Honourable Men: My life in the CIA by William Colby and Peter Forbath

Here is the inside story of American intelligence and espionage, told by one of the most controversial and visible of CIA directors. Colby's career spanned thirty years, from the dramatic Second World War era of General 'Wild Bill' Donovan -- when Colby was parachuted behind the enemy lines in German-occupied France and Norway, where he blew up railroads, joined resistance networks and led groups of underground fighters -- to the great public debate over the CIA's role and activities, in which Colby, as the embattled director, answered the questions of the press on a whole generation of CIA policies, secrets, operations and achievements. Colby describes, in full and accurate detail, the innermost workings and procedures of the CIA -- how it is organized; how it is managed and led; how its agents operate and hide; how intelligence is acquired, analyzed, checked and disseminated to the CIA's 'customers.' Here is the real description of spycraft, by a man who knows it intimately, both from field experience (in wartime France and Norway and as a CIA operative in Scandinavia, Italy and South Vietnam) and as a senior official -- and the Director -- of the CIA in Langley. His book is full of extraordinary behind-the-scenes dramas and decisions, and of intimate portraits of such world figures as Henry Kissinger, Lyndon B. Johnson (who gave Colby a surprising warning), the Diem brothers (with whom Colby had very close relations), Madame Nhu, Richard Nixon, President Thieu, Ambassador Claire Boothe Luce, Gerald Ford and the Kennedys, with unique appraisals of such formerly shadowy CIA figures as Allen Dulles (who once listened to Colby's report while in the bath), John McCone, Richard Helms, the fabled Desmond Fitzgerald, James Angleton, the legendary Edward Lansdale, and such old OSS 'graduates' as Stewart Alsop. He analyzes the creation and growth of 'the three cultures' of intelligence, the separate divisions within the CIA, which were present at its creation, of the spymasters and counterspies, the political and paramilitary activitists and the analysts, and gives astonishing and detailed accounts of his own involvement in intelligence operations in Europe during the Cold War (particularly the CIA involvement in Italian politics); the Strategic Hamlet Program in Vietnam; the coup against the Diems; the CIA's international anti-Communist cultural, labor, student and journalist groups throughout the world; the 'secret war' in Laos; the controversial Vietnam Pacification Program and CORDS (Civil Operations and Rural Development Supports), which Colby headed and which included the so-called Operation Phoenix; the CIA effort (ordered by Nixon) to block Allende in Chile; the CIA and Watergate; and Colby's own tenure as Director, which included the revelations about Glomar Explorer; the leak of the CIA's 'family jewels' (the famous list of the Agency's illegal operations); sensational accusations of assassination and Angleton's departure... Colby describes in fascinating detail his reorganization and streamlining of the Agency, his appearance before the Rockefeller Commission, his dealings with the Ford White House, his firing at the hands of President Ford in the 'Halloween Massacre'... This is an amazing, revealing book: a fascinating work of contemporary history and the autobiography of an extraordinary man. This 1978 Hutchinson Hardback is in fair condition.

ISBN: 9780091348205 SKU: 1420693 Note: Any image shown is from a stock photo and is not the actual book.

Location: Politics