If you knew or served with this Soldier and have additional information or photos to support this Page, please leave a message for the Page Administrator(s) HERE.
Contact Info
Home Town Medford
Date of Passing Jun 03, 1985
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
Lieutenant Colonel William F. Buckley was born in Medford, Massachusetts on May 30, 1928. Colonel Buckley graduated from high school in 1947 and joined the United States Army.
Following two years of service as an enlisted MP he attended Officers Candidate School and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in Armor. He later attended the Engineer Officer's Course at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the Advanced Armor Officer's Course at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and the Intelligence School at Oberammergau, Germany.
Colonel Buckley served with the 1st Cavalry Division as a company commander during the Korean War. After the war he completed his studies and graduated from Boston University with a degree in Political Science. He was employed as a librarian in the Concord, Winchester and Lexington public libraries. In 1960, Bill joined the 320th Special Forces Detachment which became the 11th Special Forces Group and attended both Basic Airborne and the Special Forces Officers Course. He was assigned as an A- Detachment Commander and later as a B-Detachment Commander.
Colonel Buckley served in Vietnam with MACV as a Senior Advisor to the ARVN. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in May 1969.
Distinguished Intelligence Cross
Exceptional Service Medallion
Buckley was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1955 to 1957 and again from 1965 until his untimely death. He served in many varied assignments all over the world.
Buckley may have been working for the CIA while in Mexico in 1963, but this is unconfirmed. His CIA employment kept him in Vietnam from 1965 to 1970, and he was promoted in his military capacity to Lieutenant Colonel in May 1969. After leaving Vietnam, he served in Zaire (1970�??1972), Cambodia (1972), Egypt (1972�??1978), and Pakistan (1978�??1979). It is believed he worked with William Casey in the secret negotiations that had taken place with the Iranians on behalf of Ronald Reagan during the 1980 presidential elections. Other sources claim that in 1980 he was put in charge to monitor the safety of the Egyptian President Anwar Al Sadat, who was killed the next year.
He was taken hostage from his last assignment in Beirut; Lebanon where he was the Political Officer/ Station Chief at the U.S. Embassy. Colonel Buckley died after 15 months in captivity of illness and torture. His body was returned to the United States on December 28, 1991 and he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
Among Colonel Buckley's Army awards are the Silver Star, Soldier's Medal, Bronze Star with "V", two Purple Hearts, Meritorious Service Medal, Combat Infantry Badge, and the Parachutist Badge. He also received the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry w/ Bronze Star from ARVN. Among his CIA awards are the Intelligence Star, Exceptional Service Medallion and Distinguished Intelligence Cross.
Among his civilian awards are the Freedom Foundation Award for Lexington Green Diorama, Collegium and Academy of Distinguished Alumni - Boston University. A memorial park - The William F. Buckley Memorial Park in Stoneham, Massachusetts, is dedicated to his memory.
Colonel Buckley was single and left two sisters, Maureen Moroney, Joyce Wing and a longtime close friend, Beverly Surette.
Other Comments:
Washington, DC, December 27, 1991:
Human remains identified as those of William F. Buckley, chief officer for CIA in Lebanon when was taken hostage in March 1984, were flown to the US this evening for funeral services. He died in captivity, apparently after torture, the next year.
A spokesman for the CIA, which seldom acknowledges identity of clandestine operatives, dead or alive, said he "was the senior agency representative in Beirut" when was kidnapped by organization calling itself Islamic Holy War. The agency also issued a brief biographical profile of him, again an unusual step for CIA in dealing with members of its clandestine service, but also reflecting the agony felt in the highest ranks of the intelligence service over the loss of one of its own.
