Buying Colt was MANY years after they quit the LE program. My friend was the head of that program and they terminated the program a long time ago. He passed away a few years ago. I'm gonna take a guess at at least 15 years ago.
While I can't speak to what was happening 15+ years ago that's almost certainly not what's being discussed. So maybe you knew somebody involved in something a long time ago and while it stopped something else started up a few years later. I can tell you that until recently (late last year or early this year, I can't remember for certain) there was a MIL/LE program for individual officers, MIL people, and similar professions to purchase firearms directly from CZ at a discount. The new version is all done through the LE distributors listed at the CZ-USA web page.
I know all of the people that have been involved in the CZ-USA MIL/LE department as employees for the past probably 6 or so years, maybe longer. None of them have passed away.