Colby served as DCI under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford until January 30, 1976 and was succeeded at the CIA by George H. W. Bush.

Elbridge's father, Charles Colby, had been a professor of chemistry at Columbia University but had died prematurely and left his family largely without money.

Colby recounted that he took from his parents a desire to serve and a commitment to liberal politics, Catholicism, and independence, exemplified by his father's career-damaging protest in The Nation magazine regarding the lenient treatment of a white Georgian who had murdered a black U.S. soldier who was also based at Fort Benning.

The Catholic Church played a "central role" in his family's life, with Colby's two daughters receiving their First Communion at St. Peter's Basilica.

During World War II, he parachuted behind enemy lines twice and earned the Silver Star as well as commendations from Norway, France, and Great Britain.

In his first mission he deployed to France as a Jedburgh commanding Team BRUCE, in mid-August 1944, and operated with the Maquis until he joined up with Allied forces later that fall.

Bored by the practice of law and inspired by his liberal beliefs, he moved to Washington to work for the National Labor Relations Board.

"[9] In 1962, he returned to Washington to become the deputy and then chief of CIA's Far East Division, succeeding Desmond Fitzgerald, who had been tapped to lead the Agency's efforts against Fidel Castro's Cuba.

During those years, Colby was deeply involved in Washington's policies in East Asia, particularly with respect to Vietnam, as well as Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and China.

He was deeply critical of the decision to abandon support for Diem, and he believed that played a material part in the weakening of the South Vietnamese position in the following years.

A strong believer in reform of the CIA and the intelligence community more broadly, Schlesinger had written a 1971 Bureau of the Budget report outlining his views on the subject.

When Nixon reshuffled his agency heads and made Schlesinger secretary of defense, Colby emerged as a natural candidate for DCI, apparently on the basis of the recommendation that he was a professional who would not make waves.

Shortly after he assumed leadership, the Yom Kippur War broke out, an event that surprised the American intelligence agencies but also those of Israel.

Colby participated in the National Security Council meetings that responded to apparent Soviet intentions to intervene in the war by raising the alert level of U.S. forces to DEFCON 3 and defusing the crisis.

In 1975, after many years of involvement, South Vietnam fell to Communist forces in April 1975, a particularly difficult blow for Colby, who had dedicated so much of his life and career to the American effort there.

One was titled Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA; the other, on Vietnam and his long involvement with American policy there, was called Lost Victory.

The topic remains open and controversial, but some recent scholarship, including by Lewis "Bob" Sorley, supports Colby's arguments.

It dealt with what Colby calls "some mistakes," specifically CIA abuses ranging from assassination plans to dosing people with mind-control drugs to domestic spying.

[25] His grandson, Elbridge A. Colby, served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Planning from 2017 to 2018 and is a co-founder of the Marathon Institute.