About William Colby
William Egan Colby (January 4, 1920 – May 6, 1996) was an American intelligence officer who served as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from September 1973 to January 1976. During World War II, Colby served with the Office of Strategic Services. After the war, he joined the newly created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Before and during the Vietnam War, Colby served as chief of station in Saigon, chief of the CIA's Far East Division, and head of the Civil Operations and Rural Development effort and oversaw the Phoenix Program. After the war, Colby became Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and during his tenure, under intense pressure from the Congress and the media, adopted a policy of relative openness about U.S. intelligence activities to the Senate Church Committee and the House Pike Committee. Colby served as DCI under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford until January 30, 1976, and was succeeded at the CIA by George H. W. Bush. == Early life == Colby was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1920. His father, Elbridge Colby, who came from a New England family with a history of military and public service, was a professor of English, an author, and a military officer who served in the U.S. Army and in university positions in Tianjin, China; Georgia; Vermont; and Washington, D.C. Though a career officer, Elbridge Colby's professional pursuits focused less on strictly military activities and more on intellectual and scholarly contributions to military and literary subjects. Elbridge's father, Charles Colby, had been a professor of chemistry at Columbia University but had died prematurely and left his family largely without money. Colby's mother, Margaret Egan, was from an Irish family in St.
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