She also came to realize, after her husband asked her for a divorce, that she didn't know him as well as she thought. The day after he returned, he went to his Southern Maryland home. Barbara H. Colby once recalled turning on the washing machine to muffle her husbands conversations. in 1950. 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. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. WebColby's daughter Catherine suffered from depression, was upset by Phoenix, and died from complications of anxiety in 1973. Now the pressure for a full Congressional investigation grew irresistible. Mrs. Colby was born Barbara Ann Heinzen in Springfield, Ohio, on Dec. 25, 1920. 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. He was an avid outdoorsman but he died, apparently by drowning, while canoeing on a familiar river. 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. In 1973, Catherine Colby, who had lived with her father in Saigon in the early '60s, died of He soon joined its successor espionage agency, the CIA, which would take him and his family on covert and often risky missions on several continents. . Colby was divorced in 1984 from the former Barbara Heinzen and married Sally Shelton. william colby daughter death. It was when Barbara came up to me, Shelton-Colby remembered. on the Internet. The rest "I asked my mother, 'What if (others in the family) all object?' Shelton-Colby was in Houston, visiting her ailing mother. View The Obituary For Frederick William Colby Sr of Dade City, Florida. Colby, however, consistently insisted that such tactics were not authorized by or permitted in the program. With his Army father, William Colby had a peripatetic upbringing before attending public high school in Burlington, Vermont. Through her sons, Barbara, 90, who lives in a Washington retirement community, also declined to be interviewed. Ultimately, according to Harry Charles in Library Journal, Joe and Joyce made the decision to remove their daughter's feeding tube and let her die "in peace." 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. He was born September 2, 1946 in Huntington, Utah to Eldwin R. Colby and Zina Loree Marshall. He was not the cold, insensitive, unfeeling person that Carl portrayed in that film.". on February 5, 2010. But she does not share her son's degree of bitterness. 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. The CIA women worked behind the scenes, as not to out the spouses still employed there. Due to a planned power outage on Friday, 1/14, between 8am-1pm PST, some services may be impacted. WASHINGTON (AP) _ William E. Colby was a professional spy and a man of contradictions. President Ford, advised by Henry Kissinger and others concerned by Colby's controversial openness to Congress and distance from the White House, replaced Colby late in 1975 with George H. W. Bush during the so-called Halloween Massacre in which Secretary of Defense Schlesinger was also replaced (by Donald Rumsfeld). He cheated on an eye examination to become a paratrooper, unwittingly taking a path that would lead him into the clandestine world. [16] His canoe was found the following day on a sandbar in the Wicomico River, a tributary of the Potomac, about 0.25 miles (0.40km) from his home. The day after he returned, he went to his southern Maryland home. Former CIA Director William Colby, who played a significant role in U.S. Vietnam War policy-making, was founded dead in 1996, eight days after going missing on a solo canoe trip near his Maryland home. Carl didnt know his father. Those cuts are slowly becoming a reality in the 1990's. After she identified the body on Monday, she thanked the searchers and said her husband had left the world a better place. During World War II Colby served with the Office of Strategic Services. Colby was known as a media-friendly CIA director. I preferred the old dad, not the new, he said. Mr. Colby cooperated, and the skeletons began tumbling out of the closet. ), 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. Press Release: 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 agency's mission and national security. Two months after the firing, Ford honored Colby with the National Security Medal, citing his ``outstanding contribution in the field of intelligence.. I have come to a hard spent realization: Costco has my number. Ultimately, the movie reveals Carl's ambivalence about his dad. She admits to feeling jealous of another CIA wife whose husband talked more about his job. 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. He married Marveline J. Dobson in Panguitch, Utah on November 27, 1971. 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. 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. 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. WILLIAM R. COLBY CONNEAUT William Rea Colby, 82, of Conneaut, OH, died Thursday morning, April 1, 2004, at his residence following a lengthy illness. Events in the arms-control field, Angola, Australia,[13] the Middle East, and elsewhere also demanded attention. In the documentary, Carl Colby said that his mother did everything for the mission., She hadnt signed up for this, he said, But she did it.. He was having a ball.. 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. Phoenix killed 20,587 Vietnamese. 