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William Colby


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Michael Holzman has recently assessed the theory that William Colby was a Soviet spy (Lobster 51). The original claim that Colby was a spy came from James Jesus Angleton. Mind you, according to Angleton, several CIA senior officials were spies and he leaked this information to several journalists. Richard Helms told his biographer, Thomas Powers (The Man Who Kept the Secrets) that Colby acts “as Director of Central Intelligence were entirely consistent with those of a man who was a Russian agent.” Helms of course was very angry with Colby for cooperating with the Congressional committees led by Frank Church and Otis Pike. In his own autobiography (A Look Over My Shoulder) Helms asks the question – “Was Colby America’s more successful Kim Philby?”

Holzman looks at the reasons why Colby was hated by both Angleton and Helms but fails to consider the connections with Watergate.

Colby appeared to have no chance of obtaining promotion while Richard Helms was Director of the CIA. However, everything changed when Nixon sacked Helms for refusing to cover-up the Watergate scandal.

In February, 1973, an outsider and Nixon supporter, James Schlesinger, became the new director of the CIA. Schlesinger was heard to say: “The clandestine service was Helms’s Praetorian Guard. It had too much influence in the Agency and was too powerful within the government. I am going to cut it down to size.” This he did and over the next three months over 7 per cent of CIA officers lost their jobs.

On 9th May, 1973, Schlesinger issued a directive to all CIA employees: “I have ordered all senior operating officials of this Agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or might have gone on in the past, which might be considered to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency. I hereby direct every person presently employed by CIA to report to me on any such activities of which he has knowledge. I invite all ex-employees to do the same. Anyone who has such information should call my secretary and say that he wishes to talk to me about “activities outside the CIA’s charter”.

There were several employees who had been trying to complain about the illegal CIA activities for some time. As Cord Meyer pointed out, this directive “was a hunting license for the resentful subordinate to dig back into the records of the past in order to come up with evidence that might destroy the career of a superior whom he long hated.”

It now became necessary to get Schlesinger removed from office. On 16th May, 1973, Deep Throat has an important meeting with Woodward where he provided information that was to destroy Nixon. This included the comment that the Senate Watergate Committee should consider interviewing Alexander P. Butterfield. Soon afterwards told a staff member of the committee (undoubtedly his friend, Scott Armstrong) that Butterfield should be asked to testify before Sam Ervin.

Nixon now realized he had gone too far and removed Schlesinger from his post. However, to maintain the pressure on the CIA, Nixon suggested Colby for the post. The reason for this was that Colby had convinced Schlesinger that he was in favour of revealing details of CIA’s dirty tricks.

This is no doubt true and this meant that the CIA now had a good reason to get rid of both Nixon and Colby.

On 25th June, 1973, John Dean testified that he believed Nixon's office might be bugged. On Friday, 13th July, Butterfield appeared before the committee and was asked about if he knew whether Nixon was recording meetings he was having in the White House. Butterfield now admitted details of the tape system which monitored Nixon's conversations. It was this disclosure that meant that Nixon would be forced to resign.

When in 1975 both houses of Congress set up inquiries into the activities of the intelligence community, Colby handed over to the Senate committee chaired by Frank Church details of the CIA's recent operations against the left-leaning government in Chile. The agency's attempts to sabotage the Chilean economy had contributed to the downfall of South America's oldest democracy and to the installation of a military dictatorship.

His testimony resulted in his predecessor, Richard Helms, being indicted for perjury. Colby was attacked by right-wing figures such as Barry Goldwater for supplying this information to the Frank Church and on 30 January 1976, President Gerald Ford replaced him with George H. W. Bush. Someone he knew would do everything he could to prevent disclosure of the CIA’s dirty tricks. After all, he had been involved with illegal CIA projects such as Operation 40 since 1960.

In retirement Colby published his memoirs Honorable Men. This resulted in him being accused of making unauthorized disclosures, and was forced to pay a $10,000 fine in an out-of-court settlement.

On 28th April 1996 William Colby went on a canoe trip at Rock Point, Maryland. His body was found several days later. Later police claimed that there was no evidence of foul play.

