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William Colby | |
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Born | January 4, 1920 Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States |
Died | May 6, 1996 Rock Point, Maryland, United States |
Nationality | Statesian |
Political orientation | Imperialism |
William Egan Colby (January 4, 1920 – May 6, 1996) was the Director of the CIA from 1973 to 1976. He died mysteriously in 1996 after revealing many of the CIA's crimes to the public. Before his death, he also said that organized crime may be controlling all levels of the U.S. government.[1]
Early life[edit | edit source]
Colby attended Princeton University and parachuted behind Nazi lines as part of the OSS during the Second World War.[1]
War crimes[edit | edit source]
In the late 1960s, Colby was the head of the Phoenix Program, which killed at least 40,000 Vietnamese civilians. He oversaw the secret CIA war in Laos, including opium trafficking.[1]
Confessions[edit | edit source]
In December 1974, Colby told the Justice Department that the three-year imprisonment of KGB defector Yuri Nosenko may have violated U.S. kidnapping laws. He also exposed illegal CIA spying on journalists and Victor Marchetti, a former CIA operative. He admitted that earlier CIA leader Richard Helms lied to Congress about the CIA's role in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état.[1]
At Church Committee hearings in 1975, Colby admitted that the CIA spied on U.S. citizens through their telephones and mail and that it experimented on humans with LSD.[1]
In July 1991, Colby co-wrote an article in The Washington Post that exposed President Bush's lies about Iraqi chemical weapons.[1]
Death[edit | edit source]
On April 27, 1996, Colby was working on his boat Eagle Wind II on the coast of Cobb Island. He returned home at 7:00 p.m and was seen in his garden at 7:15 p.m. but disappeared halfway through eating his dinner. Afterwards, two helicopters, more than 20 Navy divers, and 80 volunteers searched for him.[1]
Colby's body was found in the water nine days later, about 40 meters from his sand-filled canoe. Medical examiners determined that he died between 8:45 and 10:00 p.m. The body was in surprisingly good condition and showed only one or two days worth of decay instead of nine. Searchers found many life jackets, but none matched Colby's.[1]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Jump up to: 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Jeremy Kuzmarov (2022-04-27). "Who Whacked CIA Spy Chief William Colby?" CovertAction Magazine. Archived from the original on 2024-09-11.