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. Sally Shelton-Colby needed to watch the documentary with friends, for emotional support. WebObituary of William Michael Colby. 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. In 1945, he commanded a squad of saboteurs who blew up German rail lines in the snows of northern Norway. And even though Shelton-Colby, the spymaster's second wife, has been kept at a distance by most of Colby's biological children, their grievances with the film have united them, at least in principle. "And all she said to me was, 'We both loved him. Search the history of over 797 billion 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. His son, Carl Colby, released a documentary on his father's professional and personal life, The Man Nobody Knew, in 2011. Then an OSS friend offered him a job at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Colby accepted. In a short email to The Post, she said her recollections of her dad differ from Carl's. The agency had violated its charter by spying on Americans, tapping their telephones, reading their tax returns and opening their mail. was a tool of Presidential power, not a rogue elephant. 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. 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. Bill was working with newly Democratic elected parliaments in Eastern Europe to help them figure out how to assert authorities over spy agencies, Shelton-Colby said. Colby's time as DCI was also eventful on the world stage. She received a bachelors degree in history from Barnard College in New York in 1942 and was an advertising copywriter before marrying. In the 1980's, he began speaking out against the nuclear arms race. Diplomatic History is the official journal of Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). 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. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Bill and Barbara were still married, but their relationship was deteriorating. [19][20], Colby's death triggered conspiracy theories that his death was due to foul play. Former CIA Director William Colby comes off as cold, mysterious and ultimately suicidal in his son's documentary, The Man Nobody Knew. I would have been closer to him.. 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. He also mentioned a number of reforms intended to limit excessive classification of governmental information.[15]. See the article in its original context from. 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, 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. William E. Colby: A Highly Suspicious Death This was Saturday, April 27, 1996. Senior agency officers called him a traitor. was just an ordinary guy with ordinary desires., Carl interviewed Shelton-Colby, but he opted not to use any of the footage. She served with her husband and their family during his long CIA career in Sweden, Italy, Seated in a Washington movie theater in October, she flipped open a notepad and, as the movie played, jotted down her thoughts. Barbara H. Colby and her husband, William Colby, with their daughter Catherine, left, and their sons Carl and Jonathan. 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. Before the legislation was enacted, many spouses endured long overseas assignments that left them unable to build careers in the United States, then divorced and were destitute because they were not entitled to portions of CIA benefits. Steven Greer (from disclosureproject.org) reveals to Art Bell the circumstances surrounding William Colby's death. William Edger Colby. |Privacy Policy He feels his father left his wife isolated and eschewed real father-son bonds. Shortly after arriving Colby succeeded Komer as head of the U.S./South Vietnamese rural pacification effort named CORDS. And the movie was made by someone she rarely ever speaks to. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. 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. His 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, D.C. He was 76 and lived in the Georgetown section of Washington. 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 told Congress in 1971 that these deaths included "illegal killing." They were just teenagers. Only when contacted by a Post reporter did family members vent their frustrations about the film. In "The Man Nobody Knew," Carl, the narrator, traces his father's career as an intelligence operative in World War II to his tenure as CIA director. ), Paul, who lives in Alexandria, 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. ``He fought fascism and communism and lived to see democracy take hold in the world., President Clinton said in a statement, ``Through a quarter of a century at the CIA, William Colby played a pivotal role in shaping our nations intelligence community. Colby also lent his expertise and knowledge, along with Oleg Kalugin, to the Activision game Spycraft: The Great Game, which was released shortly before his death. After the hearings, conducted largely in private sessions, Mr. Colby was confirmed as the nation's 10th Director of Central Intelligence. He is preceded in death by daughter Jennifer. Funeral service will be celebrated at Hodges Family Funeral Home, 114412 US Hwy 301, Dade City on She writes about extraordinary lives in national and international affairs, science and the arts, sports, culture, and beyond. John, Michael Collins Piper has some interesting things to say about Colby. Through her sons, Barbara, 90, who lives in a Washington retirement community, also declined to be interviewed. He perfected the look of an invisible man: gray suits, graying hair, glasses with translucent frames the color of pale white skin. Because you don't know 10 years out what you're going to face. She filled out several pages. 