Shadow Warrior

by Randall B. Woods

  As director of central intelligence, Bill Colby had sought to change the very nature of intelligence gathering. Since the emergence of the nation-state system and the creation of the first security services, intelligence had been characterized by compartmentalization and absolute “need-to-know.” A nation’s spies operated outside constitutional and legal boundaries; secrecy was paramount, information restricted to the absolutely smallest number of individuals possible. Colby was remembered by his friends—and his enemies—for cooperating with Congress when it demanded that the Agency own up to its past and accept a future characterized by oversight and disclosure. Some said that Colby acted under duress; others, that he was an authentic advocate of more openness and accountability.

  What got less public attention—but was far more worrisome to Angleton, Helms, and other traditionalists—was the array of internal reforms Colby brought to the CIA. He attacked the concept of compartmentalization, insisting on the broadest possible sharing of information among those who had expertise or a different perspective to offer. He was concerned with protection of sources and methods, but there were limits. Secrets could be dangerous things. As he once remarked to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, “the more we know about each other, the safer we are.” From the point of view of those who made their lives in the world of espionage and counterespionage, Bill Colby was the ultimate subversive.3

  But at heart, Colby was not a true spy. He came from that branch of the CIA that specialized in covert operations, political action, and nation-building. Like his father, he was a romantic of the Rudyard Kipling, Robert Baden-Powell, Theodore Roosevelt stripe. He could destroy the country’s enemies, but he was much more interested in converting them, proving them wrong. As the Cold War developed in the 1950s and 1960s into a competition between two rival political and economic systems and moved from Europe to the developing world, Colby, the liberal activist, found himself in his element. He would train stay-behind networks in Scandinavia (to offer resistance in case the Soviets overran the area), wage political warfare in Italy, and then spend nearly a dozen years trying to build a viable noncommunist society in South Vietnam. Colby was a champion of covert action, secret armies, pacification, and counterterrorism. These alternatives, he argued, were far preferable to conventional combat by main-force units, which killed tens of thousands and usually destroyed the country in which the battles were fought. Again, as far as the traditional military was concerned, Colby was a heretic, but for advocates of unconventional warfare, he was a prophet.

  2

  THE COLBYS AND THE EGANS

  Bill Colby’s father, Elbridge, was the quintessential Yankee, descended from eight generations of Massachusetts Puritans-cum-Congregationalists. A number of Colbys had been seafarers, ships’ captains, and mates who were gone for years at a time as they traversed the world’s oceans. Bill’s grandfather, Charles Edward Colby, was the clan’s first intellectual of note. Born in Massachusetts but educated in New York City’s public schools, Charles had distinguished himself as an inventor and math whiz by age fourteen. He matriculated at Columbia College and subsequently rose to become professor of organic chemistry. He married Emily Lynn Carrington in 1882. Elbridge was born nine years later. Charles suffered from poor health throughout his adult life and died prematurely of Bright’s disease.1 Elbridge was nine years old.

  The New York that Elbridge Colby grew up in was one of the most vibrant communities in the world. It was a city of extreme wealth, high culture, an emerging middle class, and a degraded underclass composed of dirty, diseased, illiterate immigrants who toiled from dawn to dusk for a pittance. While the rich reveled in the “high life,” congregating at the Waldorf-Astoria and the opulent apartments of Fifth Avenue, and the doctors, lawyers, managers, and ministers sought refuge on Long Island or in the boroughs bordering Manhattan, the poor resided in crowded, filthy tenements in Five Points or the Lower East side—“Hell’s Kitchen.” The city produced America’s first Progressive-era president, Theodore Roosevelt. Buoyed by his exploits with the Rough Riders in the Spanish American War (or at least reports of those exploits), by his embrace of the new reform movement known as Progressivism, and by his advocacy of overseas empire, Roosevelt had shot up through the ranks of the Republican Party. Even while he was president, TR continued to be an avid outdoorsman, hunting, hiking, and horseback riding whenever he could. He was the first conservationist to occupy the White House. From what he would call his “bully pulpit,” TR advocated “preparedness” to his fellow Americans—which meant, for men, the willingness to forbear ease and risk their lives for their country; for women, the willingness to bear children and sacrifice for family; and for the nation, a strong military and active, independent foreign policy, coupled with laws to restrain big business and provide a degree of protection to the laboring masses. Though not of his socioeconomic class, the Colbys were enthusiastic supporters of the Rough Rider.

