Trump appointed Miller, an unknown whose rise was so far-fetched that the secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, had to Google<\/a> his new boss to figure out who he was. Wikipedia was useless because at the time, Miller didn\u2019t merit an entry.<\/p>\n After retiring from the Army as a Special Forces colonel in 2014, Miller moved from one mid-level job to another in Washington, D.C., a nobody in a city of somebodies. Things began to pick up after Trump\u2019s election, and by August 2020, he was promoted to director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Just three months later, he was summoned to the Oval Office and put in charge of the world\u2019s most powerful military.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m at work on a Monday morning, and the phone rings, and they\u2019re like, \u2018Get your ass down here,\u2019\u201d Miller said in an interview, referring to the moment he was called to the White House. \u201cI was like, \u2018Oh, shit.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Miller knew his name was circulating in the White House, but the announcement came abruptly and was not greeted with warmth by his life partner. \u201cYeah, my wife is like, \u2018The only thing we have is our name and you\u2019re ruining it,\u2019\u201d Miller recalled. \u201cShe\u2019s like, \u2018You\u2019re an idiot. I think this is the stupidest thing that\u2019s ever happened.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Yes dear, I know that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and his wife Kathryn make prerecorded remarks for the Military Spouse Employment Partnership New Partner Induction Ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 4, 2020.<\/p>\n \nPhoto: Department of Defense<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/p>\n As improbable Washington stories go, Miller\u2019s blink-and-it\u2019s-over journey from Beltway nothingness to what his detractors regard as a semi-witting participant in a plot to overthrow the constitutional order \u2014 well, it\u2019s quite something. Miller was in charge of the Pentagon on January 6, 2021, and is accused of delaying the deployment of National Guard troops so the mob that beat its way into the Capitol might succeed in creating more than a pause in the Senate\u2019s count of Electoral College votes. At a combative oversight hearing a few months later, Democratic members of Congress derided Miller<\/a> as \u201cAWOL,\u201d \u201cdisgusting,\u201d and \u201cridiculous,\u201d to which he responded, \u201cThank you for your thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n As is customary, Miller has written a memoir of his extremely brief time in power, \u201cSoldier Secretary<\/a>,\u201d published last month by Center Street, whose other authors include Newt Gingrich and Betsy DeVos. It\u2019s a typical Washington book in many ways \u2014 revealing at times, suspect at others. For instance, Miller describes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as suffering a \u201ctotal nuclear meltdown\u201d during a phone call with him on January 6, but there is no evidence for that characterization. His book sticks closely to the Beltway norm of having a principal character who displays calmness and reason while others go nuts; the principal character is the author.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n His rhetoric is a profane blend of MAGA and Noam Chomsky.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/span><\/p>\n But just as Miller\u2019s journey to the top is atypical, so too is his obscenity-flecked memoir, because the retired soldier emerges as a scorched-earth critic of the institution he served for more than three decades and presided over for 73 days. He wants to fire most of the generals at the Pentagon, slash defense spending by half, shut down the military academies, break up the military-industrial complex, and he describes the invasion of Iraq as an unjust war based on lies. His rhetoric is a profane blend of MAGA and Noam Chomsky.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, there are virtually no brakes on the American war machine,\u201d Miller writes. \u201cMilitary leaders are always predisposed to see war as a solution, because when you\u2019re a hammer, all the world\u2019s a nail. The establishments of both major political parties are overwhelmingly dominated by interventionists and internationalists who believe that America can and should police the world. Even the press \u2014 once so skeptical of war during the Vietnam era \u2014 is today little more than a brood of bloodthirsty vampires cheering on American missile strikes and urging greater involvement in conflicts America has no business fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n I was as surprised as everyone else when I heard the news about Miller\u2019s appointment, but it\u2019s not because I had to Google him. I knew who he was. We first met in Afghanistan in 2001, when he was a leader of the Special Forces unit that chased the Taliban out of their final stronghold, and I was reporting on that for the New York Times Magazine. I got to know him and wrote an article<\/a> in 2002 about his Afghan combat and his preparations for the Iraq invasion the following year. With the publication of his memoir, Miller is now making the media rounds, so we got together again.<\/p>\n After more than two\u00a0decades of the forever wars, Miller is pissed off in the way a lot of former soldiers are pissed off \u2014 and, I have to say, in the way a lot of former war reporters are pissed off too. It\u2019s hard to have been a participant in those calamities and not feel betrayed in some fashion, as pundits attempt to whitewash<\/a> the disaster and promotions are announced<\/a> for officials who masterminded it. Miller’s evolution from Special Forces operator to Trump Cabinet member is a forever wars parable that helps us understand the moral injury festering in our political corpus. Christopher Miller displays his recently published book \u201cSoldier Secretary\u201d on his home bookshelf on Feb. 7, 2023.