SPY STORIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000700070006-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 22, 2006
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: May 21, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

~ Approved For Rele~2~79~~Ipl~~i~301 R0007000~00~0~--~ ~ ~ ~~~~~ ~,~,~ ytt,~.
ARTICLE APPEAR I,l 2I MAY 197$
i~~3-~'dCi~$~
lbiy Life in the CIA.
Illusirated.-493pp. New York:_. .
Simon and Schuster. $t2.9S.:.::,;"`
ByTrernanA. Wafters. ~ ?
Illustrated. 654 pp. New Yorh:.I?oulaleday & Co. $12.95.
? By THOMAS ?1POl~V,1rR5Y
When the-Cent:wl Itelligence Agency's secrets
began to tumble out in their melancholy profusion
three years ago, veterans of the agency warned that it
would. not be easy to put the lid back on, rtSore ~~es-
tions would be raised than answered, and the process
? of exposure would leave the practice of intelligence in
demoralized disarray. At the time, such arguments
were roughly dismissed as disingenuous, motivated
less by honest concern for "national security" -fast
replacing patriotism as the last refuge of scoundrels
-than by fear of embarrassment. But it turns out the?
Cassandras were absolutely right: the code-breaking
com~uters?may still be humming, the satellites click-
ing off their high~resotution photos and the mighty
river of paper working its way toward the National Se-
citrIty Gouncii!, but nothing else is the same. The Intel-
Iigence'community is divided and confused, just as
predicted, and there is probably no better~ptace to go
for a glimpse of the awful mess than the memoirs of
William Colby, Director of the C.I.A. cram 2973 to 1976.
dt may come as a surpHse to most readers to learn 'i
that the intelligence community blames Mr. Colby.
not nosy reporters or the- Congressional investigators
of 2975, for the uglier revelations of recent years, but
that is -the case. Few men have suffered such disso-
nant reputations. The.public probably remernbez's I'Yir.
Colby best as the architect of the notorious Phoenix
program in South Vietnam, which tatted up the deaths
?of at Least Zp,Of10 Vietcong political cadremen; or as a
peripheral Watergate figure who, in his own wards,
lichman's name to the Federal prosecutors, But for
C.I.A. people, Mr, Colby is the man who may have
wrecked the agency with his decision to let out the
"bad secrets" concerning assassination plats, domes-
tic intelligence pragrarns, illegal drug-testing and the
Like. White at least one segment of the public fs in-
clined to see Mr. Colby as a war criminal, his former ,
comrades think of him as a prig and snitch, aturncoat- .
(or worse) who delivered secret files by the cartIoad
to the Pike and Church committees; who ioid a re- ;
porter about the C.LA.'s illegal mail-intercept pro- ~~
gram in order to' engineer the 1?emoval of an arch- .
rival, and who gave the Justice Department evidence I
that suggested 'that Mr. Coiby's immediate predeces-.: {
sor but ono, Richard 8etms, had lied to th'e SenatQ ,~
about C.I.A. political operations .in Chile. When Mr,
Colby finally left the C.I.A. early in 1976. his departure
was not loudly lamented. ~ ..
At first. or even third, glance Wlltlam Egan Colb}-
seems an . unlikely candidate for such heated
controversy. His appointment. as Director of Centro] ,
Intelligence in mid-1973 seems to have been made in a
?
~ fit of absent-mindedness while
Richard M. Nixon was busy
plugging leaks in the White
.House levees. Certainly there
was nothing inevitable about it.'
For the most part Nlr. Colby's
? years in the C.I.A?. were unex-
? ceptional, a steady cfirnb from
job to jab i;n a, manner that net- ;
ther made enemies nor left
much` by way ?of anecdote
among his friends. In the early
1950's he organized stay-behind
nets in.. Scandinavia to harass
Russian occupiers in the event
of a third world war. A few
'years . later, he orchestrated
C.I.A. support in Italy. for the?
Christian ; .::'Democrats =and ?
backed the "opening to the ]eft"
that brought Italian Socialists
into the : Government, despite
opposition" (by, the=;C.I.A.'s
James Angietonv among other=s)
' contending. that- the Commu~..
nists would not be far behind..: '!
I _.. In 1959 Mr. Colby moved an to.
Vietnam'to halp gear up for the
war he :still.: feels we never
-should have lost. As chief bf sta4 '
lion in Saigon, chief of the Far e
-East division in the clandestine- i
services section of the C.I.A.
and head of the Phoenix pro ~
gram, Mr. Colby spent 12 years
trying to dv what the French ,
had failed to achieve before
him. Vietnam absorbs the larg-
est part of his book. as it did his
life, and one is tempted to linger
overhis astonishing (tome) Ina-
bility to notice any but the most
particular causes of failure.
Approved Far Release 2006109/22 : CIS?P91-009018000700070006-1