Randall B. Woods - Shadow Warrior: William Egan Colby and the CIA

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 Wars 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 laborI 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 familywives Barbara and Sally, sons Jonathan, Carl, and Paul, daughter Christine, daughter-in-law Susan, and grandson Elbridgefor 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 ODonnell and Melissa Veronesi. Again, all errors in fact and judgment are mine and mine alone.

S aturday, April 27, 1996, dawned clear and warm; it was going to be a beautiful spring day on the Chesapeake Bay. Although his second wife, Sally, was away visiting her mother in Houston, Bill Colby was a happy man. William Egan Colby, former CIA director, Saigon station chief, and head of Americas counterinsurgency and pacification operation in Vietnam, as well as a veteran of World War IIs Office of Strategic Services (OSS), spent the day working on his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II. The Colbys owned a vacation cottage on Neale Sound in Southern Maryland, about 60 miles south of Washington, DC, and the Eagle Wing was moored at the marina on Cobb Island, directly across the sound from the cottage. The seventy-six-year-old retired spy and covert operative had worked hard repairing the torn mainsail on his beloved vessel, scraping the hull, and scouring the hardware in preparation for the years maiden voyage.

Sometime between 5:30 and 6:00 P.M., Colby knocked off and climbed into his red Fiat for the drive home. On the way, he stopped at Captain Johns, a popular seafood restaurant and market, and bought a dozen clams and some corn on the cob for his dinner. He arrived at the cottage around 7:00. The house was modest, a turn-of-the-century oystermans lodging with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a glassed-in front porch. But the view of the soundthe white frame structure was situated on a spit of land, surrounded by water on three sideswas spectacular.

Weary but content, Colby unloaded his groceries and called Sally. The two had married in 1984. Colby, theretofore a devoted Catholic, had left Barbara Colby, his equally Catholic wife of thirty-nine years and mother of their five children, for Sallyintelligent, attractive, a former US ambassador to Grenada. The two were besotted with each other. Other than for weddings or funerals, Colby never darkened the door of a Catholic church again. The two chatted warmly but briefly over the phone. Bill told Sally that he was happy but tired; he was going to feast on clams and cornhis favoritesand then turn in.

Around 7:15, Joseph Carroll Wise, the cottages off-season caretaker, turned into the driveway. He had his sister in tow and wanted her to meet his famous client. They found Colby watering his willow trees down near the water. The trio chatted briefly, and then Wise and his sister drove away. It was the last time they would see Bill Colby alive.

On Sunday afternoon, Colbys next-door neighbor, Alice Stokes, noticed that the Fiat was still parked in the driveway. She checked the jetty they shared; the aluminum ladder Colby used to climb down into his canoe was in the water. A frayed rope hung from the iron rung he used to moor his canoe, but there was no sign of the craft. Meanwhile, Kevin Akers, a twenty-nine-year-old unemployed carpenter and handyman, had taken his wife and two kids out on the sound in his small motorboat. At the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River, Akers spotted a beached green canoe. There was nothing unusual about that. Akers, who had spent all his life around the Chesapeake, had in the past picked up small craft that had broken loose from their moorings and towed them to the marina. Akers later recalled that this canoe was nearly filled with sand; it had taken him and his wife the better part of an hour to empty it. He had been out on the water the day before and had not spotted the canoe. There was no way, he mused, that two cycles of the tide could put that much sand in a canoe.

Around 7:00 Sunday evening, Alice Stokes called 911 to report a missing person. The local police arrived at half past eight. Both doors to the cottage were unlocked. Colbys computer and radio were on. Unwashed dishes and the remnants of a half-eaten meal lay in the sink. A partially filled glass of white wine sat on the counter; the bottle, with very little missing, was on the table in the sunroom. Also on the table were Colbys wallet, containing $296, and his keys. The canoe and its paddle and life jacket were missing from the nearby shed. Policewoman Sharon Walsh alerted the Coast Guard, and the search was on.

Over the next few days, a dozen navy divers, two helicopters, and more than a hundred volunteers scoured the area. They found nothing. On the morning of May 6, nine days after Colby was last seen, his body was spotted on the shoreline of Neale Sound, approximately 40 meters from where Kevin Akers had discovered the green canoe. The police announced that there were no signs of foul play. Most likely the old man had suffered a heart attack and fallen into the water. The state medical examiners office issued a preliminary verdict of accidental death.

When Akers learned who had owned the green canoe, alarm bells began going off in his head. There was the unexplained overabundance of sand in the canoe. More significant, the boat and the body were separated by a spit of land. Given the prevailing currents, there was no way the canoe could have wound up on one side of the spit and Colby on the other. The former spook had been murdered, he concluded. Akers gathered his family and went into hiding.