Randall B. Woods is the author most recently of Shadow Warrior: William Egan Colby and the CIA, a biography of the late former CIA director. His other books include LBJ: Architect of American Ambition and Fulbright: A Biography. He is John A. Cooper Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, and he lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Q: Why did you decide to write a biography of William Colby?
A: I teach courses on American history, and I’ve taught a
course on the Vietnam War. If you look at the literature of the war, for most
scholars, the war ended after Tet in 1968. The number of pieces in the media on
Vietnam dropped off. After Mr. Nixon was in office, he and [Henry] Kissinger
decided eventually to get out.
Initially, the Johnson administration [followed General
William] Westmoreland’s policy of search and destroy. People like Bill Colby in
the foreign policy establishment were arguing that this was the wrong way to
fight the war—we are trying to build [a country], let the Vietnamese fight
their own fight—and they began to turn Johnson around. He authorized CORDS
[Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support], which was really a
Colby brainchild.
This got me interested in the political, psychological type
of warfare, and I began to go back and saw that two cultures developed [in the
CIA]—espionage and nation-building.
Colby is an interesting figure….[In the CIA] there are good,
principled people doing very bad things, and that makes for nice literary
tension….
There were two trajectories—on the ground in South Vietnam,
we were building communities and making the countryside more secure; we could
never do anything about the government in Saigon. This was a fairly successful
operation. It’s as if counterinsurgency and pacification was going in one
direction and the White House was going in another. There’s a tragic element to
that.
In the military, the CIA, USAID, there were very bright
people, a lot had advanced degrees. They were very thoughtful about the war,
and very interesting to interview.
Q: What surprised you most as you were researching the book?
A: These people on the ground who worked for Colby…a lot of
people came to believe by the end of the war that the National Liberation
Front, if not the North Vietnamese Communist Party, were Vietnam’s best chance
for [success].
[Given] the lack of
political cohesion in the South, the enemy they were fighting was going to be
the country’s salvation. That was very tragic. Colby was a true believer; he
never bought into that. His disciples admired him, but they saw him as flawed
in that respect.
Colby was trying to organize civilian defense groups. The
idea was that the communities fought to defend themselves; that may or may not
have been true. From the point of view of the government in Saigon, what Colby
was doing was subversive; any independent armed group in the countryside, they
viewed as a threat. Colby was trying to create secure communities, while they
were trying to undermine it.
There’s been some stuff on CORDS, but the books written have
been very bureaucratic and dry. It’s full of stories…there’s a lot of romance.
Q: You write, “In truth, despite his goodwill and good
intentions, Bill Colby…would do more to divide and demoralize the CIA than any
of his predecessors.” Why was that?
A: It was force of circumstances; he didn’t do it on
purpose. He was confronted with the [CIA’s] “family jewels,” [various illegal
or controversial tactics or plans that were coming to light in the wake of Watergate
and Vietnam], and the White House wanted him to stonewall. He thought that was
wrong.
The community is still divided; there are people who think
he’s a traitor. On one level, he’s a constitutional lawyer, that’s how he was
trained. He perceived that if Congress determined to find out things about CIA,
it not only could do that but had a right to. His loyalty was to the Constitution.
Politically, he believed that if he wasn’t forthcoming to
Congress and the press, in the wake of the antiwar movement, Congress might do
away with the CIA, which he loved. In his eyes, he was making compromises to
save the CIA. Others didn’t see that. There were people I interviewed, old
professionals, who believe he erred. It’s very much [former CIA director Richard]
Helms [versus] Colby.
Q: Colby’s death was mysterious. What do you think really
happened?
A: I think he was murdered….You never really leave the CIA.
He was involved in things I just caught a whiff of. People were operating out
of Australia; he had probably some involvement with the contras. I think he
knew the truth about Oswald’s connections with the Cubans. There are just so
many things. I think he was killed, but I have no proof about who did it.
Q: What did his family think of your book?
A: They’re deeply divided. The oldest son and youngest son
[gave] complete cooperation and encouragement. The middle son was initially
cooperative. He’s an independent filmmaker, and made a film on his father that
features his mother. [The idea in the film is that] he left and betrayed his
family…and drowned himself in a fit of depression….The surviving daughter
didn’t like the way I treated her mother, so she’s mad at me.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Eight or nine years ago I did a big biography of Lyndon
Johnson, but there was a lot I had to leave out. I’m doing a book on the Great
Society as a great reform movement, and trying to compare it with other great
reform movements of the 20th century. There are lot of 50th
anniversaries coming up…
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: The Phoenix program [in Vietnam] was very controversial
at the time. It became a whipping boy for the antiwar movement. We were doing
to the Vietcong what they were doing to the South Vietnamese. The Vietcong had
terrorist units that were probably responsible for [thousands] of deaths. The
Phoenix program was designed to eradicate them.
The idea was that American special forces and Seals would
work with the South Vietnamese intelligence and counterterrorism teams, and
gather information at the local level, and arrest or kill them.
The Phoenix program is a predecessor to the current drone
program; the techniques are the same, the methods are different. It’s an
iteration of that. There are shadows of CORDS in Afghanistan. [General] David
Petraeus worked for Colby. The issues Colby had to deal with are very much
alive today.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. This Q&A is also posted on www.hauntinglegacy.com.
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