The CIA and the Media: Historical Fact #74

CIA influence over news media likely plays a crucial role in “sourcing” news stories in an effort to establish narratives favorable to Agency interests. One such story involves the unusual circumstances surrounding the death of former Phoenix Program director and DCI William Colby.

In the years before his death Colby became increasingly critical of certain deep state maneuvers. He encouraged his friend, for example, Nebraska lawyer John DeCamp, to write The Franklin Coverup, centering on the child sex scandal in that state. DeCamp was one of Colby’s confidantes, and as DeCamp explains in the video below he has immense reason to question the official narrative of Colby’s death.

Author Christopher Ruddy, who conducted important research on the alleged suicide of Clinton aide and White House counsel Vince Foster, examined Colby’s 1996 drowning death that mainstream news media incorrectly attributed to a heart attack or stroke. Ruddy unearthed an early Associated Press story detailing Colby’s demise, claiming the spy was “missing and presumed drowned.” The article quotes an assumed source close to Colby’s wife “as saying he’d told her that day he wasn’t feeling well ‘but was going canoeing anyway.’”

One week later, however, “Colby’s wife assured the Washington Times that her husband had been well and had not mentioned canoeing.” Police who surveyed the spymaster’s home found dishes at the table and appliances left on, as if no canoeing excursion was even in the offing. And, in contrast to the coroner and media’s conclusion attributing Colby’s death to drowning caused by a heart attack or stroke, the autopsy found no evidence of either.

Donald Jeffries, Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-ups in American Politics, New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2014, 300.