Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby

by John Prados

Book Overview

From his years as America's point man in Vietnam to his mysterious death in 1996, William E. Colby was one of the most enigmatic figures of the Cold War. Whether it was in CIA operations against Russia, anti-Communism in Western Europe, covert action in Southeast Asia, or its involvement in the Watergate affair, Colby stood at the center of the agency's secret activities.
Lost Crusader for the first time uncovers the real story of this master...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195128478
• ISBN13: 9780195128475
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

History now, not current events

Anyone who thinks of Saint Paul, Minnesota as an Irish Catholic stronghold ought to be able to imagine Margaret Egan Colby giving birth to William Egan Colby here on January 4, 1920, (p. 20), only one day after my own mother was born someplace else. LOST CRUSADER/ THE SECRET WARS OF CIA DIRECTOR WILLIAM COLBY by John Prados (Oxford University Press, 2003) is full of such close associations. Prados does not approve of everything that was done, however much Colby might. For example, after Hugh Tovar's service in Jakarta, "What Colby did can only be interpreted to show that he thought highly of the Indonesian affair: Colby dispatched the CIA's man on the scene of the bloodbath to Laos to run the agency's secret war there, probably the Far East Division's most sensitive covert operation." (p. 157). A number of issues are pursued throughout the book, over many chapters and in many settings. References to crusaders (what would Osama say?) might be considered a geopolitical red flag in 2003. Is CIA policy in the Middle East like certain popes who considered the rulers of the Holy Land (long ago) as of the wrong religion to control Jerusalem? This is still a dicey question today.As an undergraduate at Princeton, starting in the fall of 1936, "Religious Catholic that he was, Bill had a problem with the Princeton rule that first- and second-year students had to attend at least half of Sunday chapel services, as the school was strongly Presbyterian. Colby fulfilled this requirement by becoming an altar boy at the Catholic Chapel." (p. 25). I'm not sure why this would be a problem, unless Presbyterians automatically take attendance, but the priest doesn't look to see who is at mass, wouldn't remember anyway, and only keeps a schedule of who is serving as altar boy. Later, while Colby was working for the CIA in Rome under Ambassador Clare Booth Luce, it is reported that Pope Pius XII had excommunicated all Italian communists in 1949, (p. 55) a sure sign that he didn't want to see them around anymore.The early part of LOST CRUSADER fills in a lot of information on his OSS activities in France and Norway, where Colby wanted to capture the town of Lierne in Operation "Rype," but was delayed until after the German capitulation in May, 1945, when the Germans "gave up on May 11 without difficulty. Major William E. Colby corralled 10,000 German soldiers." (p. 33). He was not so lucky on his first day in Saigon, where he was assigned as CIA deputy chief of station in February, 1959. Cambodian troops had arrested Cambodian General Dap Chhuon just days after he had been visited by Ed Lansdale and senior U.S. Pacific Theater Commanders who "were traveling on a survey of United States military assistance programs and stopped in Cambodia." (p. 67). Among the items captured by the Cambodian troops on February 21, 1959 was "a CIA radio and its agency operator, Victor M. Matsui." (p. 68). Colby had to explain to the Cambodians what Matsui had been doing