William Francis Buckley

William Francis Buckley (May 30, 1928 – June 3, 1985) was a United States Army officer in the United States Army Special Forces, and a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief in Beirut from 1984 until 1985.

His cover was as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy.

Buckley was born in Medford, Massachusetts, on May 30, 1928.

He grew up on south Main Street in the neighboring town of Stoneham.

He graduated from high school there in 1947, and then joined the United States Army.

He began as a military police officer and served in that capacity for two years, but then attended Officers Candidate School (OCS) and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in Armor.

He continued his military education at 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, West Germany.

During the Korean War, Buckley served as a company commander with the 1st Cavalry Division.

Next, he returned to Boston University and completed his studies, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science (Class of 1955; he was inducted into the U.S. Army ROTC Hall of Fame in April 2022).

It was during this time that Buckley began his first employment with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), from 1955 to 1957.

He was also employed as a librarian in the Concord, Winchester and Lexington public libraries.

In 1960, Buckley 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 the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, or MACV, as a senior advisor to the South Vietnamese Army.

Buckley may have been working for the CIA while in Mexico in 1963, but this is unconfirmed.

In 1965 (or 1963, according to one source), Buckley rejoined the CIA in what is now called the Special Activities Division.

His CIA employment kept him in South 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 Marine Corps barracks bombing in October 1983 when the Islamist group Hezbollah wrongly announced that they had also killed the CIA station chief (they did not 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."

Historically, Lebanon had always been a politically and socially unstable country but throughout 1983 this instability increased dramatically.

The Shi'ite population of Lebanon became increasingly radicalized and started to target Westerners and Western-owned infrastructure such as embassies.

He was kidnapped by the group Islamic Jihad in March 1984.

He was held hostage and tortured by psychiatrist Aziz al-Abub.

Within this backdrop, on March 16, 1984, Buckley was kidnapped by Hezbollah from his apartment building when he was leaving for work.

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.

Army Major General Carl Stiner had warned Buckley that he was in danger, but Buckley told him that "I have a pretty good intelligence network. I think I'm secure."

However, according to Stiner, Buckley continued to live in his apartment and travel the same route to and from work every day.

David Barkay, a former officer in Israel's intelligence unit 504, asserts that a spy from Hezbollah delivered a note to his operatives (Barkay among them) six days before the kidnapping occurred.

The note contained a message from Imad Mughniyeh to a Hezbollah team that had been training for a kidnapping operation for months.

The message instructed the team to prepare for the operation, which was set to take place in a couple of days.

The note identified the target of the operation as "an American senior intelligence officer."

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.

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

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

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.

Also at the meeting on November 22 was Manucher Ghorbanifar.

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

According to Leslie Cockburn's book, Out of Control (1987), Buckley was involved in approving 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."