Bill Miller | he later ran afoul of the Brass and was sectioned 8′ed out of the military so he could never testify in a trial of his superiors | He retreated to the Central American jungle to live with the natives, and provided all of the animals from that region to the US National Zoo | The few times that he returned to the US, he lunched at the National Geographic private dining room, and rode around in a limousine, courtesy of the CIA

I interviewed a West Point alumnus a few years ago who had three children all go to the Academy, and all three bailed out -- post 9-11 duty -- at the end of their five years for the same reason. 

They did not want to be mercenaries for US multinational business interests, which included drug dealers.

I had the privilege to have been the housemate of Bill Miller for a few months in Barbados years ago. He was one of the three-year rushed West Point grads near the end of WWII. He was the last OSS officer to go into China to serve under the infamous John Birch.

Captain John Birch, WWII, China theater. KIA

When Birch was killed when trying to bully a Communist company commander, whose loss of face caused him to kill Birch to restore his honor, Bill Miller actually recovered his body a few weeks later after he, as a 2nt Lt. had taken the surrender of all Japanese forces in an area the size of New England. He ruled it for six weeks. That’s a screenplay that never got written.

Miller had done this after surviving a sampan river passage to the main Japanese garrison city, and after disembarking on a quiet dock at dawn with only his carbine, walked into the city past endless Japanese troops who could not believe their eyes, and announced he was there to accept their surrender.

Almost no one has ever heard of Bill Miller, as he later ran afoul of the Brass and was sectioned 8′ed out of the military so he could never testify in a trial of his superiors. He retreated to the Central American jungle to live with the natives, and provided all of the animals from that region to the US National Zoo. The few times that he returned to the US, he lunched at the National Geographic private dining room, and rode around in a limousine, courtesy of the CIA.

Miller became a world-famous fisherman and zoologist, and when word got out he had been destroyed to protect a pedophile prosecution of the General in charge of Southern Command, he became a celebrity for a while as the Caribbean fishing and diving boat charter captain of the rich and famous of the day — from the Hollywood stars to political people like Richard Nixon.

What I learned from him in those two months has been my lodestone guide as to how careful you need to be around powerful people in the military and politics. That is one reason I never served in a chain of command where I would be under the military justice system and subject to lynching at the press of a button.

So the lesson of my lead in today is that one of the reasons we don’t have more of a true-blue military brass is that many of the best are run out at an early stage. 

The same happens in politics, so instead of getting the cream of the crop, we get something else, like the Bush family crime syndicate, the Mexican cartel buddy Mitt Romney, or Hillary Clinton, who set up all the money laundering trusts while a lawyer in Arkansas. You just can’t make this stuff up… Jim W. Dean ]