Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

view all research by Dana Dillon

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Dana R. Dillon served 20 years in the U.S. Army, the last six years at the Pentagon, where he specialized in intelligence and foreign policy. Including his service at the Pentagon, Dillon served as an infantry officer and as a Foreign Area Officer, specializing in Southeast Asia political and military events.

During his military career, Dillon’s expertise in military relations took him to 30 countries including Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, where he assisted U.S. efforts to strengthen and modernize fighting forces in Southeast Asia. Dillon retired from the Army as a Major in 2000.

Dillon focused on terrorism even before 9/11. In one of his first research projects for The Heritage Foundation in September of 2000, Dillon called for a new course of action in dealing with one of the world’s hot-beds of terrorist activity, Indonesia. Since 9/11 Dillon has followed the progress of terrorism and democracy across Southeast Asia. To more effectively combat terrorism in Southeast Asia the United States, Dillon says, needs to strengthen its support of the democratic governments in the region and refocus security assistance from propping up rogue militaries to supporting the rule of law by training police, prosecutors, judges and even legislatures.

Dillon has also written on how to protect the homeland in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States. Noting the intelligence breakdown that occurred prior to the attacks, Dillon advised that the U.S should assign the Department of Justice as the lead agency for establishing a federal-level intelligence fusion center, and bring in state and local law enforcement officials as special U.S. marshals to handle classified information.

Dillon graduated at the top of his class from the Indonesian language course at the Defense Language Institute. In 1989-90 Dillon was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and attended classes at the National University of Singapore. Dillon earned his master’s degree in Southeast Asian Studies from the University of Wisconsin in 1994, and his bachelor’s degree in political science from Nebraska’s Kearney State College in 1979.

Dillon is the author of numerous articles, including "Good Riddance, Afghanistan," (International Economy, Winter 2002), in which he argued that one option that should be considered in dealing with post-war Afghanistan is partitioning out the nation’s cobbled-together territories amongst its neighbors; "Maritime Piracy: Defining the Problem" (SAIS Review, 2005) and "Contemporary Security Challenges in Southeast Asia" (Parameters, 1997). He is a frequent commentator on the FOX News Channel, CNN and MSNBC, and had been widely quoted in the major print media, including the New York Times, USA Today, and the Associated Press.