Hezbollah later claimed they executed him in October 1985, but another American hostage disputed that, believing that he died five months prior, in June.

[4][5][6] He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery and is commemorated with a star on the Memorial Wall at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

After serving as a company commander during the Korean War with the 1st Cavalry Division, Buckley returned to Boston University and completed his studies, graduating in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.

[12][13][14] In recent history, Lebanon has been considered by American Intelligence agencies as a politically and socially unstable country, but throughout 1983 this instability increased dramatically.

Barkay adds that it's possible that the information about the impending kidnapping did not reach the CIA due to an "egotistical" dispute between the Mossad and Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate.

[20] It was thought that one of the reasons he was kidnapped along with two other Americans at different times in Beirut was because of the upcoming trial of 17 Iranian-backed militants that was about to begin in Kuwait.

On November 22, 1985, Ted Shackley, Buckley's friend and recruiter, traveled to the Atlantic Hotel in Hamburg, where he met General Manouchehr Hashemi, the former head of SAVAK's counterintelligence division.

According to the report of this meeting that Shackley sent to the State Department, Hashemi said Ghorbanifar had "fantastic" contacts with Iran,[21] but the CIA had designated him one year earlier as a "fabricator".

[22] At the meeting, Shackley told Hashemi and Ghorbanifar that the United States was willing to discuss arms shipments in exchange for the four Americans kidnapped in Lebanon, although Buckley was already dead at this point.

His words were often incoherent; he slobbered and drooled and, most unnerving of all, he would suddenly scream in terror, his eyes rolling helplessly and his body shaking.

[29] The United States National Security Council acknowledged in an unclassified note that Buckley probably died on June 3, 1985, of a heart attack.

A public memorial service was held with full military honors at Arlington on May 13, 1988, just short of three years after his presumed death date.

At the service, attended by more than 100 colleagues and friends, CIA Director William H. Webster eulogized Buckley, saying, "Bill's success in collecting information in situations of incredible danger was exceptional, even remarkable.

According to the biographical information distributed by the CIA, Buckley was "an avid reader of politics and history" and "a collector and builder of miniature soldiers."

The latter hobby enabled him to become a principal artisan in the creation of a panorama at the Lexington Battlefield Tourist Center near his native Medford, Massachusetts.