Neighbors in the News: Iranian Expert Dies; New Movie on CIA Director by his Son

Two of McLean's well-known neighbors are in the news:

Philo Dibble, a career Foreign Service officer who played a central role in the release of two American hikers who had been held in an Iranian prison for more than two years, died at his home in McLean on Oct. 1, 10 days after the hikers were freed, according to The New York Times.

The cause was a heart attack, according to his wife, Elizabeth Link Dibble, who is also a State Department official. Both worked in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, where he was deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran and she is the bureau’s principal deputy secretary, the Times reported. He was 60.

Dibble had coordinated efforts with diplomats from other nations, including Oman and Switzerland, in trying to free the hikers. (Switzerland has represented American interests in Iran since the hostage crisis of 1979-81, the Times reported.)

The two hikers, Shane M. Bauer and Joshua F. Fattal, and their friend Sarah E. Shourd were hiking in a mountainous region of Turkey near Iran in June 2009 when they were seized by Iranian border guards. Although Iranian officials said they were spies, the hikers insisted that they had no connection to the American government. If they had stepped over the unmarked border into Iran, they said, it had been by accident.

Shourd, who became engaged to Bauer while they were in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran, was released in September 2009. In August of this year, Bauer and Fattal were sentenced to eight years in prison. Then, on Sept. 21, after a series of reversals by Iranian officials, they were freed. Like Shourd, they were released on $500,000 bail each, according to the Iranian government, the Times said.

Several hundred State Department officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, attended Dibble’s funeral Oct. 6 at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown, during which a letter from President Obama was read. His “leadership proved indispensable” in American dealings with Iran, the president said, according to the Times.

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Former CIA Director William Colby stars in a movie opening Friday “The Man Nobody Knew”. The movie, made by Carl Colby, is an account of the career of his father, William Colby, director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1973 to 1976.

According to reviews in The New York Times and The Washington Post, it's a movie about a son in search of his dad.

William E. Colby, as director of Central Intelligence, chose to disclose some of the nation's darkest secrets to save the spy service he loved, the Times reported in his obituary. Colby drowned on April 27 in a tributary of the Potomac River in Maryland. He was 76, the Times said.

From 1968 to 1971, under the aegis of the Agency for International Development, Colby had run programs that included Operation Phoenix. Phoenix killed 20,587 Vietnamese. Colby told Congress in 1971 that these deaths included "illegal killing," the Times reported.

"The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby" opens Friday at the Landmark E Street Cinema, in downtown Washington. The movie opened in New York in September.