William Francis Buckley - Career at The CIA

Career At The CIA

In 1965 (or 1963, according to one source), Buckley rejoined the CIA in what is now called the Special Activities Division. He may have been recruited by Ted Shackley, joining his Secret Team that had been involved with Edwin Wilson, Thomas Clines, Carl Jenkins, Rafael Quintero, Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada Carriles, in the CIA “assassination” program. Leslie Cockburn pointed out in her book, Out of Control (1987), that Buckley had had to approve CIA assassinations undertaken by the Shackley organizations. In his book, Prelude to Terror (2005) Joseph Trento claims that Buckley was "one of Shackley's oldest and dearest friends."

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).

In 1983, Buckley succeeded Ken Haas as the Beirut Station Chief/Political Officer at the U.S. Embassy. Buckley was successfully rebuilding the network of agents lost in and due to the bombing of the U.S. Embassy; after the October 23, 1983 Marine Corps barracks bombing, the Islamist group Hezbollah wrongly announced that they had also killed the CIA station chief (they didn't yet know the station chief was Buckley) in the blast; their announcement was the first real indication that he was on a Hezbollah "hit list."