START Headquarters
On Thursday, June 20 at 11:00am, former CIA Directorate of Operations Joe Kiehl will give a career talk at START Headquarters. This event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are appreciated. If you are not a START affiliate, please email Eva Coll (escoll@umd.edu) if you're interested in attending for more information.
Mr. Joe Kiehl is a 27-year veteran of the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO), sometimes called the National Clandestine Service (NCS). Much of his CIA career was spent overseas as a field operations officer and manager, including two stints as a Station Chief in Africa and Eastern Europe. Mr. Kiehl also served in East Asia and at CIA Headquarters, where he was, inter alia, Chief of Operations for the DO's Africa Division, Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, and Chief of Personnel Evaluation and Management for the DO's Soviet/East European Division. When he left the Agency in 1994, Mr. Kiehl continued to work on international security issues as a corporate manager and consultant.
Among his many and diverse private sector experiences, he served as interim Chief of Field Security in N'djamena, Chad for the largest Petroleum Pipeline project ongoing in the world at the time (ExxonMobil's Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project), and successfully handled all manner of risk management and security investigation cases for corporations and private clients - including major kidnap and ransom, product contamination, extortion, embezzlement, and fraud cases. On 9/11/2001, Mr. Kiehl was asked by his former Agency to return to duty under an independent contract, and has since concentrated mainly on U.S. Government-sponsored counter-terrorism assignments abroad. At the outset, he worked extensively in Pakistan and Afghanistan in connection with the then-ongoing search for Osama Bin Laden. For the final five years prior to 2017, his focus had been on working closely with various African governments and intelligence services in combating international terrorism.