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Bernard Mathis Malloy, M.D. passed away at home on August 1, 2025.
Barney was born in Chicago, but was much influenced by his childhood years in Jackson, TN. After graduating from Jackson High School in 1946, Barney joined the Army, serving at Ft. Benning, Georgia for 18 months. Returning to Jackson, he worked at the local A&P while studying pre-med at Lambuth College. In the summer of 1950, before enrolling at Vanderbilt Medical School, he sold Bibles door-to-door in Horry County, SC. In order to earn money to buy a microscope, a requirement of medical school at the time. While at Vanderbilt, Barney developed a fascination with psychiatry that would guide his life and career.
In the fall of 1958, Barney joined the Central Intelligence Agency as a Staff Psychiatrist. He worked there for 31 years, ultimately serving as Chief of the Psychiatric Division and where, among other things, he was tasked with creating psychiatric studies of foreign leaders.
It was because of his expertise that Barney found himself embroiled in the Watergate affair when the Nixon White House directed him to provide a psychiatric study on Daniel Ellsberg, who had previously leaked the Pentagon Papers. As Barney later testified to the Senate Watergate Committee, conspirator Howard Hunt told him that he hoped to use information in the study to ruin Ellsberg's public reputation. Barney advised Hunt and others that the Agency should not be involved in intelligence work on American citizens, and the CIA eventually awarded him the Agency Intelligence Medal of Merit for his ethical behavior.