Honorable Men

In this memoir, the former CIA director and veteran intelligence agent recalls the people and events who shaped his career, while detailing the inner workings of the CIA.

“This is a big and important book. It deserves to be read whole, and carefully.” —Foreign Affairs

William E. Colby was not expected to cause a stir when he accepted the role of CIA director from President Richard Nixon. But in the wake of firestorms in Vietnam, Chile, and at the Watergate Hotel, a scathing exposé forced Colby to answer for a decade of troubling CIA activity. The statements he made in front of Congress and the press transformed him into a controversial figure in the political and intelligence communities; he simply thought he was doing the right thing.

In Honorable Men, Colby retraces his career and the development of the OSS and the CIA. He recounts parachuting behind enemy lines in World War II to blow up railroads and lead resistance groups, and ends with his involvement in the great debate over the CIA’s operations—and his dismissal at the hands of Gerald Ford.

Along the way, Colby outlines the practices of the CIA, offering an insider’s description of spycraft as a man who knew it intimately. A senior official with decades of field experience before running “The Company” from its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Colby explains how the CIA is organized, managed, and led, and how its agents operate and hide. He also discusses how intelligence is acquired, reviewed, and disseminated to the CIA’s “customers.”

In addition, Colby describes the extraordinary behind-the-scenes dramas and decisions he witnessed and the world figures he met: Henry Kissinger, Lyndon B. Johnson, Vietnamese presidents Ngo Dinh Diem and Nguyen Van Thieu, Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce, and the Kennedys. He also provides unique appraisals of such shadowy CIA figures as Allen Dulles (who once listened to Colby’s report while in the bath), the fabled Desmond FitzGerald, and the legendary Edward Lansdale, as well as such old OSS “graduates” as Stewart Alsop.

Colby analyzes the creation and growth of the CIA and its separate divisions of spymasters and counterspies, the political and paramilitary activists, and the analysts. He recalls his involvement in pivotal intelligence operations in Europe, Vietnam, Chile, and elsewhere, as well as events during his tenure as CIA director.

An amazing classic full of stunning revelations and a fascinating work of twentieth-century history, Honorable Men is the autobiography of an extraordinary man.