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. After long-time DCI Richard Helms was dismissed by President Nixon in 1973, James Schlesinger assumed the helm at the Agency. On the other, Carl admired his dad's public service and seems most proud of his disclosures to Congress about the CIA's past misdeeds. The film has drawn criticism from family members. 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. And she, too, had been in a tired marriage to a Mexican ambassador that fell apart. Web william colby daughter death. PRICE William Edger Colby (AKA) Gummer, 74, passed away unexpectedly at his home in Price on December 31, 2020. His family moved constantly, living everywhere from Tientsin, China, to Burlington, Vt. In 1992, she received a masters degree in humanities from Georgetown University. [2][3], Colby was for his entire life a staunch Roman Catholic. 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. Call it whatever you like. Last Updated: November 23, 2011 8:25 pm. 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. Note: This article is a review of another work, such as a book, film, musical composition, etc. ``There wasnt much that was left undone for him, she said. Aiden Rodgers of Salem has won an award from Indie Short Fest, a Los Angeles-based international film competition. PRICE William Edger Colby (AKA) Gummer, 74, passed away unexpectedly at his home in Price on December 31, 2020. Then he took the canoe out. 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. Carl Colby, whose documentary opened in September and is playing in theaters nationwide, declined to discuss his familys reactions to his film. "The coroner's report listed the cause of death as a drowning, brought on by a stroke or heart attack. During these years Colby was deeply involved in Washington's policies in East Asia, particularly with respect to Vietnam, as well as Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and China. And the movie was made by someone she rarely ever speaks to. He fit this published description: ``Mr. Colby never seems to have a hair or an emotion out of place., Even Colby said, in his 1978 memoir, that he was ``the traditional gray man, so inconspicuous that he can never catch the waiters eye in a restaurant.. Summoned to Washington by a Senate committee in 1970, Colby defended the project but conceded there may have been ``some illegal killing.. 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. 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. He entered Columbia Law School, but left to join the Army and serve in World War II. "My dad's shoes were off when they found his body, usually a sign of a drowning victim fighting to live," he said. 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. Bill moved out of the family home in July 1983 to write a sequel to his memoir, Shelton-Colby said. 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. did business with the legislative branch in those days. 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. Mrs. Colby served for many years on the CIAs Family Advisory Board, which represents the interests of agency family members, and in 2002 received the prestigious Directors Award from then-CIA Director George Tenet, recognizing her untiring efforts on the part of former Agency spouses and her constant concern for the welfare of Agency families., In a statement after Mrs. Colbys death, Tenet and his wife, Stephanie Glakas-Tenet, said that CIA Directors came and went, but Barbara was an indispensable foundation, serving the Agency for nearly 60 years.. In 1959, they moved to South Vietnam, where William Colby became station chief in Saigon, which is now called Ho Chi Minh City. Over the next several years, they traveled the world. He answered a call for French-speaking volunteers and joined the Office of Strategic Services, the World War II American father of the CIA. 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. 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. "It would have muddled the story.". He showed unusual candour while testifying before Congress in 1975 in the wake of In consonance with his long-held liberal views, Colby became a supporter of the nuclear freeze and of reductions in military spending. Why Was Former CIA Director William Colby Assassinated? Smialek's r WebSally Angela Shelton-Colby (born August 29, 1944) is an American diplomat. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence. 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 It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Soon, she began courting him. Tasked by CIA with supporting the government of Ng nh Dim, Colby established a relationship with President Diem's family and with Ng nh Nhu, the president's brother, with whom Colby became close. He loved music and could play piano, accordion and guitar. in a bottle and throw it away.". [24] Part of the effort was the controversial Phoenix Program, an initiative designed to identify and attack the "Viet Cong Infrastructure." The coroners report listed the cause of death as a drowning, brought on by a stroke or heart attack. ", This page was last edited on 20 January 2023, at 14:13. 