  After his father’s death, Elbridge’s mother took a position in the registrar’s office of New York’s Hunter College. As his family clung desperately to the lower rungs of the middle class, Elbridge worked his way first through high school and then Columbia College. He received a bachelor’s degree in English literature, graduating magna cum laude in 1912—the same year he became a Phi Beta Kappa—and earned a master’s degree in 1913. Elbridge converted to Catholicism while in college. At Columbia, he was deeply influenced by the distinguished European historian Carlton J. H. Hayes. In 1904, Hayes, drawn by the teachings and example of John Henry Cardinal Newman, had himself converted. Elbridge’s family did not approve of his conversion. Protestants to the core, his two older sisters would not speak to him for more than twenty years.2

  In addition to Roosevelt, Hayes, and Newman, Elbridge was drawn to two other prominent figures of the post-Victorian era—the Englishmen Rudyard Kipling and Robert Baden-Powell. Kipling, one of the most popular writers of his time, was the ultimate apologist for British imperialism. Born in India, he and his parents considered themselves “Anglo-Indians.” In his Jungle Book tales, Kim, and the epic poem “Gunga Din,” Kipling reveled in the melding of native cultures and British civilization. His only son died in World War I. Robert Baden-Powell, first Baron Baden-Powell, was famed as the founder of modern scouting. “Lord B-P,” as he became known in the press, served in the British Army from 1876 to 1910. During the early 1880s in the Natal Province of South Africa, where his regiment had been posted, Baden-Powell honed his military scouting skills amid the Zulu. In 1896, during the Second Matabele War, the Englishman met and befriended the American scout Frederick Burnham, who introduced Baden-Powell to “woodcraft,” that is, the scout craft of the American Old West. Learned primarily from Native Americans, this method of scouting included among other things tracking, stealth, and survival techniques. On his return from Africa in 1903, Lord B-P found that his military training manual, Aids to Scouting, had become a best seller. Scouting for Boys was published in 1908 and sold 150 million copies during the years that followed.3 TR, Baden-Powell, and Kipling were role models for the fatherless boy.

  From 1912 to 1914, Elbridge was a Proudfit Fellow in Letters at Columbia. In 1914 he was accepted into the Ph.D. program in English at the University of Minnesota. While employed as an instructor there, he met and fell in love with Mary Margaret Egan, the daughter of one of nearby St. Paul’s most prominent Catholic families. They were an unlikely couple. Elbridge, though still a young man, was evidencing that austerity, rigid self-discipline, and severity that would characterize the rest of his life. “Converts are painful people,” Elbridge’s granddaughter would later observe. Margaret was pretty, outgoing, liberal, and liberated. Her father, William H. Egan, born in St. Paul in 1859, was the son of Irish immigrants. Like Elbridge’s Puritan ancestors, he had grown up on the frontier; the upper Midwest was the scene of the last sustained fighting between Indians and whites. As a young man, however, William Egan had learned Sioux—even producing a Sioux-English dictionary—and he had made
a fortune trading with the natives rather than killing them. The family archives boasts a photo of little Margaret sitting in the lap of the famous Sitting Bull, who was clad in native garb and top hat. The Egans lived in a small mansion on Summit Avenue just down the street from railroad executive Jay Gould. By the 1890s, William had accumulated enough capital to take the family on an around-the-world tour. John, Margaret’s elder brother, attended Harvard.4

