Office of Strategic Services on the 17th of May 1945. 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, who was trained to work with resistance forces in occupied Europe to harass German and other Axis forces. During
World War II, he parachuted behind enemy lines twice and earned the
Silver Star as well as commendations from Norway, France, and Great Britain. In his first mission he deployed to
France as a Jedburgh commanding Team BRUCE, in mid-August 1944, and operated with the
Maquis until he joined up with Allied forces later that fall. In April 1945, he led the
NORSO Group Operasjon Rype into Norway on a sabotage mission to destroy railway lines in an effort to hinder German forces in Norway from reinforcing the final defense of Germany. Colby then spent much of the 1950s based in
Rome under the cover as a
State Department officer, where he led the Agency's covert political operations campaign to support
anti-communist parties in their electoral contests against
left wing Soviet–associated parties. The Christian Democrats and allied parties won several key elections in the 1950s, preventing a takeover by the
Communist Party. 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. That position first brought him into conflict with
James J. Angleton.
Southeast Asia In 1959, Colby became the CIA's deputy chief and then chief of station in
Saigon,
South Vietnam, where he served until 1962. Tasked by the CIA with supporting the government of South Vietnamese President
Ngô Đình Diệm, Colby established a relationship with Diem's family and with
Ngô Đình Nhu, the president's brother, with whom Colby became close. In 1962, he returned to Washington to become the deputy and then chief of the CIA's Far East Division, succeeding
Desmond Fitzgerald, who had been tapped to lead the Agency's efforts against
Fidel Castro's Cuba. During those 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. He was deeply critical of the decision to abandon support for Diem, and he believed that played a material part in the weakening of the South Vietnamese position in the following years. In 1968, while Colby was preparing to take up the post of chief of the Soviet Bloc Division of the Agency, U.S. 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. Shortly after arriving Colby succeeded Komer as head of the U.S./South Vietnamese rural pacification effort named
CORDS. Part of the effort was the controversial
Phoenix Program, an initiative designed to identify and attack the "Viet Cong Infrastructure". There is considerable debate about the merits of the program, which was subject to allegations that it relied on or was complicit in assassination and torture. Colby consistently insisted that such tactics were not authorized by or permitted in the program. More broadly, along with Ambassador
Ellsworth Bunker and
Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) commander General
Creighton Abrams, Colby was part of a leadership group that worked to apply a new approach to the war designed to focus more on pacification (winning
hearts and minds) and securing the countryside, as opposed to the "
search and destroy" approach that had characterized General
William Westmoreland's tenure as MACV commander. Some, including Colby later in life, argue that approach succeeded in reducing the Communist insurgency in South Vietnam, but that South Vietnam, without air and ground support by the United States after the 1973
Paris Peace Accords, was ultimately overwhelmed by a conventional
North Vietnamese assault in 1975.
CIA HQ: Director Colby returned to Washington in July 1971 and became executive director of CIA. After long-time DCI
Richard Helms was dismissed by President Nixon in 1973, James Schlesinger assumed the helm at the Agency. 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. Colby, who had had a somewhat unorthodox career in the CIA focused on political action and counterinsurgency, agreed with Schlesinger's reformist approach. Schlesinger appointed him head of the clandestine branch in early 1973. When Nixon reshuffled his agency heads and made Schlesinger secretary of defense, Colby emerged as a natural candidate for DCI, apparently on the basis of the recommendation that he was a professional who would not make waves. Colby was known as a media-friendly CIA director. the Middle East, and elsewhere also demanded attention. He also focused on internal reforms within the CIA and the intelligence community. 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 speech from 1973 addressed to
NSA employees, he emphasized the role of free speech in the U.S. and the moral role of CIA as a defender, not a preventer, of civil rights, an attempt to rebut the then emerging revelations of CIA and NSA domestic spying. He also mentioned a number of reforms intended to limit excessive classification of governmental information. President
Gerald 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
Halloween Massacre in which Secretary of Defense Schlesinger was also replaced (by
Donald Rumsfeld). Colby was offered the position of
United States Permanent Representative to NATO but turned it down.
Later career In 1977 Colby founded a D.C. law firm, Colby, Miller & Hanes, with Marshall Miller, David Hanes, and associated lawyers, and worked on public policy issues. In consonance with his long-held liberal views, Colby became a supporter of the
nuclear freeze and of reductions in military spending. He practiced law and advised various bodies on intelligence matters. During that period, he also wrote two books, both of which were memoirs of his professional life, combined with discussions of history and policy. 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. In the latter book, Colby argued that the U.S.–South Vietnamese counterinsurgency campaign in Vietnam had succeeded by the early 1970s and that South Vietnam could have survived if the U.S. had continued to provide support after the Paris Accords. The topic remains open and controversial, but some recent scholarship, including by Lewis "Bob" Sorley, supports Colby's arguments. Colby lent his expertise and knowledge, along with
Oleg Kalugin, to the
Activision game
Spycraft: The Great Game, which was released shortly before his death. Both Colby and Kalugin played themselves in the game. Colby was a member of the
National Coalition to Ban Handguns. His name appears on a note to Senator
John Heinz dated July 5, 1989, as a "National Sponsor." At the time of the Senate hearings to confirm his appointment, Colby was relentlessly grilled about
The Family Jewels, a secret 693-page report ordered by Schlesinger, directed by Colby, and compiled by CIA's own Inspector General's Office. It dealt with what Colby calls "some mistakes," specifically CIA abuses ranging from assassination plans to dosing people with mind-control drugs to domestic spying. ==Death==