John Morton Spec Ops Dak, Real Rogue: Back-seater to Luke Skywalker

Name- John "Dak" Morton Content Area- Spec Ops Location- Washington, DC   USA Twitter- @tapcaf

John is best known as Dak, Luke Skywalker's back-seater in the Battle of Hoth, The Empire Strikes Back. He also appeared in the film substituting for Jeremy Bulloch as Boba Fett on Bespin when Boba utters his famous line to Darth Vader, "He's no good to me dead." Currently, he is a regular contributor to the Official Star Wars Blog.

Beyond the Galaxy, fans know John from roles in epic films like A Bridge Too Far, Superman II and Flash Gordon and in the BBC television series Oppenheimer. A veteran performer, he appeared on London’s West End stage and New York’s Off-Off Broadway as an actor and musician. When not acting, singing or playing guitar, he was a lighting and sound technician affiliated with London’s White Light Electrics working on such classic productions as The Rocky Horror Show, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Nicholas Nickleby and thought-provoking plays by celebrated playwright David Hare.

A published author, John’s Backstory In Blue: Ellington At Newport ’56 is a behind-the-scenes look at a legendary moment in American cultural history when a performance of the great Duke Ellington Orchestra almost caused a riot at the third Newport Jazz Festival. John’s plays have been produced in New York and Washington, notably his award-winning Hubris.

In his current Washington reincarnation, John is a senior national security analyst with Gryphon Technologies under a contract supporting the Navy’s Aegis combat system modernization for the PEO Integrated Warfare Systems (IWS). He is also the strategic advisor to DomesticPreparedness.com and was a distinguished fellow and the homeland security lead for the Project on National Security Reform. With over 25 years experience in complex national and homeland security issues, he has consulted and conducted independent research and analyses for among others: BAE Systems/Detica, Technology Strategies & Alliances (under a contract with the OSD Office of Net Assessment), Lockheed Martin Government Electronics Group, United Defense, L.P., Business Executives for National Security, Forecast International/DMS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the National Defense Industrial Association. John has been extensively published and has written for virtually every major defense publication.

A graduate of the George Washington University with a B.A. and M.A. in International Affairs, he completed his thesis research as a two-term student reader at the London School of Economics.

John is an honorary member of the 501st Garrison, Rebel Legion, Mandalorian Mercs and the Dark Alliance. He also helps the 501st with various charity events, most recently supporting the Travis Manion Foundation. In his work with these groups and at convention appearances, he provides particular support and encouragement to active and reserve military, veterans and first responders who are serving or have served community and country.

Each semester, John gives the introductory lecture to the homeland security elective students at Washington’s National War College, a component of the National Defense University. These graduate-level students come from the military and other security-related Federal departments and agencies. He has also given homeland security presentations to a number of professional associations, most recently the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) and the Security Industry Association (SIA).

As a member of the Spec Ops Team, John hopes to partner and/or mentor research into the evolution of 20th century and next-generation American governance where he feels Star Wars Rebels will provide an accessible analogy. He plans to use his “Toward a Premise for Grand Strategy” in Sheila R. Ronis, ed. Economic Security: Neglected Dimension of National Security? (National Defense University Press, 2011), pp. 13-61, as his starting point.

• “Toward a Premise for Grand Strategy” in Sheila R. Ronis, ed. Economic Security: Neglected Dimension of National Security? (National Defense University Press, 2011), pp. 13-61.

• Next-Generation Homeland Security: Network Federalism and the Course to National Preparedness

  Foreword by Gov. Tom Ridge, the Nation’s first secretary of homeland security.

  An inside view of the political dynamics behind the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the development of the National Preparedness System, this book focuses on the emerging belief that the nation must advance beyond the interagency model dominated by Washington and the federal agencies’ security relationships with state and local governments and the private sector. It introduces a 21st century governance paradigm called Network Federalism and charts the course to next-generation homeland security via empowered and decentralized intergovernmental staffs in the ten federal regions.

• Mustin: A Naval Family of the 20th Century

  Mustin is on the Chief of Naval Operations’ (CNO’s) 2004 Book List as recommended reading for leadership and management.

  The family's story intertwines with the history of the U.S. Navy as it rose through the century to become the preeminent maritime player on the international stage. Key participants in many of the major naval milestones of the twentieth century, the Mustins dealt with tremendous technological and historical change, from the rise of the battleship and naval aviation to the introduction of missiles, nuclear submarines and atomic weapons. The intense degree to which technology, operations and bureaucratic politics intersected their careers proves timeless.

• Backstory in Blue: Ellington at Newport '56

  Awarded the 2009 Certificate of Merit from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research.

  It may be that the song most baby boomers identify from July 1956 is a simple twelve-bar blues, hyped on national television by a twenty-one-year-old Elvis Presley and his handlers. But it is a very different song, with its elongated fourteen-bar choruses of rhythm and dissonance, played on the night of July 7, 1956, by a fifty-seven-year-old Duke Ellington and his big band that got everybody on their feet and moving as one. More than fifty years later, “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” recorded at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, still makes a profound statement about postwar America—how we got there and where it all went.

  Backstory in Blue is a behind-the-scenes look at this epic moment in American cultural history. It is the story of who and what made Ellington’s composition so compelling and how one piece of music reflected the feelings and shaped the sensibilities of the postwar generation. It was music expressed as much by those who performed offstage as by those who performed on.

  Duke Ellington once remarked, “I was born at Newport.” Here we learn that Newport was much more than the turning point for Ellington’s career. It was the tipping point for a generation and a musical genre.

• Stanley Crouch “The Electric Company: How technology revived Ellington's Career” (A Review of John Fass Morton’s Backstory in Blue: Ellington at Newport '56) Harper’s Magazine (Friday, September 11, 2009)

  Concludes this pre-eminent African-American cultural critic, “In all, Backstory in Blue gives us a startlingly pure rendition of the private, public, domestic, and international significance of the American community in what may be an era that will more perfectly realize the deeper meanings of why the new president of the United States proudly calls himself a mutt.”

  Backstory in Blue and the Crouch review could provide another Spec Ops module as relates to pop culture.

John and his fellow Rogues prep for the Battle of Hoth with Director Irvin Kershner

John as Boba Fett

**All information shared with permission.