  Margaret was an English major at the University of Minnesota when she met Elbridge. It was still rare for women to go to college, and she was one of the few female students on campus. Margaret and Elbridge had very different personalities—Margaret was affectionate and carefree, and Elbridge stern and intense—but they shared common values. First, there was their Catholicism, which at that time began to emphasize the Social Gospel that later developed into the Catholic Worker Movement led by Dorothy Day. Elbridge had inherited the educated New Englander’s enlightened attitudes toward race, and the Egans were Democrats in a region where Progressivism was at its strongest. The Colby’s exhibited enlightened racial attitudes early on. Elbridge’s great-uncle, Lieutenant Colonel Ebenezer T. Colby of the 4th Massachusetts, writing to his brother in April 1863, had said, “Several hundreds of the able bodied men have joined the Negro Regiment forming here. Their condition arouses my sympathies. I am becoming more and more interested in this oppressed race every day. I hope the Government will adopt a liberal policy respecting them.” Both Margaret and Elbridge also had a strong sense of service and a determination to make a difference.5

  In 1915, Elbridge interrupted his studies—and his courtship—to volunteer for service with the Serbian Executive Committee of Mercy, a creation of the American Red Cross. Following the outbreak of World War I, the committee had devoted itself to aiding the wounded and displaced of the various Allied countries, especially Belgium and Serbia. Elbridge spent several months in the Balkans driving ambulances, delivering supplies, and helping to set up refugee camps. He was a Progressive abroad—a miniature Herbert Hoover—sharing American largesse and striving to make a better world. For his efforts he was awarded the Serbian Red Cross’s Gold Medal and, after the Versailles Peace Conference, the Order of Mercy by Yugoslavia, Serbia’s successor state.6

  In 1916, Elbridge returned to his teaching post in Minnesota; he married Margaret the following year.7 When America entered World War I in 1917, Elbridge enlisted, hoping to be sent to France, where he could establish a combat record. Instead, to his deep chagrin, he was posted to Panama to serve in the detachment guarding the canal. The one bright spot was that Margaret was able to accompany him. At war’s end in 1919, he resigned from the army, and, with a pregnant Margaret in tow, returned to Minnesota to resume his studies and teaching duties.

  William Egan Colby was born in St. Paul on January 4, 1920. A year later, Elbridge earned his doctorate and then abruptly decided to reenlist in the military. In his memoirs, Bill recalled that his father “became anxious about his ability, as a struggling writer and underpaid teacher, to support his family of my mother and myself.” Indeed, so strapped was the young couple that they found it necessary to live with the Egans after returning from Panama. “I went into the Army to keep the family decent,” Elbridge would later tell one of his grandsons.8

  It was clear that eventually Margaret would become a modest heiress, but her Yankee husband had no intention of living off his wife. There was more than machismo involved; from an early age, Elbridge had had to assume familial duties; he was raised to be responsible, to take responsibility for those dependent on him, and then, of course, to breed responsibility. The army recognized Elbridge’s previous service and advanced degree and granted him a commission. Thus, at the age of twenty-nine, Second Lieutenant Elbridge Colby embarked on a military career that would span four decades; ultimately, however, he would be noted more for his intellectual and pedagogical attainments than for his battlefield achievements.

  The interwar army was small and dominated by southern whites—and as such its culture was a bit alien to Yankees like Elbridge and Margaret. The Colbys bounced around from post to post, landing, in 1925, at Fort Benning, Georgia, where Elbridge became involved in a racial incident that would change the course of his career. That year the army, rather unwisely, had assigned the all-black 24th Infantry Division to Benning, which was situated in the heart of the ex-Confederacy. The 24th had been established in 1869 and at that time had included African American veterans of the Union Army as well as freed slaves. The regiment was one of the “Buffalo Soldier” outfits that had served in the Indian Wars on the western frontier, in the Spanish American War, and in General John J. Pershing’s punitive expedition against Pancho Villa in 1916. In 1917, 150 members of the unit had become involved in a vicious race riot in Houston.

  While Elbridge was at Benning, a black soldier from the 24th was shot dead in nearby Americus, Georgia, when he refused to give up the sidewalk to a white. Subsequently, an all-white jury acquitted the shooter. Elbridge, then serving as Benning’s publicity officer, wrote an outraged letter of protest for the post’s newspaper, calling upon all soldiers, black and white, to declare support for their wronged comrade. His eloquent appeal was reprinted in The Nation magazine, creating a national uproar. With the Georgia congressional delegation calling for Elbridge’s head, the black press and the biracial NAACP came to the young officer’s aid, but the army also felt that it had to act. As punishment, Elbridge was to be assigned for a period to the 24th.9 Although the idealistic young officer hardly viewed his assignment as punishment, the Benning incident would mar his career, and many in his family, including Bill, would later believe that it had kept Elbridge from attaining the rank of general.

