On May 7, 1996, the Charles County Sheriff’s Office found the body of former CIA Director William E. Colby, 76, washed up on the shore of the Wicomico River near his canoe, about a quarter mile from his country home on Cobb Island, Maryland.
Colby’s death was ruled a drowning accident. Nine days earlier, he had allegedly gone canoeing at dusk, never to return.
A graduate of Princeton University who parachuted behind Nazi lines in France during World War II as a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) elite Jedburgh teams, Colby had spent most of his adult life as a cold warrior in his country’s clandestine service, “a soldier-priest,” as a colleague called him, on a covert crusade.[1]
According to his New York Times obituary, Colby “perfected the look of an invisible man: gray suits, graying hair, glasses with translucent frames the color of pale white skin.”
Hellbound and Down 