John O Koehler was a German-born American journalist and executive for the Associated Press, who briefly served as the White House Communications Director in 1987 during the Reagan administration.
22 Facts About Jack Koehler
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Jack Koehler was born Wolfgang Jack Koehler in Dresden, Germany, but fled the city to escape the invasion of Soviet troops into Germany towards the end of World War II.
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Jack Koehler soon found a position as a German language interpreter for the United States Army when he was a teenager.
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Jack Koehler emigrated to Canada after World War II and then immigrated to the United States in 1954.
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Jack Koehler enlisted in the US Army, where he worked in military intelligence.
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Jack Koehler legally changed his name to John Koehler after moving to the United States.
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Jack Koehler took a position with the Associated Press as a foreign correspondent in Berlin and Bonn, West Germany.
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Jack Koehler then became the Associated Press' bureau chief in Newark, New Jersey.
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Jack Koehler rose to become the assistant general manager and managing director of AP's world services, a position he held until his retirement in 1985.
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Jack Koehler traveled to Pakistan and France to focus on helping the Afghan rebels get their messages out to uncensored media and to foreign governments.
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In 1987, Jack Koehler, who was friends with Ronald Reagan, became the White House Communications Director.
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However, Jack Koehler resigned after just one week in the White House.
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Jack Koehler insisted that his coercive training and use as a child soldier was not the reason for his resignation and dismissed the Jungvolk as "the Boy Scouts run by the Nazi party".
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Jack Koehler then left the White House temporarily to start an international consulting firm.
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On 9 December 1988, Jack Koehler was appointed by President Reagan to a position in the National Commission for Employment Policy of the United States Department of Labor.
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Jack Koehler spent much of his later life as a Cold War-era historian of espionage, while using the former East German Stasi archives and his experiences and connections from his career in the US intelligence community to document and expose the formerly covert activities of Soviet Bloc intelligence services and those who spied for them worldwide.
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At the time of their conversation, Jack Koehler was working covertly for the US Intelligence Community, while under journalistic cover at the Associated Press.
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Jack Koehler particularly exposed the collusion of the GDR with death squads run by Libyan diplomats and in the training and arming of terrorist organizations dedicating to attacking NATO, United States military personnel in Western Europe, and the State of Israel.
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Jack Koehler accused Erich Mielke, Markus Wolf, and the Stasi military advisors they assigned to Ethiopia to assist Far Left dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam of complicity in genocide.
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Jack Koehler alleges, based on detailed documentary material in both Polish and Soviet archives, that the 1981 assassination attempt by Mehmet Ali Agca against Pope John Paul II was a Soviet intelligence operation which had been unanimously voted upon in advance by the Politburo, the ruling Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
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Jack Koehler died from pancreatic cancer at his home in Stamford, Connecticut, on September 28,2012, at the age of 82.
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Jack Koehler was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.