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  • 1 month later...
Michael Holzman has recently assessed the theory that William Colby was a Soviet spy (Lobster 51). The original claim that Colby was a spy came from James Jesus Angleton. Mind you, according to Angleton, several CIA senior officials were spies and he leaked this information to several journalists. Richard Helms told his biographer, Thomas Powers (The Man Who Kept the Secrets) that Colby acts “as Director of Central Intelligence were entirely consistent with those of a man who was a Russian agent.” Helms of course was very angry with Colby for cooperating with the Congressional committees led by Frank Church and Otis Pike. In his own autobiography (A Look Over My Shoulder) Helms asks the question – “Was Colby America’s more successful Kim Philby?”

Holzman looks at the reasons why Colby was hated by both Angleton and Helms but fails to consider the connections with Watergate.

Colby appeared to have no chance of obtaining promotion while Richard Helms was Director of the CIA. However, everything changed when Nixon sacked Helms for refusing to cover-up the Watergate scandal.

In February, 1973, an outsider and Nixon supporter, James Schlesinger, became the new director of the CIA. Schlesinger was heard to say: “The clandestine service was Helms’s Praetorian Guard. It had too much influence in the Agency and was too powerful within the government. I am going to cut it down to size.” This he did and over the next three months over 7 per cent of CIA officers lost their jobs.

On 9th May, 1973, Schlesinger issued a directive to all CIA employees: “I have ordered all senior operating officials of this Agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or might have gone on in the past, which might be considered to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency. I hereby direct every person presently employed by CIA to report to me on any such activities of which he has knowledge. I invite all ex-employees to do the same. Anyone who has such information should call my secretary and say that he wishes to talk to me about “activities outside the CIA’s charter”.

There were several employees who had been trying to complain about the illegal CIA activities for some time. As Cord Meyer pointed out, this directive “was a hunting license for the resentful subordinate to dig back into the records of the past in order to come up with evidence that might destroy the career of a superior whom he long hated.”

It now became necessary to get Schlesinger removed from office. On 16th May, 1973, Deep Throat has an important meeting with Woodward where he provided information that was to destroy Nixon. This included the comment that the Senate Watergate Committee should consider interviewing Alexander P. Butterfield. Soon afterwards told a staff member of the committee (undoubtedly his friend, Scott Armstrong) that Butterfield should be asked to testify before Sam Ervin.

Nixon now realized he had gone too far and removed Schlesinger from his post. However, to maintain the pressure on the CIA, Nixon suggested Colby for the post. The reason for this was that Colby had convinced Schlesinger that he was in favour of revealing details of CIA’s dirty tricks.

This is no doubt true and this meant that the CIA now had a good reason to get rid of both Nixon and Colby.

On 25th June, 1973, John Dean testified that he believed Nixon's office might be bugged. On Friday, 13th July, Butterfield appeared before the committee and was asked about if he knew whether Nixon was recording meetings he was having in the White House. Butterfield now admitted details of the tape system which monitored Nixon's conversations. It was this disclosure that meant that Nixon would be forced to resign.

When in 1975 both houses of Congress set up inquiries into the activities of the intelligence community, Colby handed over to the Senate committee chaired by Frank Church details of the CIA's recent operations against the left-leaning government in Chile. The agency's attempts to sabotage the Chilean economy had contributed to the downfall of South America's oldest democracy and to the installation of a military dictatorship.

His testimony resulted in his predecessor, Richard Helms, being indicted for perjury. Colby was attacked by right-wing figures such as Barry Goldwater for supplying this information to the Frank Church and on 30 January 1976, President Gerald Ford replaced him with George H. W. Bush. Someone he knew would do everything he could to prevent disclosure of the CIA’s dirty tricks. After all, he had been involved with illegal CIA projects such as Operation 40 since 1960.

In retirement Colby published his memoirs Honorable Men. This resulted in him being accused of making unauthorized disclosures, and was forced to pay a $10,000 fine in an out-of-court settlement.

On 28th April 1996 William Colby went on a canoe trip at Rock Point, Maryland. His body was found several days later. Later police claimed that there was no evidence of foul play.