The CIA acknowledged his death in an agency memorial service, August 1987, nearly 2 years after Islamic Holy War boasted of having killed him. The spokesman also noted that agency honored him with a star carved in the marble memorial wall of the CIA's main building in Langley, Virginia, where officers killed on duty are commemorated. "It is star 51 of 54 stars," he said. "We are waiting for final positive identification by US authorities" at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Saturday, a spokesman said, noting preliminary identification was made early today by Lebanon's chief pathologist, Dr. Ahmed Harati, who issued his finding after examining a skull and some bones that were found wrapped in blankets early today on a roadside near Beirut airport. It is routine practice for US military forensic specialists at Dover to conduct their own examinations of remains of US officials killed in foreign lands, spokesman said. The same was done for Lieuenant Colonel William R. Higgins, USMC, another Beirut hostage slain by Islamic militants, whose body was returned to this country this week. Unlike Buckley, who arrived in Beirut in 1983 under cover of State Department posting as political officer of US Embassy, Higgins was serving openly as chief of UN observation team in Lebanon when seized.
CIA official and a Pentagon spokesman said plans were underway for joint funeral service for them at Andrews Air Force Base, just outside the capital, on Monday. Remains of Higgins will then be buried at Marine base in Quantico, Virginia. There is already gravesite and stone for Buckley at Arlington National Cemetery where many of nation's heroes are buried. Buckley, who was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve, won the Silver Star for gallantry while serving in Vietnam. A public memorial service was held with full military honors at Arlington on May 13, 1988, just short of 3 years after his presumed death. At the service, attended by more than 100 colleagues and friends, the Director of the CIA, William H. Webster, eulogized Buckley saying, "Bill's success in collecting information in situations of incredible danger was exceptional, even remarkable." Among the mourners was Buckley's longtime companion, Candace Hammond of Farmer, North Carolina, whom he left behind when he moved to Beirut. By the time of that service, some details of his previous life had become public: he had served in clandestine CIA assignments in Syria and Pakistan and that fate had become intertwined with President Reagan's impassioned efforts to gain release of other Americans held hostage in Lebanon. Well before US policy makers were certain that he was dead at age 57, the Director of CIA, William J. Casey, began efforts aimed at finding and possibly rescuing Buckley. At one point, an FBI team specializing in kidnapping cases was brought in. When the Reagan Administration accepted the fact of Buckley's death, hostage takers in Lebanon were believed to be holding 5 other Americans. In late 1985, Reagan made the release of these Americans a principal policy objective of his Administration, leading him and a handful of aides into a series of covert operations involving sale of sophisticated weapons to Iran by way of Israel and other incentives intended to ransom the captives. These operations culminated in what became known as Iran-Contra Affair in 1986.
According to the biographical information distributed by fax today by CIA, Buckley was "an avid reader of politics and history" and "a collector and builder of miniature soldiers." Latter hobby enabled him to become principal artisan in the creation of a panorama at the Lexington Battlefield Tourist Center near his native Bedford, Massachusetts. The press release also said he owned an antique shop and was an amateur artist and a collector of fine art. It called him "a very private and discreet individual." The CIA awarded him an Intelligence Star, an Exceptional Service Medallion and a Distinguished Intelligence Cross, but did not say whether any of these were issued posthumously. He was a bachelor, and is survived by 2 sisters. May 30, 1928-June 3, 1985.
He is buried in Section 59 of Arlington National Cemetery.
On 8 March 1985 a car bomb exploded near the house of Hezbollah spiritual leader, Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, a disciple of Ayatollah Khomeini. Fadlallah escaped unhurt, but eighty-one people were killed in the explosion. While the CIA and President Ronald Reagan denied responsibility, many throughout the arab world believe the attack to be revenge for Buckley's killing. The bombing led to more kidnapping of Westerners and the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 a month later. The death of Imad Mughniyeh has been confirmed. This man, along with others, was responsible for the U.S. Marine Barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983 and the kidnapping and murder of William F. Buckley.
Description 19 May 69 to 15 Aug 73; The fall of Cambodia to the Khamer Rouge. Campaign was a U.S. 7th Air Force Interdiction and close air suport operation waged in Cambodia. Targets were base areas and border sanctuaries.
