Shadow Warrior (82 page)

In 1989, Colby published
Lost Victory
, his revisionist account of the Vietnam War. The book argued that the United States had triumphed where it counted—in the countryside—and that if Congress and the American people had stood by South Vietnam, the 1975 North Vietnamese invasion could have been thwarted.
Lost Victory
, ironically, tended to identify Colby with Nixon, Reagan, and the New Right. The book elicited a long, anguished letter from Thomas Powers, who recited the orthodox litany: the Viet Minh, and subsequently the North Vietnamese, had captured the nationalist
flag; the South Vietnamese government had been hopelessly undemocratic and corrupt; the strategic assumptions upon which the war was based were erroneous; and the whole damned mess had had little or no impact on the larger geopolitical situation and would not have had such an impact no matter who had won. Powers apologized for having earlier implied that Colby was a KGB mole and then closed by lamenting “the lack of feel in your books.” In his reply, Colby passed over the “feel” comment and politely accused Powers of being a fatalist, of implying that man could not discern the difference between good and evil and was powerless to do anything about it if he could.
²²

In December 1989, the Berlin Wall came down and pundits pronounced the Cold War at an end. Shortly afterward, Colby attended a conference in Moscow. In between sessions, he took a stroll around Red Square. It was snowing, he remembered. He walked past St. Basil's Cathedral and then noticed something strange—nobody was following him; nobody cared. The Cold War really was over. “That was my victory parade,” he later told his son John.
²³

It was Saturday, April 27, 1996. William Colby, a former director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, was alone at his weekend house on Chesapeake Bay across from Cobb Island, Maryland. Colby, who was seventy-six years old, had worked all day on his sailboat at a nearby marina, putting it in shape for the coming summer . . .

Several years ago, my son, Jeff Woods, who is also a professional historian, suggested that we write a book together. I readily agreed, and we chose as our subject William Egan Colby, one of the Cold War's great enigmas. For five years we researched and interviewed people, both in harness and separately. It soon became apparent that we were dealing with two potential books, one on Bill Colby and the other on the whole issue of counterinsurgency and pacification in the Vietnam War. In the end, we decided on a division of labor—I would do the Colby biography, and he would write on “the other Vietnam war.” I recount all of this to make it clear that this book has been very much a joint effort between Jeff and me, although the original composition (as well as any errors) is mine.

All historians stand on the shoulders of others, but I owe a special debt to John Prados, whose
Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby
paved the way for this book. His superb research allowed me to start the project at a much more advanced stage than would otherwise have been possible.

I am also indebted to the entire Colby family—wives Barbara and Sally, sons Jonathan, Carl, and Paul, daughter Christine, daughter-in-law Susan, and grandson Elbridge—for their cooperation on this project. They have shared their memories and observations without once attempting to control the end product.

As usual, the staffs of National Archives II, the Library of Congress, and the Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald Ford presidential libraries have behaved with the utmost professionalism. My research brought me for the first time to the Vietnam Archives at Texas Tech University and the George C. Marshall Library at the Virginia Military Institute. Both institutions exceeded my expectations. In addition, my thanks go out to the dozens of CIA veterans and personal friends of Bill Colby who agreed to be interviewed for
this project. Of particular importance were the counterinsurgency/pacification personnel who worked for him in Vietnam and Laos, especially David Nuttle, Vinton Lawrence, Jean Sauvageot, and Frank Scotton.

Richard Immerman, Wesley Wark, Rhodri Jeffrey-Jones, Mark Lawrence, and my in-house editor, Rhoda Woods, have all read the book in manuscript and saved me from many errors in fact and style. Finally, I would like to pay tribute to the excellent team at Basic Books. Lara Heimert, publisher and editor-in-chief, has been an enthusiastic supporter and wise adviser from the start. Roger Labrie proved to be one of the most skilled textual editors with whom I have ever worked. Kudos, too, to Katy O'Donnell and Melissa Veronesi. Again, all errors in fact and judgment are mine and mine alone.

1
. Tad Szulc, “The Missing CIA Man,”
New York Times Magazine
, Jan. 7, 1989.

2
. Zalin Grant, “Who Murdered the CIA Chief? William E. Colby: A Highly Sus
picious Death,” 2011, Zalin Grant's War Tales,
www.pythiapress.com/wartales/colby.htm
.

3
. Some in the Agency, however, would view Colby as simply a man ahead of his time. See Douglas F. Garthoff,
Directors of Central Intelligence as Leaders of the U.S. Intelligence Community, 1946–2005
, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: 2007).

1
. “Obituaries,”
Science
45, no. 147 (1897): 628.

2
. Author interviews with Paul Colby, Jan. 8 and June 10, 2007; author interview with Barbara Colby, Jan. 5, 2007; author interview with John Colby, Jan. 8, 2007.

3
. The best biography of Baden-Powell is Tim Jael,
Baden-Powell: Founder of the Boy Scouts
(London: 1989).

4
. “Minnesota Territorial and State Censuses, 1849–1905,”
Ancestry.com
,
http://search.ancestry.com/Places/US/Minnesota/Default.aspx
; author interview with Christine Colby Giraudo, June 5, 2010; author interview with Barbara Colby, Jan. 5, 2007; “1900 United States Federal Census,”
Ancestry.com
,
http://search.ancestry.com/search/grouplist.aspx?group=usfedcen
; Lieutenant James J. Egan,
Battle of Birch Cooley
, Oct. 2, 1889, Colby Family Papers; author interviews with John Colby, Jan. 12 and June 8, 2007.