John,

Michael Collins Piper has some interesting things to say about Colby. Quoting his book "Final Judgement" (pp353-357):

"The August 20, 1996 issue of The Sun, a supermarket tabloid, carried an exciting 'newsflash' which announced, "Dead CIA Chief Was Set To Finally Blow Lid on JFK Assassination". The tabloid announced that former CIA director William Colby had been planning to blow the whistle on the truth about the assassination. Although the tabloid provided no evidence whatsoever that this was the case, there is no question but that Colby's strange demise did give many people--not just so called conspiracy theorists--reason to pause. Colby himself had indeed made cryptic remarks about the JFK assassination in one interview shortly before his death, so perhaps there is reason for suspicion.

....The fact is, that while serving as CIA director, William Colby was considered hostile to Israel's interests, so much so that it was Colby who fired the Mossad's longtime agent-in-place at the CIA, James Jesus Angleton, who has been documented in 'Final Judgement' as the key CIA player in the JFK assassination conspiracy.

Evidently, most press reports at the time, describing Colby's sacking of Angleton, didn't tell the whole story. However, according to Wolf Blitzer, longtime Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post: 'CBS News back in 1975 reported that Angleton had lost his job in December 1974 because of policy disputes over Israel and not because of allegations of CIA domestic spying as originally reported...[and that] Angleton was said to have argued with CIA director William Colby over Middle East policy questions as well'1. In fact, according to Blitzer, it was one week before the New York Times first published a story by Seymour Hersh alleging that the CIA was engaged in domestic spying that Colby told Angleton he could no longer handle the Israeli desk at the CIA after which Angleton resigned--effectively forced out by Colby.

As early as 1967 Angleton's behavior had become so bizarre that on one of Angleton's trips to Israel, John Denley Walker, the CIA's station chief in Israel, believed Angleton 'was on the edge of a nervous breakdown'. CBS News reporter Daniel Shorr has described meeting with Angleton shortly after he had been dismissed by Colby. According to Schorr, Angleton 'rambled on circuitously, the conversation disjoined. He had been to Israel thirty times. He had never met Howard Hunt. Angleton added that: 'For twenty two years I handled the Israeli account. Israel was the only sanity in the Middle East. As Angleton's ravings continued, Schorr decided that Angleton was 'really crazy'. Schorr said that Angleton 'went on speaking almost as though I wasn't there'. 'He was talking as though he was looking into his own mind'.

Wolf Blitzer has written about how many high ranking CIA officials didn't share Angleton's enthusiasm for Israel, citing Colby as a specific example: 'In 1975, for example, there was an increasing concern among Israeli intelligence officials over what appeared to be a growing pro-Arab tilt among several senior analysts in the CIA. The November 1975 closed door testimony on the Middle East arms balance offered by outgoing CIA director William Colby was one of the first indications of this attitude. Colby, who had just been dismissed by President Ford, but was asked to remain in office until his designated successor, Ambassador George Bush, returned from China and won Senate confirmation, argued in his testimony that the balance of power was shifting in Israel's favor. Colby's testimony, which disputed figures offered by Israeli officials, was widely seen as having damaged the Administration's own pending request before the Congress for $1.5 billion in military aid for Israel during that fiscal year'.

In the Spring of 1996, Colby contacted a veteran journalist whom he knew to be friendly with top Arab diplomatic, military and intelligence officials and requested that the journalist arrange for Colby to meet with a certain high-level Arab official.2. The first meeting was held at the exclusive (and now infamous) Watergate Hotel in Washington DC. According to a former federal security administrator who attended one of the meetings, Colby and his Arab associate 'had shared concerns. Both men knew that their respective Governments were being infiltrated and manipulated by Israeli agents. Following these meetings, Colby agreed to go to work as a confidential advisor to Arab interests'.

