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Info: This week on Q&A, film producer Carl Colby discusses his latest documentary film about the life of his father, former CIA Director William Colby. Carl details the actual production of the film, and discusses the choice of his mother, Barbara Colby, as one of his primary interview sources. The film examines the personal and professional life of William Colby who, his son says, was a controversial figure with few close friends and a deep institutional understanding of the spy business. In the film, which Carl narrates, he reveals the distress his mother felt when she learned of the assassination of the South Vietnamese President in 1963. He discusses coming to terms with people referring to his father as a “murderer” for his actions in Vietnam on behalf of the government. William Colby was fired after two and one half years as CIA Director, after he revealed to Congress some of the agency’s darkest secrets about extra-legal operations. Carl Colby discusses the night his father died in 1996. He comments that his father “had had enough of this life.” The cause of death was officially determined to be a heart attack.