Operation Freedom Deal was a U.S. Seventh Air Force interdiction and close air support campaign waged in Cambodia (later, the Khmer Republic) between 19 May 1970 and 15 August 1973, during the Vietnam War. The targets of the operation were the Base Areas and border sanctuaries of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Khmer Rouge.
SOG recon teams in Cambodia now had all the air support that they needed in targeting base areas and border sanctuaries.
In the post-incursion period, Freedom Deal was originally an interdiction effort, striking enemy supply lines in eastern Cambodia and it was restricted to a 30-mile deep area between the South Vietnamese border and the Mekong River. This restriction was, however, quickly voided due to Search and Rescue operations conducted by the U.S. Air Force in order to pick up downed South Vietnamese pilots, who regularly flew outside the Freedom Deal zone. Within two months (and without public announcement), the operation was expanded west of the Mekong.
The withdrawal of U.S. forces in May left only South Vietnamese and Cambodian forces to do battle with PAVN and the Khmer Rouge. U.S. tactical aircraft then began supplying FANK troops with direct air support. Meanwhile, President Nixon had announced that the policy of the U.S. Air Force was only to interdict PAVN/NLF supply networks (in the same manner that they were interdicted in Laos), and that they were only to be conducted within the specified zone (known as the AIZ or Aerial Interdiction Zone).
During the rest of the year, the Freedom Deal area of operations was expanded three times.
Transcripts of telephone conversations reveal that by December 1970 Nixon's dissatisfaction with the success of the bombings prompted him to order that they be stepped up. "They have got to go in there and I mean really go in," he told Kissinger. "I want them to hit everything. I want them to use the big planes, the small planes, everything they can that will help out there, and let's start giving them a little shock."
By the beginning of 1971, the area of operations stretched from Route 7 to the Laotian border in the north and 75 miles beyond the Mekong to the west. Between July 1970 and February 1971, approximately 44 percent of the 8,000 sorties flown in Cambodia struck targets outside the authorized zone. This led to a policy of falsifying the reports of missions carried out beyond the boundary.
Most of the strikes were flown in direct support of FANK troops, although American officials continued to deny the fact. Despite this effort, the communists occupied one-half of Cambodia by late 1970 and had cut all the land routes leading to and from the capital of Phnom Penh. In short order the U.S. Air Force found itself shifting more and more of its diminishing air power from its interdiction campaign in southern Laos to the struggle in the Cambodia. In 1971 Cambodian missions made up nearly 15 percent of the total number of combat sorties flown in Southeast Asia, up from eight percent during the previous year.
In Cambodia, the ground war dragged on, with the Khmer Rouge doing the bulk of the fighting against the government. On 28 January 1973, the day the Paris Peace Accord was signed, Lon Nol announced a unilateral cease-fire and U.S. airstrikes were halted. When the Khmer Rouge refused to respond, the bombing resumed on 9 February. The US Seventh Air Force argued that the bombing prevented the fall of Phnom Penh in 1973 by killing 16,000 of 25,500 Khmer Rouge fighters besieging the city. In March the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed a much expanded bombing campaign. From then until the end of the operation on 15 August, sortie and tonnage rates increased. By the last day of Operation Freedom Deal (15 August 1973), 250,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on the Khmer Republic, 82,000 tons of which had been released in the last 45 days of the operation.
The end
During 1973 Freedom Deal aircraft dropped 250,000 tons of bombs (primarily high explosive), topping the 180,000 tons dropped on Japan during the Second World War. As communist forces drew a tighter ring around Phnom Penh in April, the U.S. Air Force flew more than 12,000 bombing sorties and dropped more than 82,000 tons of ordnance in support of Lon Nol's forces during the last 45 days of the operation. Since the inception of the Menu bombings in March 1969, the total amount of ordnance dropped on Cambodia reached 539,129 tons. On 15 August, the last mission of Freedom Deal was flown and the fate of Cambodia was sealed.
