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William Egan Colby (January 4, 1920–April 27, 1996) became Director of Central Intelligence on September 4, 1973, after James R. Schlesinger. It was Colby who launched the Accelerated Pacification Campaign during the Vietnam War. He later would reveal a large amount of information to Congress, such as CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. He was fired by President Gerald Ford and replaced with George H.W. Bush on January 30, 1976.

Colby was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1920. His father, Elbridge Colby, was a professor of English and Army officer who raised his son in a peripatetic manner, including a stint in Tientsin, China. William attended Princeton University, graduating in 1940 and entering Columbia Law School the following year. He volunteered for the Army in 1941 and served with the Office of Strategic Services during the war, parachuting behind enemy lines in France and Norway and receiving the Silver Star for his efforts.

After finishing Columbia Law School, Colby briefly practiced law in New York and then, inspired by his liberal beliefs, moved to Washington to work for the National Labor Relations Board. Shortly thereafter, an OSS friend offered him a job at CIA, and Colby accepted.

Colby spent the next twelve years in the field, first in Stockholm, Sweden. He then spent much of the 1950s based in Rome, where he led the Agency's covert political operations campaign to support moderate anti-Communist parties. In 1959 he became the CIA's Chief of Station in Saigon, Vietnam, where he served until 1962, when he returned to Washington to become the Chief of CIA's Far East Division. In 1968 he returned to Vietnam as Deputy to Robert Komer, head of the U.S./South Vietnamese rural pacification effort, and shortly thereafter succeeded him. This program, elements of which were known as "the Phoenix Program"

After reportedly going out canoeing in the middle of the night, Colby died under suspicious circumstances near his home in Rock Point, Maryland. He reportedly did not mention any canoeing plans to his wife, nor was it normal for him to go boating at night. Colby's body was not immediately located, but later found underwater—close to where his canoe was. The cause of death was reportedly an aneurism, which caused him to drown, resulting in hypothermia. He was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery on May 13, 1996.

Quotes

• South Vietnam faces total defeat, and soon.

Sources

• http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/usa/william-colby/
• William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honourable Men: My Life in the CIA, London: Hutchinson & Co., 1978

v t e Directors of Central Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence	Souers Vandenberg Hillenkoetter Smith Dulles McCone Raborn Helms Schlesinger Colby Bush Turner Casey Webster Gates Woolsey Deutch Tenet Goss
Central Intelligence Agency	Goss Hayden Panetta Petraeus Brennan Pompeo Haspel Burns

• 1920 births
• 1996 deaths
• Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency