WILLIAM EGAN COLBY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00418R000100060007-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 7
• Content Type: BIO

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/11: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100060007-9
WILLIAM EGAN COLBY
Mr. William E. Colby was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1920.
The son of an Army officer, his early life was 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 be-
fore 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 Devel-
opment 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 30 June 1971. On 5, 1971 he returned
to CIA as a staff officer in the Office of the Director.
On 10 January 1972 Mr. Colby was appointe Executive Director-
Comptroller. of the Central Intelligence Agency. r. Colby was appointed
Deputy Director for Operations effective 3 March 1973.
STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/11: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100060007-9