WILLIAM EGAN COLBY BIOGRAPHICAL DATA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00418R000100060003-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: May 10, 1973
• Content Type: BIO

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100060003-3
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 10, 1973
Office of the White House Press Secretary
THE WHITE HOUSE
WILLIAM EGAN COLBY
Biographical Data
William E. Colby was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on January 4, 1920..
The son of an Army officer, his-ea_rly life wa.s_spent in various posts,
including a three-year period in Tientsin, China.
In 1940 he was graduated from Princeton University and in 1941 joined the
United States Army, serving in the Parachute Field Artillery. When the
Office of Strategic Services put out a call for French speakers in 1943, Mr.
Colby volunteered and in 1944 was parachuted behind enemy lines in north
central France to work with a resistance unit. Shortly before the end of the.
war in 1945, he led a team dropped in northern Norway to destroy a rail
line used for transporting German reinforcements.
Following the war, Mr. Colby obtained his law degree from Columbia Law
School and joined a New York law firm headed by William J. Donovan,
former head of OSS. He is a member of the New York State and U.S.
Supreme Court bars.
In 1949 Mr. Colby accepted his first U.S. Government position as an
attorney for the National Labor Relations Board in Washington. In 1951 he
?joined the staff of the American Embassy in Stockholm and from 1953 to
1958 served in the American Embassy in Rome, Italy.
Mr. Colby became First Secretary of the American Embassy in Saigon in
1959, leaving in 1962 for an assignment as Chief of the Far East Division
of the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington, D. C.
In March 1968 Mr. Colby joined the Agency for International Development and
was posted to Saigon to assume the post of Assistant Chief of Staff and in
November 1968 of Deputy to the Commander of MACV for the CORDS
program of support to the Government of Vietnam's pacification campaign,
with the personal rank of Ambassador. He was reassigned to the Department
of State on June 30, 1971.
On January 10., . 1972 Mr. Colby was appointed Executive Director-
Comptroller of the Central Intelligence Agency. On March 3, 1973 he
-was appointed its Deputy Directcir for Operations.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100060003-3