His name is Kuhla, Bernie Kuhla.

For thirty years, Kuhla traveled the world as a communications officer for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. He retired in 1991 to his boyhood home of Jim Thorpe and for the past 15 years has been telling people close to him about the years he worked for the Government—although he avoids giving any details.

“If I told you, I’d have to shoot you,” said Kuhla – first serious, then smiling. "It was an expression they used to tell. A joke really.” 

Kuhla traveled to places that would have made even James Bond envious: Budapest, Islamabad, Leopoldville, and Munich. Along the way, he was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit in Sept. 1965 by C.I.A. Director Admiral William Rayborn. 

Born in East Mauch Chunk, Kuhla graduated from the local high school in 1950 and joined the Navy where he became a Communications Technician and received a Top Secret clearance. After receiving an Honorable Discharge in 1955, he returned to Jim Thorpe. 

Shortly afterward, he received a letter from a U.S. Government agency. “It asked if I be interested in working for the government. It didn’t say who it was from.” 

Kuhla wrote back that he was interested. Soon afterward, he received a phone call informing him, “They’d be setting up a gentleman to interview me, to talk about the government, and give me a test.” 

Three weeks later, a man came to Jim Thorpe, spoke to him and gave Kuhla a written test. “He told me that I’d be hearing from him in anywhere from two to four months.” Kuhla said. 

Three months later, Kuhla received a letter to report to Washington D.C.  On Monday, May 19, 1956, Kuhla took his seat in a large auditorium as the program began with the announcement, “As of today, you are working for the C.I.A.” 

At a break in the meeting, Kuhla told the speaker, “I thought that I was only coming for an interview. I can’t start today. I have a job.” Kuhla returned to his job as office equipment Service Technician for Remington Rand and gave them two weeks notice. 

Because of this delay, Kuhla was placed at the end of the list for new recruits to complete the last requirement to join the Agency—passing a polygraph test. He was nervous for six months until he was finally called. “If I flunked the polygraph test, I wouldn’t have had a job,” said Kuhla. He passed. 

Kuhla moved to Washington D.C. where he spent three years on his first project which, even today, he refuses to discuss. This was followed by a second three-year project, this time in Boston, Massachusetts. There, he met and married Constance Tambollio, a first generation Italian, and the two were married in a Catholic ceremony. The couple moved to Washington in the late 1950s and to Virginia in 1963. 

Kuhla would spend half his Agency career overseas. His first field assignment was in Bulgaria. Bernie and Constance spent two years there, followed by three years in Hungary.  

In 1971, Kuhla returned for a two-year tour in Washington and, in 1973, was transferred to Islamabad, Pakistan. Bernie and Constance spent four years there. As an American woman, Constance was shunned and isolated in Pakistan. She was becoming unhappy and tired of living in distant places and every few years, needing to learn new customs and languages. 

In 1977, they returned to Washington where they spent three years before receiving an assignment to Germany—a place where Kuhla had been stationed in the Navy. Their assignment lasted five years until, after completion of thirty years with the Agency, Kuhla retired in 1986 and accepted an offer to work for the Agency as a Contract Employee. Bernie and Constance divorced the same year. Bernie continued as a contract employee until 1991 when he returned to live in Jim Thorpe. 

During his contracting period, he frequently returned to Jim Thorpe to visit his father and sister, and old friends. He ran into a high school girl friend, Adelle Sheehan, who he knew as Adelle Melber. Sheehan’s husband, a railroad worker, had passed away from cancer.

In 1988, they were married for the first of three times. This was in a Protestant ceremony since the Catholic Church would not accept Kuhla’s secular divorce. 

Adelle was 58 years old. At the age of sixty, she anticipated receipt of her late husband’s railroad pension. She found out that by being married, she would lose her right to the pension. 

“She came home crying,” Kuhla said. “We hired a lawyer who recommended a divorce.” They divorced. 

“Our names were printed in the paper as getting divorced and people couldn’t understand what happened to this happy couple,” Kuhla noted. Adelle received the pension and they remarried. 

A year ago, Kuhla’s first wife, Constance, passed away. This freed Bernie to marry in a Catholic ceremony, which he and Adelle did. “I was free to receive the sacraments from the Catholic Church and got married a third time to the same woman,” said Kuhla.” 

When the U.S. sent troops to Afghanistan four years ago, Kuhla – now in his seventies, was asked to work as a contractor. “They asked me and my wife said, ‘No way you are going back.’” 

 

A Bulgarian Tale

Although Bernie Kuhla was never a cloak and dagger operative for the Agency, there was one occasion when he found himself face to face with a KGB agent on a remote road behind the Iron Curtain. 

“I remember in Bulgaria, a KGB man, an agent of the Russian Secret Service, followed me every place I went. One time, my wife and I and my two-year-old daughter drove our Volkswagen Beetle on a trip into the woods. 

“As we are returning from the trail, there’s a Mercedes that had broken down with a flat tire. This was the guy who was following me. I helped him fix the flat tire.”  

A Hungarian Tale

Cardinal József Mindszenty sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy when Hungary was invaded in 1965, and lived there until 1971, when the Hungarian government let him leave the country. 

“I served Mass for him,” said Kuhla. “My son was the last person to be baptized in Hungary by him.”