He was dropped behind enemy lines in German- occupied France and Norway where he blew up railroads joined resistance networks and led groups
He was dropped behind enemy lines in German- occupied France and Norway, where he blew up railroads, joined resistance networks and led groups of underground fighters. Recently, at a spies’ reunion, Colby recalled the first time he parachuted into France in 1944. It seemed that he was trying to be more open.
Colby began his 30-year espionage career during the Second World War as a member of Major-General J “Wild Bill” Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services. I just wanted to note that he could be approachable in a way his more furtive colleagues such as James Angleton never were. The well- attended recital was in aid of the Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem..
The last of the great spymasters, William Colby contrived in his later years to appear as a normal person rather than a shadowy figure burdened down with the nation’s secrets. Shortly after his retirement as CIA director in 1976 I literally bumped into him coming out of the Century Club in New York. He was donning his raincoat and a hat, but underneath this espionage garb was a pleasant and gracious man. His autobiography, Honorable Men, had just been published and he was briefly a celebrity and, perhaps, more open to someone he had never met stopping him in the street and asking to talk about Soviet missiles That is what he did I’m not saying he told me any secrets; he didn’t.
Husband-to-be, the Evening Standard’s personal finance guru Robert Cole, is having his own stag night next weekend. His own arrangements have been left to the last minute, apparently – Robert gave pounds 100 to his best man and told him to get on with it. Which won’t get them very close to Budapest, so it sounds like lagers all round in the local then.The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Taylor, is being forced to retire due to cancer, but this did not stop him from playing in a music concert at the Middle Temple last Thursday night. Peter Taylor played the piano for an hour, accompanied by the violinist Maureen Smith.