It is interesting to note further that Colby's death came at a critical time when the Israeli lobby in Washington was engaged in a major behind-the-scenes effort to substantially expand the power of the CIA and its then director, John Deutch, a Belgian born Jewish refugee and longtime Washington figure known for his close ties to Israeli intelligence. The so called reform measures were of such a nature that a genuine CIA reformer such as Colby would have emerged as a very loud and public critic of such proposals. On April 24, 1996--two days before Colby disappeared--a little noted Senate committee vote laid the groundwork for a bizarre and unprecedented proposed restructuring of the US civilian and military intelligence system. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, pushed through a vote on a measure to extend the author of the CIA director to control the budgets of all US intelligence agencies, most of which were then under the purview of the military divisions. Under Spector's proposal, the CIA director would have been granted the authority to play a major role in the appointment of the directors of various intelligence agencies, including those inside the Pentagon. This would have put Deutch in control of not only the CIA but also the NSA, DIA and the National Reconnaissance Office, as well as the Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force intelligence groups.

On April 25, the Washington Post commented that, 'such a radical change is likely to run into strong opposition not only from the military services themselves but also from other Congressional committees with Pentagon oversight. The Senate Armed Services Committee has already sent a letter to Specter saying it wants to hold off any action on any of the reforms that would limit the powers of the Pentagon, such as proposals to give the CIA director a role in the naming of agency heads'.

In fact, in the end, the CIA power grab orchestrated by the Israeli sympathisers in Washington was defeated but in the meantime the man who would have been one of its most effective opponents--William Colby--had been removed from the scene.

1. Wolf Blitzer: Between Washington and Jerusalem. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p.89.

2. Author's interview with Andrew St. George, the journalist who arranged the meeting.

Edited by Mark Stapleton
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  • 3 years later...

Journalist and author Zalin Grant makes a compelling argument for foul play in the death of former DCI William E. Colby in his article WHO MURDERED THE CIA CHIEF? William E. Colby: A Highly Suspicious Death.

Grant visited the scene, took pictures, and interviewed witnesses, including the state medical examiner.

Article link: http://www.pythiapress.com/wartales/colby.htm

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Journalist and author Zalin Grant makes a compelling argument for foul play in the death of former DCI William E. Colby in his article WHO MURDERED THE CIA CHIEF? William E. Colby: A Highly Suspicious Death.

Grant visited the scene, took pictures, and interviewed witnesses, including the state medical examiner.

Article link: http://www.pythiapress.com/wartales/colby.htm

Canoes are not very stable boats and tip over very easily.

Maybe he should have went sailing in the Chesapeake instead. Ha ha...

BK

Edited by William Kelly
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  • 1 year later...

Post #2: "The August 20, 1996 issue of The Sun, a supermarket tabloid, carried an exciting 'newsflash' which announced, 'Dead CIA Chief Was Set To Finally Blow Lid on JFK Assassination.' The tabloid announced that former CIA director William Colby had been planning to blow the whistle on the truth about the assassination. Although the tabloid provided no evidence whatsoever that this was the case, there is no question but that Colby's strange demise did give many people--not just so called conspiracy theorists--reason to pause. Colby himself had indeed made cryptic remarks about the JFK assassination in one interview shortly before his death, so perhaps there is reason for suspicion."

Can anyone peg this interview?

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  • 2 months later...

Former CIA Director's Death Raises Questions, Divides Family

First Posted: 12/ 5/11 07:38 PM ET Updated: 12/ 5/11 07:38 PM ET

www.huffingtonpost.com

[view video]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/05/former-cia-directors-death-raises-questions-divides-family_n_1130176.html

WASHINGTON -- A new film on the life and death of master spy and former CIA director William E. Colby, created by his son, raises the question of whether the man who pioneered U.S. counterinsurgency warfare may have ended his own life -- a question that has divided the intelligence community and Colby's family.

Colby developed the strategy of training and arming local troops to assist with counterinsurgency during the Vietnam War -- the same tactic in use today by U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. But as former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft speculates in the film, "The Man Nobody Knew," Colby's role in the creation of U.S. counterintelligence programs in the Vietnam War may have contributed to his suffering "a tortured soul."

If this alleged remorse were real, and had any connection to Colby's death, it could cast a shadow over the early history of U.S. counterinsurgency.

When Colby vanished in rough waters on a late-night, solo canoe trip in 1996, local sheriffs ruled out suicide before they even found his body. A lifetime of espionage meant Colby had enemies from Baltimore to Bali, and conspiracy theories about his death still circulate between Georgetown mansions and CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., today, despite an official ruling of accidental death.

