Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA

by William E. Colby

Book Overview

The first half of this candid and revealing memoir recounts the author's career as a practitioner of covert action in World War II and afterward in Sweden, Italy and Vietnam. The operator's limited... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671228757
• ISBN13: 9780671228750
• Release Date: May 1978
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 493 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Learning about my father's covert life

My father's involvement with the CIA has always been a mystery to me as he was not forthcoming with information and deceptive at times. He did get me a summer job working for one of the CIA's proprietary airlnes and most likely recruited my cousin Billy Jean Crawley who, after retirement, revealed that his supposed State Department employment was really CIA. Billy Jean attended Modesto Junior College, and he and his first CIA partner who I once met, were apparently referred to in Colby's book regardng the background of their recruits. Bill said he lost two partners (killed) during his tenure in Vietnem, Laos, and Cambodia and narrowly escaped death in Iraq in the '50s. While a Visiting Professor at VMI in 1989, I spoke with the #2 man in the management of the forerunner of Air America, whose superior was Gene Winters, and he described my late father by saying "He was an honorable man" and informed me that some of my father's activities were still classified. I read a footnote in Mr. Colby's book which answered on of my questions about covert involvement of some of the aircraft of Transocean Airlines I worked on at Hanger 28, Oakland Airport during the 1950s. I also worked on Civil Air Transport, Overseas National and Flying Tiger aircraft. I was offered contract employment(Guam, Iran, and Nigeria) and a CIA career position (GS-11 Analyst) by Mr. Winters after completing my education and working on the Titan IIIC development and testing. I did not accept employment offers with the CIA because of personal and family concerns but am grateful of the fact that they, via my father, financed my higher education. My last employment offer in intellignce was in 1972.