of Phoenix, that his dad wasnt even in Vietnam at the time of the shooting and that the footage is a total smear of my father., Carl told me that if I didnt like it, I should make my own film, Paul said. When Bill's body was found, his wallet contained a photo of Catherine, Carl says. I have come to a hard spent realization: Costco has my number. His family moved constantly, living everywhere from Tientsin, China, to Burlington, Vt. 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. And she, too, had been in a tired marriage to a Mexican ambassador that fell apart. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. He feels his father left his wife isolated and eschewed real father-son bonds. Steven Greer (from disclosureproject.org) reveals to Art Bell the circumstances surrounding William Colby's death. ", "The more we know about each other the safer we all are." The World War II OSS agent first went to Vietnam in 1956 as a young CIA agent. The Christian Democrats and allied parties won several key elections in the 1950s, preventing a takeover by the Communist Party. 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. Colby, who had had a somewhat unorthodox career in the CIA focused on political action and counterinsurgency, agreed with Schlesinger's reformist approach. The film is about the oldest question: Who are your father and mother? He loved music and could play piano, accordion and guitar. He was nominated to be CIA director on May 10, 1973, by President Nixon, then struggling to extricate himself from the Watergate scandal. It would have muddled the story.. Call it whatever you like. He was 76 and lived in the Georgetown section of Washington. WhyWasFormerCiaDirectorWilliamColbyAssassinated, Advanced embedding details, examples, and help, StevenGreerTellsArtBellAboutWilliamColbysDeath2008-08-08.ogg, Steven Greer tells Art Bell about William Colby's Death 2008-08-08, Terms of Service (last updated 12/31/2014). 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. WASHINGTON (AP) _ William E. Colby was a professional spy and a man of contradictions. Let's not go through that again. 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. Only when contacted by a Post reporter did family members vent their frustrations about the film. Let me be very blunt, said Shelton-Colby, 67, a foreign policy professor at American University. 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. Thousands of targets were killed, leading the media and much of America to call Phoenix an assassination program. Through her sons, Barbara, 90, who lives in a Washington retirement community, also declined to be interviewed. [24] Bored by the practice of law and inspired by his liberal beliefs, he moved to Washington to work for the National Labor Relations Board. She and other CIA wives modeled their campaign on earlier, more public efforts by former spouses of State Department employees. In 1968, while Colby was preparing to take up the post of chief of the Soviet Bloc Division of the Agency, President Lyndon Johnson instead sent 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. That assignment led to one in which he parachuted behind enemy lines in Norway to blow up a Nazi rail line. ``The Cold War is over, and the military threat is now far less, he said in a 1992 ad. He was born From 1968 to 1971, under the aegis of the Agency for International Development, Mr. Colby had run programs that included Operation Phoenix. His canoe was found the following day on a sandbar in the Wicomico River, a tributary of the Potomac, about 0.25 miles (0.40 km) from his home. In 1992, she received a masters degree in humanities from Georgetown University. I think he'd had enough of this life.". His name appears on a note to Senator John Heinz dated July 5, 1989 as a "National Sponsor". The day after he returned, he went to his Southern Maryland home. Quoting his book "Final Judgement" (pp353-357): "The August 20, 1996 issue of The Sun, Colby was dismissed as CIA director 20 years ago, after 3 1/2 years, by President Ford. Early on the morning of Feb. 19, William G. (Bill) Armstrong, 89, passed away surrounded by his loving family at this Tamarack Lane home. With his Army father, William Colby had a peripatetic upbringing before attending public high school in Burlington, Vermont. 9 UConn still standing barely as sole regular-season champion of Big East. 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. In that city, he wrote, the family received its baptism of fire during an unsuccessful 1960 coup mounted against Diem. Family and friends are welcome to send flowers or leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family. See the article in its original context from. Then an OSS friend offered him a job at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Colby accepted. Mrs. Colby, 94, died July 16 in Washington. Mr. Schlesinger ordered all agency employees and veterans who knew about such activities to report them -- and then departed to become Defense Secretary. 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 U.S. soldier also based at Ft. The rest 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. William E. Colby, 76, Head of C.I.A. And the movie was made by someone she rarely ever speaks to. 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. [16][18] After an autopsy, Maryland's Chief Medical Examiner John E. Smialek ruled his death to be accidental. 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 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. "My dad's shoes were off when they found his body, usually a sign of a drowning victim fighting to live," he said. "It was when Barbara came up to me," Shelton-Colby remembered. 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]. Barbara H. Colby and her husband, William Colby, with their daughter Catherine, left, and their sons Carl and Jonathan. "I would have been closer to him. Carl didn't know his father. Shortly thereafter, William Colby married Sally Shelton, a former U.S. ambassador. 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. 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. At Bills 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. He was not the cold, insensitive, unfeeling person that Carl portrayed in that film.. "I asked my mother, 'What if (others in the family) all object?' 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 also came to realize, after her husband asked her for a divorce, that she didn't know him as well as she thought. My dads shoes were off when they found his body, usually a sign of a drowning victim fighting to live, he said. During and after her husbands tenure as director, she was regarded inside the agency as a charismatic advocate for CIA families. 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. Emily Langer is a reporter on The Washington Posts obituaries desk. He was 76. The film is about the oldest question: Who are your father and mother? 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. Note: This article is a review of another work, such as a book, film, musical composition, etc. 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. Mr. Colby's confirmation hearings that summer were excruciating, in part because of his past in Vietnam. He was born September 2, 1946 in Huntington, Utah to Eldwin R. Colby and Zina Loree Marshall. Bill Cosbys daughter Ensa has died from renal disease, Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt told CNN. 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. When Bills body was found, his wallet contained a photo of Catherine, Carl says. 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. Shortly after he assumed leadership, the Yom Kippur War broke out, an event that surprised not only the American intelligence agencies but also the Israelis. Barbara H. Colby once recalled turning on the washing machine to muffle her husbands conversations. 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. ", 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. "It would have muddled the story.". The original work is not included in the purchase of this review. To save the agency, Mr. Colby believed, he had to confess to its sins. His son, Carl Colby, released a documentary on his father's professional and personal life, The Man Nobody Knew, in 2011. did business with the legislative branch in those days. 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. Colby served as DCI under President Richard Nixon and President Gerald Ford until January 30, 1976; he was succeeded at the CIA by George H. W. Bush. Web william colby daughter death. 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. On the other, Carl admired his dads public service and seems most proud of his disclosures to Congress about the CIAs past misdeeds. The film: The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby. Its director and narrator: his second-oldest son, Carl Colby. 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. Mounted against Diem Colby was a professional spy and a man of contradictions daughter Ensa has died from renal,! 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