Up to this point, conspiracy theories have focused mainly on the possibility of foul play -- not on suicide. But this may be changing.

Fifteen years after Colby drowned in Maryland's Wimlico River, his son, filmmaker Carl Colby, has produced a documentary about him, "The Man Nobody Knew." The film portrays his father as a man who was wracked with guilt over his actions in the Vietnam War, and whose life fell apart after he left the CIA in 1975. By the time William Colby took his canoe out for one last trip, Carl says "he had had enough of this life."

A narrative that suggests the possibility of suicide is convenient for the film, but for the rest of the Washington-based Colby clan, Carl's public revision of their father's death is painful, and they strongly believe, inaccurate.

Carl Colby's film presents an alternative to the medical examiner's report. "[My father's] death was ruled an accident -- a stroke or a heart attack -- but I think he was done. He didn't have a lot left to live for. And he never wanted to grow old," Carl told Vanity Fair.

But interviews with family members and with Colby's biographer, Randall Woods, paint a very different picture of William Colby's emotional life than Carl's movie does. They portray him as a straightforward, unrepentant soldier who did what he felt was necessary without agonizing too much over the costs. Colby's family also provided The Huffington Post with the coroner's report, which has never been released before, available here.

The Coroner's Report

"I respect my brother's movie, but the implication that my father took his life is not correct, and we felt it was important for people to see the final report of how he died in writing," Jonathan Colby, William Colby's eldest son, said in an interview at his downtown D.C. office Thursday.

The official cause of death is listed as "drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease," meaning that either a stroke or a heart attack debilitated Colby, who was 76 years old, and caused him to fall out of the canoe into the freezing water, where he drowned.

Carl Colby, meanwhile, told The Washington Post that his father "had had enough long before [he drowned]." Asked whether he believes his father committed suicide, Carl was cryptic, though his movie carries strong implications. "I think he just got tired," he said.

But Colby had severe plaque buildup in his arteries, and not just any arteries: specifically the left, anterior descending artery -- known for producing heart attacks so massive that it's nicknamed the widow-maker.

Another clue Jonathan pointed out was the fact that Colby's body was found without his shoes, likely the result of his kicking the water, and largely inconsistent with suicide, he said.

Colby's Private Life

Carl Colby and his siblings also hold deeply divergent opinions about what kind of person their father was.

Throughout the film, Carl focuses on the impenetrable and complicated "Rubik's cube" that he believed his father to be. Carl did not include any of his siblings in the film, telling HuffPost, "everyone has their own story to tell; this is simply mine."

Yet the film only presents Carl's version of his father's life and death. Furthermore, William Colby was a public figure who had an impact on American history, so the story that Carl calls "simply mine" is in fact much bigger.

One sister, the late Catherine Colby, figures prominently into a narrative suggesting that remorse may have been a motive in Colby's death. Catherine suffered from epilepsy and died in 1973, at age 24. Carl says that "while she was alive, [her father] was never there for her." But 23 years after her death and two weeks before their father's final canoe trip, Carl Colby says his father called him "seeking absolution for his not doing enough when Catherine was so ill."

The film is dedicated to Catherine's memory, and the implication is that William Colby was wracked by guilt over her death. But it's difficult to reconcile this narrative with another line in the movie, where Carl, the narrator, says of his father, "I'm not sure he ever loved anyone; I never heard him say anything heartfelt."

Colby's Public Life

Among historians, William Colby is best-remembered as the man who gave away the CIA's "family jewels," details about covert actions the agency carried out between 1950 and the end of the Vietnam War. Colby was ordered to release them to Congress as part of the Church Committee hearings of 1975, but many of his colleagues at the time considered it a major betrayal. In "The Man Nobody Knew," Scowcroft, then the National Security Advisor, speculates that giving up the information was a form of penance Colby performed to absolve his "tortured soul" of sins he believed were committed during the war. But Colby's family disagrees.

