Tapes Released - Eavesdropping on Henry Kissinger's Telephone Conversations

CIA director William Colby’s openness about more odious U.S. intelligence practices did not go over well with Henry Kissinger.

Speaking on the phone with McGeorge Bundy, the National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, Kissinger referred to Colby as a “psychopath.”

[A film by the son of CIA spymaster William Colby has divided the Colby clan]

The two men were chatting about congressional investigations into the CIA activities post-Watergate and worried about leaks and misinformation.

“On top of it you have the pysopath(sic)/running the CIA. You accuse him of a traffic violation and he confesses murder,” Kissinger said in the June 1975 telephone conversation. Colby, Loop fans will recall, was replaced soon after as director of CIA by George H.W. Bush.

That conversation is part of 900 final Kissinger phone transcripts from the Gerald Ford administration released Wednesday by the National Security Archive, which sued the State Department in March to have them released. For history buffs the tapes are precious gold... more