Friday, June 13, 2008

Biehl brings CIA, defense insider expertise to BBN

By Catherine Williams

For almost 20 years, Heather Triplett Biehl has been an expert on bad guys. As an authority on counterterrorism, a former Middle East analyst for the CIA and a defense industry executive, she has briefed presidents, jumped out of helicopters and pitched technology to the country’s top intelligence agencies.

Biehl’s occasionally covert career continues with her latest post as the vice president of the flagship intelligence programs office at Cambridge-based BBN Technologies Inc. 

Biehl, 40, said she is responsible for analyzing and identifying which technologies across five of BBN’s business units are best suited for the intelligence community, including the CIA and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The units specialize in information technology, quantum physics, speech and language analysis, sensors and cyber security. BBN’s technologies range from systems that conduct group analysis of connections between “bad guys” to sensors that monitor the types of trucks traveling in certain areas, she said.

“I feel like a kid in a candy store. I have a whole new set of tools to play with,” said Biehl, who plans to hire up to five workers for the new office.

Biehl, who began her job last month, said the intelligence community needs information-sharing systems to pass data across federal and local agencies, automatic translation technologies for monitoring foreign media broadcasts, and analytic systems. “Most technology in the past few years has been about data collection. The analytics have suffered,” said Biehl.

Prior to joining BBN, Biehl was the director of intelligence programs at BAE Systems Inc. in Burlington. While at BAE, she wrote an 85-page paper adopted by the CIA as part of its blueprint for fighting global terrorism through 2009, according to Biehl.

Biehl began her decade-long career with the CIA in 1989 after winning acceptance to an agency training program. After she passed psychological tests, background checks, and a polygraph test — in addition to learning to build bombs and jump out of helicopters — the CIA hired her as a watch officer at a 24-hour crisis center, Biehl said.

Biehl later became a CIA senior political analyst in the office of Near East and South Asian analysis. She served as a senior member of the Iraqi analysis team and prepared daily publications for the White House, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Congress. Biehl said she conducted in-person briefings with Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Biehl earned a bachelor’s degree from Westminster College, where Winston Churchill delivered his Iron Curtain speech in 1946. She grew up on a farm in Jefferson City, Mo. 
 

Catherine Williams is a freelance reporter in Boston.