[2] The film begins with Colby's service in World War II as an officer and paratrooper with the OSS, and follows his rise through the Central Intelligence Agency, where his roles included political covert action to oppose the Communist Party in Italy, later counterinsurgency actions and involvement in the 1963 coup in South Vietnam (in concert with President John F. Kennedy) during the Vietnam War, and later as Director of Central Intelligence in the 1970s.

[3][4] The Man Nobody Knew was produced by Carl Colby, with David Johnson and Grace Guggenheim, for Act 4 Entertainment.

The film combines archival footage with new interviews, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft,[2] James R. Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Bob Woodward and Seymour Hersh, among others.

Time Out New York called it a "tour of queasy, morally questionable intelligence endeavors over the last 50 years from the perspective of the spook community's grand pooh-bah.

"[7] A review in The Village Voice stated that the film's "thorough investigation transcends [director Colby's] personal catharsis to become an enduring treatise on how character flaws affect policy.