BLACK PRESIDENT, Chapter 46. Former CIA chief Bill Colby and Major General Oleg Kalugin, former KGB chief, together designed the Spycraft computer game. Colby dies supposedly while fishing...

I've owned SPYCRAFT--the computer game is realistic and somewhat brutal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycraft:_The_Great_Game

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

April 27, 1996

The Potomac was a calm glide as retired CIA director Bill Colby sliced the water with his oar, coasting over to an outcropping of rocks. The sky had threatened with some dark patches, but the rain had never come and he still had hopes of catching a trout before nightfall. Calm and peaceful. That’s what fishing was all about. He had had enough of high-stress living. He’d seen some ugly things in his time and now, with each new day, he could feel the data – images, names, all the imprinting – emptying from his memory banks. He liked to think that with each dollop of sunshine caught across his eyes he cancelled out a negative thought or deed. But what was there to feel guilty about? Those were war-time missions, directed by his country. He had just followed orders. The work had been approved by his superiors; the Secretary of Defence and the President of the United States. All off-the-record of course.

Colby had seen and heard all the protesting at home and had listened to the outcry. The speediest way to get the country back on track had been to end the war. He and others had helped accomplish that by breaking down the chain of command in Vietnam. An op named Phoenix...the bird that conquered all...

“Tweet, tweet...” Some little bird suddenly made a pretty sound and Colby looked up toward the bushes just above the riverbank. The ends of the branches were already showing green and there were lots of flower buds ready to break out everywhere. The leaves rustled pleasantly in the light breeze. All alone and peaceful. Then he saw a robin, maybe the first he’d spotted that year. Couldn’t remember. But beautiful. It might be that special one, thought Colby, that signaled the beginning of Spring. The Phoenix program had been successful and he was proud of the fact. When he had been questioned about his program at the Congressional hearings he’d had no regrets at announcing the number of assassinations at around 20,000. Those were good numbers. His men had cut a swath right through the center of the communist block, disabling their infrastructure. He had been proud of the work, even though some of the Congressmen had reacted poorly.

“You had to be there,” read his testimony.

“It was a necessary element of war,” he’d repeated endlessly. Colby saw no difference between the Vietnam communists and the Nazis, another hornet’s nest he had parachuted into in WWII. The parallels were obvious to him. Nazis were a cancer within the structure of German society that needed to be cut out so the patient could live. Within the Vietnam society there was also malignant growth, a secret mafia from the North, infiltrating and terrorizing people into submission. Phoenix had worked hard to identify those individuals, then surgically removed them. Yes, people were shot, stabbed, throats slit in their sleep, ugly things, horrible things that had needed doing, just like in the second world war with the Nazis. When Bill Colby, DCI had stood before Congress they had witnessed a patriot and a gentleman, not a black-hearted killer.

We would collect people at the refugee camps and put them back in their old villages, put some protection around them, give them guns to protect themselves, Colby had told them, proud of his Pacification Program. He had enjoyed sitting there, testifying, being the center of attention. He saw nothing wrong with any of it. But as CIA officials monitored the hearings they were deeply shocked by Colby’s candor. It was clear that he didn’t see the necessity of stonewalling. His pride in his covert activities had blinded him to the need for secrecy.

Among the old guard, elder Bush and Baker were acutely concerned over just how far gentleman Bill would go. They had previously discussed the “open testimony” policy with Colby, and he had agreed that the CIA needed to maintain a cloak of secrecy to protect agents and protocols. But on several occasions Colby, with his loose lips, had steamed right past that line in the sand, touched upon ultra-sensitive material that threatened to do irrevocable harm to ongoing clandestine operations. So certain members of the CIA hiarchy kept close tabs on Mr. William Colby, very close tabs indeed.

Colby had been stunned by the dismissal. So had his wife. He had done an exemplary job and yet, he’d been forcibly retired. Why had Gerald Ford bent to that pressure?

“Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.” More birds hiding in bushes along the river bank greeted Colby’s canoe as he paddled around the bend. With the cover of night approaching it was even more quiet and calm. No humans around. Just the pure sounds of nature. That’s what he liked. Well, thought Colby, as he glided with the current, taking a sip of red wine from his thermos, Things do work out for the best.

He mused over the pleasant diversion of his co-created Spycraft software game, which was selling well, filling up his retirement fund beyond the CIA pension. The premise for the game had been an intriguing one. After a Russian Premier is assassinated, CIA officers must protect the President of the United States from meeting a similar fate. Sure, he’d heard some grumbling from a few CIA cohorts, that the game was in bad taste and too realistic, but Colby just wrote that off to their petty jealousies. After all, he’d been the one invited to join the design team, to “round out the realism.” And Presidents had been assassinated.

Old associates of his from the CIA had become even more irate when they’d learned that he had teamed up with Major General Oleg Kalugin, former KGB counter-intelligence chief. Both men were well represented in the computer game, becoming on-screen characters in charge of their particular intelligence factions. Colby knew that the game was a good way to demonstrate the very things he’d been proud of: how effective the CIA could be when defending a President or tracking down his foes. What Colby failed to grasp was that the Spycraft game also explained just how inefficient his Company had been on the occasion of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s visit to Dallas, back in November of 1963. Certain intelligence officers believed there were some dangerous revelations offered surreptitiously, within the guise of “harmless entertainment.”