<\/p>\n \nPhoto: Alyssa Schukar for The Intercept<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/p>\n Miller\u2019s 9\/11 journey got into literal high gear when he roared into Kandahar in a Toyota pickup with blown-out windows. It was December 2001, he was a 36-year-old major in the 3rd Battalion of the 5th Special Forces Group, and this was his first combat deployment.<\/p>\n I spotted Miller at the entrance to a compound on the outskirts of the city. Until a few days earlier, it had been the residence of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban who, after Osama bin Laden, was the most hunted man in the country. The scene was surreal because the compound was now the temporary home of Hamid Karzai, the soon-to-be leader of Afghanistan, whose security was guaranteed by Miller\u2019s soldiers. These just-arrived Americans were dressed half in camouflage, half in fleece jackets, and they sported the types of accessories that ordinary GIs were prohibited from having, such as beards and long hair. Mixed among them were Afghan fighters with AK-47s who had fought with the Taliban not long ago but switched loyalties, which is an accepted practice in Afghanistan when your team is losing.<\/p>\n I struck up a conversation with Miller, a tall officer with bushy red hair and a wicked-looking assault weapon slung over his shoulder. Most of his soldiers were silent and grim \u2014 they weren\u2019t happy about the journalists who had shown up \u2014 but Miller, who recognized my name because he had read my memoir on the Bosnian war, was friendly and answered a few questions. I asked if he had been to Bosnia, and he gave me a vague special operator laugh and said, \u201cI\u2019ve been everywhere, man.\u201d As it turned out, he\u2019d worked undercover in Bosnia in the late 1990s alongside CIA operatives tracking Serb war criminals.<\/p>\n I stayed in Kandahar for a while longer, as did Miller. We were both spending time around the city\u2019s U.S.-installed warlord, Gul Agha Shirzai<\/a>, whom Miller describes in his book as \u201ca self-serving piece of shit,\u201d which is totally accurate. After we both returned to America, I got Miller to invite me to spend a few days at his battalion\u2019s headquarters at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. We talked for hours about what happened in Afghanistan, about the soldiers he lost, about the Al Qaeda fighters he helped kill, and about the next war on the horizon (this was a year before the illegal invasion of Iraq). Miller was as friendly and transparent as I could hope for from a Special Forces officer. His favorite word was \u201cknucklehead,\u201d which he sometimes used to describe himself<\/a>.<\/p>\n Miller didn\u2019t know it at the time, but he was at the cusp of a profound disenchantment with the country\u2019s military and political leaders, a disillusionment he shared with a lot of soldiers, thanks to the deceptions and errors embedded in the wars they fought. Miller is exceptional only in his Cabinet-level end point. While it\u2019s important to remember that the vast bulk of these veterans are law-abiding, a small but influential group have been radicalized to violence rather than government service.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Veterans are one of the key subjects in historian Kathleen Belew\u2019s lauded book about right-wing extremism, titled \u201cBring the War Home<\/a>.\u201d American history teaches us a consistent lesson: There will almost always be blowback at home from wars fought elsewhere. Of 968 people indicted after the storming of the Capitol, 131 have military backgrounds, according to the\u00a0Program on Extremism<\/a>\u00a0at George Washington University. Due to the respect military service generates among civilians in right-wing movements, veterans composed a disproportionately large number of the ringleaders on January 6, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes<\/a>, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy last year.<\/p>\n Soon after we met in 2001, Miller noticed omens of dysfunction in the American war machine. It began, he wrote in his book, with a visit to the airport that U.S. Marines seized outside Kandahar a few days after the Special Forces sped into town in their four-wheel-drive vehicles. Miller and one of his sergeants had to pick up supplies at the airport, and they saw Marines putting up a big tent. The sergeant told Miller, \u201cSir, it\u2019s time for us to get the fuck out of here.\u201d Miller asked why, and the sergeant replied, \u201cThey\u2019re building the PX. It\u2019s time for the Green Berets to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe should have kept it to about 500 people, just let that be the special operations theater.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/span><\/p>\n He meant the military was settling in for the long haul. Sprawling bases would be constructed with Burger King and Pizza Hut outlets, staffed by workers flown in from Nepal, Kenya, and other countries. There would be more than 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan at the peak of President Barack Obama\u2019s surge, and hundreds of billions of dollars<\/a> spent in the country, yielding decades of full employment for generals and executives in the weapons industry. Miller had a front-row seat at this carnival. \u201cWe should have kept it to about 500 people, just let that be the special operations theater,\u201d he told me. In other words, quickly arrange a power-sharing deal between Karzai and the Taliban rather than try to eliminate the Taliban and leave a small number of special operators to find and kill Osama bin Laden and the remnants of Al Qaeda.