5
. Author interview with Paul Colby, Jan. 8, 2007; Lieutenant Colonel Ebenezer T. Colby to Charles A. Colby, April 10, 1863, Colby Family Papers; author interview with John Colby, Jan. 12, 2007.

6
. John Prados,
Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby
(New York: 2003), 19.

7
. Elbridge Colby and Margaret Egan, Marriage Certificate, Colby Family Papers.

8
. William E. Colby, Birth Certificate, Colby Family Papers; William Colby and Peter Forbath,
Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA
(New York: 1978), 27; author interview with Paul Colby, Jan. 8, 2007.

9
. Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 28; Prados,
Lost Crusader
, 20.

10
. Alfred Emile Cornbise,
The United States 15th Infantry Regiment in China, 1912–1938
(Jefferson, NC: 2004), 1–2.

11
. Ibid., 7–9.

12
. Ibid., 13.

13
. Ibid., 15.

14
. Prados,
Lost Crusader
, 21; Cornbise,
15th Infantry
, 17.

15
. Brian Power,
The Ford of Heaven
(New York: 1984), 10–11.

16
. Ibid., 14–15.

17
. Author interview with Sally Shelton Colby, June 12, 2007.

18
. Ibid., 107.

19
. W. E. Colby, Personnel File, CIA Records Search Tool (CREST hereafter), National Archives, Washington, DC; Prados,
Lost Crusader
, 22; William Colby,
Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America's Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam
(Chicago: 1989), 19.

20
. Author interview with John Colby, June 4, 2010; Prados,
Lost Crusader
, 22.

21
. Prados,
Lost Crusader
, 23–24.

22
. Author interview with Paul Colby, Jan.8, 2007; author interview with John Colby, June 8, 2007.

23
. Author interview with John Colby, Jan. 12, 2007; author interview with Christine Colby Giraudo, June 5, 2010; author interview with Paul Colby, Jan. 8, 2007.

24
. Author interview with John Colby, Jan. 12, 2007; author interview with Carl Colby, Jan. 9, 2007.

25
. Author interview with Paul Colby, Jan. 8, 2007; Kenneth Roberts,
Northwest Passage
(Garden City, NY: 1937), 83, 98.

26
. Roberts,
Northwest Passage
, 12.

27
. Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 29; Prados,
Lost Crusader
, 24–25.

28
. Author interview with Carl Colby, Jan. 9, 2007; Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 29; author interview with Christine Colby Giraudo, June 5, 2010.

29
. Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 30.

30
. Author interview with John Colby, Jan. 12, 2007; “What Attitude Toward Spain?” Jan. 21, 1938, Colby Family Papers.

31
. Author interview with John Colby, Jan. 12, 2007.

32
. Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 32; Zalin Grant,
Facing the Phoenix: The CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam
(New York: 1991), 282.

33
. Prados,
Lost Crusader
, 27.

34
. Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 31.

35
. Author interview with Stan Temko, Jan. 6, 2007; author interview with Barbara Colby, Jan. 5, 2007; Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 32.

36
. Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 32.

37
. “Interview: William Colby, Former Director, Central Intelligence Agency,”
Special Forces Magazine
, April 1994, 2; Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 32; Prados,
Lost Crusader
, 28.

38
. Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 32; William E. Colby, Personnel File, CREST.

1
. William Colby and Peter Forbath,
Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA
(New York: 1978), 33.

2
. For Donovan's background and his early relationship with Roosevelt, see Douglas Waller,
Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage
(New York: 2011), 9–87.

3
. Will Irwin,
The Jedburghs: The Secret History of the Allied Special Forces, France 1944
(New York: 2005), 32, 34; Richard Harris Smith,
OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency
(Berkeley, CA: 1972), 2; Anthony Cave Brown,
The Last Hero: Wild Bill Donovan
(New York: 1984); Waller,
Wild Bill Donovan
, 93.

4
. Quoted in Smith,
OSS
, 1; Waller,
Wild Bill Donovan
, 6, 11, 16, 93.

5
. Waller,
Wild Bill Donovan
, 29–31.

6
. Arthur Lyton Funk,
Hidden Ally: The French Resistance, Special Operations, and the Landings in Southern France, 1944
(New York: 1992), 74.

7
. John Prados,
Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby
(New York: 2003), 9; Irwin,
Jedburghs
, 38.

8
. Anthony Cave Brown,
Bodyguard of Lies
(New York: 1975), 576.

9
. Smith,
OSS
, 175; Irwin,
Jedburghs
, 40; Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 35.

10
. Irwin,
Jedburghs
, 43–44.

11
. Ibid., 44–45.

12
. Quoted in ibid.; Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 35–36.

13
. Irwin,
Jedburghs
, 46–53; Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 36.

14
. Irwin,
Jedburghs
, 47–48, 62.

15
. Ibid., 62–64, 77.

16
. Irwin,
Jedburghs
, 65, 139; Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 38.

17
. Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 37, 70–71.

18
. T. E. Lawrence,
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
(Garden City, NY: 1938), 29.

19
. Cave Brown,
Bodyguard
, 575; Funk,
Hidden Ally
, 74; Jeffrey Richelson,
A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century
(New York: 1997), 154.

20
. Prados,
Lost Crusader
, 11; Irwin,
Jedburghs
, 135.

21
. Colby and Forbath,
Honorable Men
, 38–39.

22
. Quoted in Cave Brown,
Bodyguard
, 575; quoted in Smith,
OSS
, 180.

23
. Irwin,
Jedburghs
, 136–138.