If anyone cared to notice, they’d learn of Oswald’s connection to Moscow and KGB, their modus operandi, and the CIA’s clandestine US operations. Had old Bill gone completely nuts, some wondered? Why was he taunting the Agency, meddling with the gravest secrets? Several of the Skull and Bones members also wanted answers. But old Colby had just jaunted along in the lecture circuit, kept spilling beans here and there.

When Oliver Stone visited him he had found Colby “a nice chap,” happy to go out of his way to release hitherto unavailable CIA documents to the filmmaker (minus a few names and dates that could“cause embarrassment”). Colby thought that if the CIA had had anything to do with the murder of JFK he would surely have known about it. And I would have revealed it, Colby admitted to Stone. I’ve revealed a lot of other things.

Over the twenty years following the 1975 Phoenix hearings, Colby had kept himself active, revealing more and more internal secrets about the clandestine CIA society, while his old comrades stood by, aghast by his total lack of propriety. The man was trading CIA secrets for kudos at afternoon teas!

Staring into the greenish-blue water of the river, Colby noticed a little swirling action, sort of like a miniature whirlpool. A few small air bubbles rose to the surface. From some fish no doubt. The sun glinted off the circular ripples, creating a series of interesting patterns. He decided to cast his fishing line out toward the next pocket of tree roots.

Fusssssh... The line spun out from the tiny Mitchell reel and landed its red and white daredevil lure right where he wanted it. Immediately, he started reeling the line back, collecting the microfilament around the hub of the reel, jerking the pole every so often to entice a fish to bite. Nothing on the first toss, so he cast out again. From below the surface, CIA frogman Jim Taylor watched the lure get reeled back again, in toward the canoe, dancing along, wiggling away, flip-flopping red then silver. Taylor believed he had an accurate mental picture of the activity going on above him. While one of Colby’s hands held the pole, the other would be turning the handle of the spinning reel. Both his hands would be occupied, making the old man too off-balance to block the attack. Taylor had been told that it was a “Class-A” OP. It didn’t get any more serious than that. It had to look like an accident. But didn’t they all?

Fusssssh. Out went the line again. As soon as Taylor saw the lure heading back underwater he eased up above the waterline on the side of the canoe behind Colby’s back, and jabbed him in the buttocks with a hypodermic needle, quickly plunging the Solifron into his system. The clenched fishing pole whipped around as Colby reached backwards toward the hornet-bite-like pain. Within seconds the old man lapsed into unconsciousness, his blood clotting, cutting off flow to the brain.

As Colby fell backwards out of the boat, Taylor pulled him farther down, grasping him tightly in an underwater dance. In less than half-a-minute, Colby’s “accidentally drowned” corpse was released and allowed to disappear into the loose sediment downstream.

http://www.pythiapress.com/wartales/colby.htm

***

July 24, 1996

The family gathering was overflowing, with not only the usual members celebrating the double birthdays, but also some advisors to Jackson Little’s, young men and women who would be crucial to advancing his political career. Since he’d won the Alderman seat in Chicago, Jackson had been one of the fastest rising stars in the Midwest. With the twins turning thirty-five, the occasion had become a great deal more significant than simply another birthday. Jackson and John had just passed the minimum age requirement for the nation’s highest office. In honor of that great Presidential potential, for which Sarah believed her “Kennedy” boys were well suited, she had gone all out on the festivities.

“Les’s got your cake all lit up, boys,” called Rudy, as he rounded the corner from the kitchen. “Make way now!”

Sarah’s pale skin looked even lighter as she walked slowly ahead with the bright glow of seventy candles illuminating her face and the room beyond. Jackson and John quickly seated themselves at the dining room table as their mother approached and carefully placed the flaming pastry before them on the white tablecloth.

“You boys take turns, you hear?” she said, merrily. She had provided each son with his own set of thirty-five candles, leaving an inch-wide strip of bare frosting down the middle to separate the two groupings. The singing started up without any one person trying to conduct.

“Hap’ birthday to you, hap’ birthday to you, hap’ birthday dear Jackson and John...hap’ birthday to you.”

Both twins blew from the same side of the table and kept blowing together as they moved their heads down the long flat surface until all the candles were extinguished. John had actually helped Jackson blow out the last few candles on his side, and for that Jackson laughed heartily.

“Yes, brother, you can serve as my chief blowhard, all right!”

The brothers hugged and a few pictures were snapped, toasts made amid the opening of presents. When all the guests had departed, Jackson’s two children were put to bed by his wife, Cissy, and John’s wife, Fran, retired for the night in the second upstairs guest room with their seven-month-old baby boy, named Sam. Grandmother Sarah approached her sons and handed them the last present of the day. It was a thin rectangular box, about twelve by eighteen inches long. If either of the men believed they knew what was inside, neither voiced a guess. John deferred to Jackson to unwrap the gift.

“Older brother, you do the honors,” he said, ceremoniously. Jackson untied the ribbon carefully and removed the card. To my dear men, all grown up and ready to help improve the world...maybe even become Presidents some day! Love, your mother.

Both twins kissed Sarah and fussed over the lovely inscription. Then Jackson ripped the paper away. Removing the lid of the box, he examined the cover of the first journal that their mother had begun before their births. As his mother looked on proudly, Jackson flipped the book open to page one, and read the first entry.

“Your Daddy’s friends comment on President Kennedy, April 19, 1961.”

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