John Koehler, 60; CIA Official, Internet Exec

John E. Koehler, a Yale-educated economist whose varied career included serving as a CIA deputy director and founding the first company to offer two-way, high-speed Internet access over satellite, has died. He was 60.

Koehler, who launched San Diego-based Tachyon Inc. in 1997, shortly after being diagnosed with cancer, died Dec. 14 at his home in Carlsbad, Calif.

Although declining health forced Koehler to resign as president and chief executive of the data networking services firm last December, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks spurred him to offer his services as a government advisor through the Rand Corp., where he once worked.

Koehler last met with government officials in Washington to discuss cyber-security two weeks ago, said Susan Koehler, his wife of 10 years.

And because of his experience in the late 1970s and early ‘80s as a CIA deputy director responsible for developing the budget for all of the government’s intelligence gathering functions, she said, he was asked to help develop the budget for the White House Office of Homeland Security.

Koehler filed what became his final report to Rand the day before he discovered that his cancer had spread to his brain. He died two days later.

“He was a remarkable man; he just kept going,” his wife said. “To call him patriotic is not the right word. He just really cared about there being a peaceful world. God had given him special talents, and he really felt he needed to share them.”

The Olympia, Wash.-born son of a baker, Koehler earned a scholarship to Yale University and graduated summa cum laude in 1963.

After doing postgraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he earned a doctorate in economics at Yale in 1968.

Recruited to work in the economics department at the Rand Corp., he worked on policy analyses in national and international security.

Charles Wolf, the Rand senior economics advisor who hired Koehler, still marvels at Koehler’s ability to take an elaborate World Bank forecasting model of the Indonesian economy and turn it into something that made sense by condensing 300 equations down to eight.

“He was a very well-trained economist, a highly competent and creative guy,” said Wolf.

After becoming the economics department’s associate director, Koehler left Rand in 1975.

He then became assistant director of the Congressional Budget Office in Washington, where he established the National Security and International Affairs division and directed studies of U.S. defense policy.

He next served as a CIA deputy director and director of the Intelligence Community Staff from 1978 to 1982--during which he oversaw procurement of advanced satellite communications and computing systems for the federal government and managed the budget for the National Foreign Intelligence Program.

After leaving the CIA, Koehler joined Hughes Electronics and became president of its Tokyo-based Asia-Pacific operations.

He later became president and chief executive of Hughes Communications, helping Hughes launch DirecTV as a satellite broadcasting system and establishing the American Mobile Satellite Corp. and other ventures.

In the mid-1990s, he served as chief operating officer of the San Diego-based Titan Corp., maker of satellite equipment for commercial and government customers.

Then he founded Tachyon. “He was an absolutely brilliant guy,” said Jeremy Guralnick, senior vice president of strategic marketing and chief scientist at Tachyon.

“He’s very well known worldwide in the satellite industry, and most people who spent any amount of time with him would say he was one of two or three people in the entire industry who could see three or five years out to the next big thing.”

Koehler served on the advisory board of the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UC San Diego. He also lectured and taught courses in international economics, policy analysis and quantitative methods at Yale, UCLA, the Rand Graduate School and El Colegio de Mexico.

In addition to his wife, Koehler is survived by a daughter, Maggie of Carlsbad; sons, Matthew of Carlsbad and Andrew of Santa Fe, N.M.; his mother, Frances Koehler of Seattle; a sister, Mary Ellen Rapp of Seattle; and a brother, Richard of Marietta, Ga.

A service is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Jan. 12 at St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Encinitas, Calif. Donations are suggested to Green Cancer Center, 10666 N. Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037.