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think Miller sensed all this when he saw that tent going up; nobody knew what was going to happen that early in the game. And remember, you can\u2019t trust Beltway memoirs; they\u2019re a racket of myth construction. But locating the exact moment of Miller\u2019s awareness is less important than the fact he eventually recognized, as most of us did, a historic error that he blamed on his leadership. \u201cAs soon as we went conventional, that war was lost,\u201d Miller said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019ll take to my grave. As soon as we brought in the Army generals and all their big ideas \u2014 war was over at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Like many veterans, Miller participated in not just the Afghanistan disaster, but also the one in Iraq. There he had an even stronger sense of betrayal.<\/p>\n As the invasion neared, Miller was responsible for operational planning for his Special Forces battalion, and he put together a blueprint for seizing an airfield southwest of Baghdad as an advance position for the capture of Iraq\u2019s capital. He thought the buildup was a bluff to coerce Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein into giving up the weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration insisted he possessed (though he did not). In Miller\u2019s telling, it wasn\u2019t until he was geared up in an MH-53 helicopter at night, heading deep into Iraq, that he knew it was on. The future acting defense secretary turned to a soldier next to him and said, \u201cWe\u2019re really doing this. I can\u2019t believe we\u2019re fucking doing this.\u201d According to Miller, the soldier replied, \u201cMe neither.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller and I were sitting in a caf\u00e9 at the public library in Westport, Connecticut \u2014 he lives in northern Virginia and was visiting this wealthy suburb for a fundraiser for a play about the Special Forces. He was dressed in khaki pants and a casual shirt, and his shag of red hair from 20 years ago was gone; it had thinned out to a distinguished-looking silver. He is 57 years old now and looks no different from any other close-to-senior citizen killing time at a library (same goes for me, I should confess). He sipped his coffee and continued, \u201cInvading a sovereign country is a big deal, you know. We typically don\u2019t do that except in extenuating circumstances. I thought it was all coercive diplomacy. Then when it goes down, you\u2019re like, \u2018Damn.\u2019\u201d As he writes in his book, \u201cI had been an active participant in an unjust war. We invaded a sovereign nation, killed and maimed a lot of Iraqis and lost some of the greatest American patriots to ever live \u2014 all for a god-damned lie.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou can mess up a piece of paperwork and get run out of the Army. But you can lose a damn war and nobody is held accountable.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n If your nation calls on you to send your comrades to their deaths in battle, you expect it will be for a good reason; soldiers have a lot more at stake than Beltway hawks for whom a bad day consists of getting bumped from their hit on CNN or Fox. That\u2019s why Miller describes himself as \u201cwhite-hot\u201d angry toward the leaders who lied<\/a> or dissembled<\/a> and suffered no consequences; many have profited in retirement, thanks to amply compensated speaking gigs<\/a> and board seats<\/a>. \u201cYou can mess up a piece of paperwork and get run out of the Army,\u201d Miller told me. \u201cBut you can lose a damn war and nobody is held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n If that line came from a pundit, it would be a platitude. But Miller described to me the case of a soldier he knew well who was forced out of the military for not having the paperwork for a machine gun he left in Afghanistan for troops replacing his unit. The soldier was trying to help other soldiers who didn\u2019t have all the weapons they needed. It didn\u2019t matter; he was gone, and Miller couldn\u2019t stop it.<\/p>\n Miller trembled a bit as he narrated this story. Maybe he was on the verge of tears; I couldn\u2019t be sure. There\u2019s a saying in journalism that if your mother says she loves you, check it out. Never trust a source, especially one selling a book and an image of himself. As these things always are, our conversation was a bit of a performance by each of us, both trying to get out of the other as much as we could. Miller\u2019s intentions were hard to pin down, but his anger was not. I had seen some of what he had seen.<\/p>\n In 2014, after three decades in the Army and more than a dozen deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kuwait, Bosnia, and elsewhere, Miller retired. He had a lot of baggage to deal with. As he writes, \u201cFor years I had been cramming unpleasant memories into a box and storing them on a shelf deep in the recesses of my psyche, knowing that someday I\u2019d have to unpack each one.\u201d<\/p>\n He set a goal: Complete a marathon in less than three hours. His long practice runs of 15-25 miles were, as he put it, therapy sessions to work through the wreckage of the wars he fought and \u201ca simmering sense of betrayal that every veteran today must feel \u2014 the recognition that so many sacrifices were ultimately made in the service of a lie, as in Iraq, or to further a delusion.\u201d After running that marathon, he entered a 50-mile race on the Appalachian Trail and finished in less than eight hours, ranking second in his age group<\/a>.