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 MONTEREY,
Calif. - Former Navy intelligence officer turned academic, Naval
Postgraduate School (NPS) Assistant Professor Erik Dahl teaches at
both NPS and at its Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS).
Dahl's expertise is focused largely on domestic security, and what
he describes as the “balance between security and liberty” that is
found at “the intersection of intelligence, terrorism and homeland
security”.
“I argue that we can learn more from the study of
failed than successful terrorist plots, even though most of the
attention is on terrorist successes. A terrorist failure is an
intelligence success, and I want to know what contributes to
intelligence success,” said Dahl. “What motivates me is helping the
American intelligence community to keep America safe.”
Dahl is a prolific writer on the subject of balancing
security with civil liberties.
“Many of our leaders argue
that you do not have to sacrifice civil liberties to have security,
but I don't buy it,” said Dahl. “History shows that when we have
endured crises, we have given up [some of our] civil liberties.”
Dahl contends that when civil liberties are at stake,
appropriate measures and safeguards must be in place.
“There
are two things that must happen first,” explained Dahl. “First we
need to have a public discussion about what we are giving up. The
American people need to be informed ... The main purpose of my work
is to help engage [them] in a better discussion."
“We also
need to be able to move the pendulum back after a security threat
recedes, but I don't think we have done that since 9/11. My personal
belief is that we need to start moving the pendulum back toward
civil liberties,” Dahl continued.
Still, Dahl acknowledges
that it is not easy for a government to give up a privilege once
taken. Discussions on this point have become increasingly prevalent
in light of the ability of both governments and private corporations
to track and monitor citizens/consumers online.
Although
much of the public debate is over how much data private corporations
gather on individuals, Dahl says he is more worried about what the
government is doing.
“When we talk about domestic
surveillance, the dots that the intelligence community are
collecting [and connecting] are you and me,” he said. “When the dots
are you and me, we have to set the bar higher. People in the future
may say that we went too far, and that's why open decisions and
oversight is necessary.”
He further illustrated his point by
quoting Royal Professor of Law John MacArthur Maguire who famously
described laws as “the wise restraints that make men free.”
“The problem with our current domestic intelligence and surveillance
programs,” Dahl said, “is that they don't appear to be very wisely
implemented, and they infringe on our personal freedoms more than
they need to.”
Dahl's circuitous path to academia and the
ideas that he espouses are a story in and of itself. It's a path
that took him from the storied halls of Harvard, to a brief stint as
a reporter for a small-town newspaper, and finally to a naval career
followed by graduate and doctoral education at Tufts College.
Dahl's life experience has certainly shaped his outlook, but so
too has his daily interactions with the students he teaches. In
addition to teaching U.S. and allied officers at NPS, Dahl's work
with its CHDS allows him to exchange ideas with federal, state and
local civilian officials including security and intelligence
officials, ranging from the New York Police Department (NYPD) to the
FBI.
His latest article, “Finding Bin Laden: Lessons for a
New American Way of Intelligence” published in Political Science
Quarterly, grew out of discussions between Dahl and members of the
NYPD in his courses at CHDS.
“I'm interested in the
intelligence side [of how we found him], why did it take 10 years?”
asks Dahl. “Why did the biggest, most expensive and most effective
intelligence system in the world take 10 years to find the most
recognizable bad guy on the planet?”
After scouring
unclassified sources, Dahl came to the conclusion that the way the
American intelligence system had evolved from the Cold War to today
is good at catching terrorists, but not as capable as it should be
at preventing their attacks or addressing the many other threats our
nation faces.
“We got very good at ‘finding, fixing and
finishing' terrorists around the world, but are those the things
that America needs today, particularly against domestic terrorist
threats?” Dahl asks.
For Dahl, teaching and writing about
these important issues is only part of what he feels the public has
charged him and colleagues to do. He is a vocal advocate for
engaging with the public - an exercise that he considers a “civic
duty,” both for himself and his students.
“I love to
encourage my students to write for publication, the Naval Institute
Proceedings, the Small Wars Journal, etc.,” he said. “In some of my
classes, I assign my students to write an op-ed. They don't need to
submit them for publication, but I hope that some of them will do
that someday.”
“I enjoy not just engaging with students in
the classroom, but with local organizations and with others at
conferences around the country. I think that [this sort of
engagement] is an important part of our job,” said Dahl. “We should
be instilling a desire to think and debate the important issues of
the day, both in our students and the community. That's why the
people of this country pay us, to teach our students, but to also
stimulate important discussions among our students and the public.”
Article by Kenneth Stewart, Naval Postgraduate School
Photo by
Javier Chagoya, Naval Postgraduate School
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2015
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