ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 7, 1996 TAG: 9605070108
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
The body of former CIA director William Colby was found Monday on a marshy riverbank in southern Maryland after an eight-day search that began when his overturned canoe was discovered not far from his vacation home.
Police said in the absence of any signs of foul play, they believed Colby, 76, drowned in a boating accident. However, his body was sent to Baltimore, where an autopsy will be conducted to determine the exact cause of death, officials said.
Colby's wife, Sally Shelton-Colby, identified the body, which was lying face down along the Wicomico River near the point where it empties into the Potomac about 40 miles south of Washington. The site is only a few hundred yards south of where his empty green fiberglass canoe had been discovered April 28.
Colby had spent 30 years in the U.S. intelligence service, capped by a stint as CIA director during two of its most turbulent years in the mid-1970s. Confronted by charges that the agency had overstepped its bounds during the previous two decades by spying on domestic political dissidents, plotting overseas assassinations and committing other illegal acts, Colby directed an internal inquiry that documented the misdeeds.
Testifying before Congressional committees more than 50 times in 1974 and 1975, he incurred the wrath of agency hard-liners who resented his openness and disclosure of secret operations. Many others, however, praised his candor.
President Clinton extended condolences Monday to Colby's family, calling him ``a dedicated public servant'' who had played ``a pivotal role in shaping our nation's intelligence community.''
John Deutch, the current CIA director, said Colby had ``demonstrated great courage, determination and devotion to his country ... to guide the agency through a difficult time.''
Colby had last been seen by neighbors about 7:15 p.m. April 27 outside his modest weekend retreat at Rock Point, Md. His capsized canoe was discovered offshore the following morning.
Lt. Mark Sanders, a police spokesman, said the former spymaster was likely alive when he fell into the water, got hypothermia from the cold temperature and drowned. ``There is nothing unusual about this case,'' he told reporters.
Sanders said the body apparently had been submerged for days but that a natural buildup of gas had brought it to the surface.
Shelton-Colby, an assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development and former U.S. ambassador to Grenada and Barbados, tearfully told reporters her husband had had a ``magnificent life.''
``There was not much that was left undone for him,'' she said. ``He fought the fascists and he fought the communists and he lived to see democracy taking hold around the world.''
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Colby. color. KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB