WILLIAM EGAN COLBY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00418R000100060010-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 10
• Content Type: BIO

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/11 : CIA-RDP99-00418R000100060010-5
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 was commissioned in the United States Army. When OSS 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 join a resistance unit. Shortly before the end of the war in 1945,
he was one of thirty-two men 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.
In 1949 Mr. Colby accepted his first U. S. Government position
as an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board in Washington.
He is a member of the New York State and Supreme Court bars. In
1951 Mr. Colby 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 and served as a Special Assistant to two U.S. Ambassa-
dors -- Elbridge Durbrow and Frederick Nolting -- before leaving in
1962 for an assignment with the Far East Division of the Central
Intelligence Agency in Washington, D. C.
In March 1968 Mr. Colby resigned from the Central Intelligence
Agency to accept a position within the Office of the President. He
was subsequently assigned by that Office to the Ambassadorial
position as Director of CORDS in Vietnam. He was reassigned
to the Department of State on June 30, 1971.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/11 : CIA-RDP99-00418R000100060010-5