Eight years after graduating with honors from George Mason University, Curt Klun, MPA '02, continues to rely on the skills that he gained from his master's degree in public administration. Now, he is helping transform United States national security structure to meet today’s threats.
Klun presented a case study on Tuesday, Oct. 19 examining 35 years of drug trafficking and the law enforcement and federal government responses to the trade. Klun authored the study for a Project on National Security Reform presentation at the Reserve Officer’s Association headquarters in Washington, D.C.
He has worked for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration since 1998 as a program analyst. He obtained a second master’s degree in 2006, this time in military studies from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. While at the college, he had heard that the Project on National Security Reform was looking for someone to write a case study on how the federal government has responded to the war on drugs, so he volunteered to write the pro bono case study off duty from his work.
The Project on National Security Reform is a non-partisan organization that studies the U.S. national security system. In the fall of 2006, Klun started his research for the study, titled “War on Drugs: Lessons Learned from 35 Years of Fighting Asymmetric Threats.”
“This case study tackles the issue of non-state actor threats, such as insurgency, terrorism and criminal networks,” Klun said. "Our new national security structure must have the tactical flexibility of a network to meet the non-state actor threat, and at the same time, the longevity and accountability of a rule-based organization to counter traditional military-to-military threats.”