"My father saw how the country was changing after Watergate, with a weak White House and a powerful Congress, and he believed that a covert intelligence agency could exist with congressional oversight," Jonathan said.

Bridge Colby, Jonathan's son, added that "the release of the family jewels was the only way he knew to save the agency, in effect showing Congress, 'Look, this is all we did, nothing more!'"

"For him, the world was very black and white. He fought the Nazis in Europe and then fought the Communists in Vietnam, and as far as he was concerned, these were not good people, full stop," Jonathan said. "Was he introspective? In a word, no."

The program Colby pioneered in Vietnam was known as the Phoenix program, and it armed Vietnamese soldiers and helped them root out suspected Communist insurgents -- much like American intelligence agents do today by training Afghan soldiers to find and fight al Qaeda militants. But the plan resulted in the deaths of more than 20,000 Vietnamese villagers at the hands of their countrymen, leading human rights activists to liken it to a U.S.-backed assassination program.

But Jonathan Colby compared civilian deaths in the Phoenix program to President Obama's use of CIA drones in the tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which have unintentionally killed civilians, alongside their intended targets: members of al Qaeda's leadership. "Do people think Obama and Gen. [David] Petraeus are 'tortured souls' over this?" he asked rhetorically. "Of course not."

Randall Woods spent the past seven years studying Colby's life for his upcoming biography, "America's Jesuit: William Egan Colby and the CIA," which contains interviews with hundreds of Colby's friends and colleagues. Woods also dismisses the idea that the career spy had deeply-buried guilt over his family or his decisions in Vietnam.

"In terms of his emotional and psychological life, there's nothing else here than what you see," Woods told HuffPost. "This was a well-intentioned, decent guy who loved adventure, and whose greatest fault was his naivete."

After The CIA

Woods also disputes another claim Carl Colby makes in "The Man Nobody Knew": that William Colby was "very bitter and angry" when then-President Gerald Ford fired him in 1975.

Jonathan Colby agrees with Woods, and he recalls his father neither bitter nor broken-up when Ford replaced him with future president George H.W. Bush. "He actually stayed on for three months after Ford canned him, unlike [then-Defense Secretary James] Schlesinger, who was fired the same day as my father was, and who walked out right away."

Schlesinger was replaced by a young Donald Rumsfeld, who would face the same challenge in Afghanistan post-9/11 as Colby and Schlesinger had in Vietnam: How to wage a guerilla war for the hearts and minds of rural villagers with an army designed for massive, scorched-earth combat ops.

For his part, however, William Colby did not seem to suffer from the kind of mental anguish that would drive a man to suicide, his son Jonathan said.

"With all that happened in the Vietnam years," he said, "what's really striking to me is why he wasn't tortured by it more."

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Guest Robert Morrow

At about the time Colby died, elite CIA counterintelligence agent and assassin Chip Tatum was going public with his story: http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/TATUM/tatum.html

Colby, Felix Rodriguez and Oliver North, on behalf of GHW Bush, had approached Chip Tatum about shutting up and quit talking about his blockbuster story of years of covert and often criminal operations for Pegasus.

Also, William Colby was a friend of John De Camp, the Nebraska legislator and state senator who had worked with Colby in Operation Phoenix. De Camp had approached Colby about help with investigating the Franklin pedophile ring which had recently been covered up in Omaha and Washington, DC. There was gartantuan amounts of official corruption with the cover up of the Franklin Scandal.

In my opinion, William Colby either had a heart attack or ... it is possible, someone with hierarchy like George Herbert Walker Bush had him murdered for a variety of reasons.

Franklin Scandal web page: http://www.franklinscandal.com/

Another good web page on Franklin: http://www.franklincase.org/

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  • 5 years later...
On 10/29/2004 at 2:38 AM, Shanet Clark said:

John, Tim, James and other members:

I Just Found a huge web site dedicated to Colby, The MK/ULTRA and various

CIA excesses. It was put together by the son of Frank Olson, who died

from the MK/ULTRA experiments. It contains the article "The man who knew too much" and many of Colby's actual CIA files, and much more:

(the 1953 CIA assassination handbook is particularly rich):

http://www.frankolsonproject.org/Contents.html

Shanet

 

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