  In 1929, Elbridge, now a captain, was assigned to the 15th Infantry Regiment in Tientsin (Tianjin), China. Bill, who was nine years old when his father received the assignment, would spend the next three years in the Orient; it would be one of the formative influences of his life.

  The 15th Regiment had initially served in China as part of the relief expedition that had ended the siege of foreigners in Peking during the Boxer Uprising (1899–1900). Although the regiment was withdrawn after the Great Powers crushed the rebellion, it was ordered back to China following the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty in 1912. Headquartered in Tientsin, it took its position astride the Peking-Mukden railway in January 1912; it labored to protect American interests during the tumultuous years of the 1920s, particularly when the Chinese Nationalists ousted the ruling dynasty and then split into communist and noncommunist factions. A prolonged civil war between the two groups ended with Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists driving Mao Tse-tung and the communists into the far northwestern reaches of the country.10 Despite this unrest, China was an attractive post for many Americans: alcohol was legal and plentiful, and the Great Depression lay half a world away. Elbridge was particularly excited about the assignment. China had occupied a special place in the hearts and minds of American Progressives. Bankers and businessmen dreamed of a “great China market,” while missionaries and engineers like Herbert Hoover labored to bring a better life to the inhabitants of the land that Pearl S. Buck would so movingly profile in her novel The Good Earth. Progressives had launched the “Open Door Policy,” which sought to preserve both Chinese markets and sovereignty, and many had embraced Chiang as the avatar of modernity. Tientsin promised to satisfy Elbridge’s yearning for adventure and provide an outlet for his missionary impulses.

  Elbridge, Margaret, and Bill began their journey to Tientsin on the East Coast in the fall, boarding a US Army Transport (USAT) in Brooklyn. The voyage proceeded down the eastern seaboard, where it encountered one of the gales that regularly visit the mid-Atlantic states with winter’s approach. Farther south, the travelers encountered warmer weather and the stunning blue waters of the Caribbean. After a brief stop to allow passengers to see the Canal Zone and the sights of Panama City, which were new to Bill, the ship continued on to San Francisco. There Elbridge and his
family boarded the “doughboy special,” the USAT Thomas, a veteran of many transpacific runs. Following weeks at sea, the ship anchored at Chinwangtao, a major Chinese port on the Gulf of Chihli that served much of northern China, including Peking and Tientsin. Disembarking, the new arrivals boarded railcars for a six-hour trip along the Peking-Mukden railway to Tientsin, 167 miles to the southwest. At last, the replacements for the 15th arrived at Tientsin’s East Station, there to find the regiment’s service company waiting with teams of horses and baggage wagons. The new arrivals were soon marching along Victoria and Meadows Roads bound for the American compound situated in the old German concession.11

  Tientsin, a city of four thousand foreigners and a million Chinese, was situated on a vast alluvial plain extending beyond Peking to the Gulf of Chihli on the Yellow Sea. It lay at the head of the Hai Ho, the “Sea River,” a short waterway formed by the confluence of the Grand Canal entering Tientsin from the west and the Pei Ho River flowing from the northwest. The Sea River meandered 40 miles to the southeast, where its mouth was guarded by the Taku forts. The Sea River was an important commercial waterway navigated by small steamers, seagoing junks, and gunboats of the international concessionary powers, those nations that during the past century had forced various Chinese rulers to grant them territory and economic monopolies.12

  As far as the eye could see, the surrounding countryside was absolutely flat, dotted with small villages, brick kilns, and the mounds of countless graves. The climate in northern China was harsh. Summers were stifling and winters bitterly cold. Situated on the banks of the Sea River, Tientsin was sometimes flooded, especially in typhoon season. In the spring, northeastern China choked under a veil of dust blowing in from the Gobi Desert located 65 miles to the northwest. Because it was the gateway to Peking, the imperial seat, Tientsin was known as the Ford of Heaven.