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 That year, Bill and Shelton-Colby got married in Italy. A strong believer in reform of the CIA and the intelligence community more broadly, Schlesinger had written a 1971 Bureau of the Budget report outlining his views on the subject. After the war, Colby graduated from Columbia Law School and then briefly practiced law in William J. Donovan's New York firm, Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine. "The agency's survival," he wrote in his memoirs, "could only come from understanding, not hostility, built on knowledge, not faith.". We all have our own relationships. William E. Colby was a member of the National Coalition to Ban Handguns. 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. I think Carl portrayed his father in the way he did to sell his film. She recalled wondering, Who are we tonight?. He then joined the Manhattan law firm then known as Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Lombard, run by the founder of the Office of Strategic Services, William J. Donovan. During this period he also wrote two books, both of which were memoirs of his professional life combined with discussions of history and policy. The original work is not included in the purchase of this review. 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. Schlesinger appointed him head of the clandestine branch in early 1973. Mr. Colby "had no choice in 1975 but to cooperate," but the agency's pride, "however based on a fiction, took a blow from which we never recovered," Mr. Gates recounts in his just-published memoir, "From the Shadows," (Simon and Schuster). Carl said he didn't interview his siblings because he views the film as his memoir, not a biography. 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. [18] Smialek's report said that Colby was predisposed to having a heart attack or stroke due to "severe calcified atherosclerosis" and that 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". Her father, Karl, was president of the Bayer drug manufacturer in the mid-1930s. 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. [5] His tenure as DCI, which lasted two and a half tumultuous years, was overshadowed by the Church and Pike congressional investigations into alleged U.S. intelligence malfeasance over the preceding 25 years, including 1975, the so-called Year of Intelligence. On April 27, 1996, Colby set out from his weekend home in Rock Point, Maryland, on a solo canoe trip. Thousands of targets were killed, leading the media and much of America to call Phoenix an assassination program. Enterprise reporter covering the Washington region and beyond. Colby spent the next 12 years in the field, first in Stockholm, Sweden. 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. She was his little sister. web pages William Egan Colby was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1920. Mrs. Colby, 94, died July 16 in Washington. Shes just a coda.. Menu. Following his first year at Columbia, in 1941 Colby volunteered for active duty with the United States Army and served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as a "Jedburgh", or special operator, trained to work with resistance forces in occupied Europe to harass German and Axis forces. 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. Let me be very blunt, said Shelton-Colby, 67, a foreign policy professor at American University. William Colby died in 1996 in an apparent accidental drowning I guess I would say he was a complicated person whom maybe I didnt know as well as I would hope to think I did, Mrs. Colby said in her sons documentary. The old dad taught me how to sacrifice. | Veteran Collectibles Quoting his book "Final Judgement" (pp353-357): "The August 20, 1996 issue of The Sun, They were later . "The worst thing I could have done was to sugarcoat my father and paint things as rosy.". She and other CIA wives modeled their campaign on earlier, more public efforts by former spouses of State Department employees. He drank some wine and ate some clams. William's mother, Margaret Egan, was from an Irish family in St. Paul active in business and Democratic politics. Shortly thereafter, William Colby married Sally Shelton, a former U.S. ambassador. He was said to have been too candid in testimony to congressional investigators; he had long ago aroused the ire of the agencys old guard for trying to channel more effort into the gathering, evaluation and analysis of information and less into covert operation. He stopped in Mongolia to advise a mining company. Carl Colby, whose documentary opened in September and is playing in theaters nationwide, declined to discuss his family's reactions to his film. The contradictions followed him to the end. 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. "It's a terrible thing to say, but sometimes I think I would have rather worked for him than be his son," Carl said. WebI have not found him in the death records yet but the 1900 Lawrence Co., KY Fed Census has him born Nov 1845, his wife Sarah born Sep 1847 and two
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