<\/p>\n There were no epiphanies at the end. Physical exhaustion would not eliminate his bitterness about Iraq and Afghanistan. \u201cIt still makes my blood boil,\u201d he writes, \u201cand it probably will until the day I die.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, center left, walks with Lt. Gen. John Deedrick after arriving to Kabul, Afghanistan, on Dec. 22, 2020.<\/p>\n \nPhoto: Staff Sgt. Jack Sanders\/DoD<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/p>\n While Miller describes himself as falling \u201cass-backwards\u201d into the job of acting secretary of defense, you don\u2019t rise to the top by mistake in Washington, and people who run ultramarathons don\u2019t tend to be lily pads just floating along. Miller has a gosh-darn way of talking, and even his detractors describe him as affable, but he\u2019s a special operator, and you shouldn\u2019t forget that. After retiring from the military, he made a series of canny moves to join the National Security Council, at the White House and pair up with a key figure in Trump\u2019s orbit, Kash Patel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Patel became Washington famous<\/a> in the first years of the Trump era because, as an aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, he played a behind-the-scenes role in the GOP effort to undermine special\u00a0counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. In early 2019, Patel was rewarded with a job on the NSC,\u00a0reportedly<\/a> on direct orders from Trump. Miller had joined the NSC the previous year as senior director for counterterrorism and transnational threats, and Patel became his deputy. Miller claims that initially, he was wary.<\/p>\n \u201cI got online and Wikipedia\u2019d him, and I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh my God, this is the crazy guy,\u201d he told me with a laugh.<\/p>\n What happened next could be a how-to guide for Beltway strivers.<\/p>\n \u201cI just had convening authority,\u201d Miller recalled of his time at the NSC. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018That\u2019s bullshit.\u2019 So I went to the Pentagon and took a job as a political appointee because I needed to have money and people.\u201d<\/p>\n It was early 2020 when he became deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism. This gave him greater influence over the hunt for ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorists, which had been his obsession at the NSC. Yet it wasn\u2019t enough. As Miller describes it, \u201cNow I had people, now I had money, but still not being very successful. \u2026 I still need more juice.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kash Patel, former chief of staff to then-Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, departs from a deposition meeting on Capitol Hill with the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack, on Dec. 9, 2021, in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n \nPhoto: Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/p>\n One of his friends in the administration made a suggestion: Why don\u2019t you shoot for a Senate-confirmed position?<\/p>\n \u201cI was like, \u2018That gives me more wasta<\/em>, right?\u2019\u201d Miller said, using an Arabic word for clout. \u201cAnd I\u2019m like, \u2018Shit yeah.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u00a0nominated<\/a> him to head the National Counterterrorism Center, and on August 6, the Senate confirmed him in a unanimous voice vote.<\/p>\n \u201cSo now I\u2019ve got more fucking throw weight,\u201d Miller continued. \u201cPatel’s working in the National Security Council with the president. We’re starting to grind down the resistors.\u201d The resistance, he said, was against a heightened effort he and Patel advocated to finish off the remaining leaders of Al Qaeda and rescue\u00a0a handful of remaining American hostages.<\/p>\n Miller was invited for a talk with Johnny McEntee, the head of the White House Presidential Personnel Office. In the twilight of the Trump era, McEntee was one of the president\u2019s most loyal confidantes; though just 29 years old at the time, he was described, in a magazine\u00a0article<\/a>, as the \u201cdeputy president.\u201d Miller knew through the grapevine that he might be in line for Esper\u2019s job because the administration had just a few Senate-confirmed officials with national security credentials. McEntee was sizing him up.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Oh shit,\u2019 because I didn\u2019t want the job,\u201d Miller told me.<\/p>\n This was part of Miller\u2019s \u201cass-backwards\u201d shtick. Why grind as hard as he did to stop short of the biggest prize of all? I pushed back, and he acknowledged that while the job might \u201csuck really, really badly,\u201d it could be worthwhile even if Trump lost the election. \u201cI had a work list,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI thought, \u2018I can get a lot of shit done.\u2019\u201d His main tasks, he told me, included stabilizing the Pentagon after Esper\u2019s ouster; withdrawing the remaining U.S. forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia; and elevating special operations forces in the Department of Defense\u2019s hierarchy.<\/p>\n Just before the election, he heard the shuffle was imminent.<\/p>\n \u201cThe word comes down: They\u2019re getting rid of Esper, win or lose,\u201d Miller said. \u201cIt\u2019s payback time.\u201d<\/p>\n On Monday morning, six days after Trump lost the election, Miller\u2019s phone rang. Come to the White House, now.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Pictured, from left, Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, Vice Adm. Sean Buck, President Donald Trump, Lt. Gen. Darryl Williams, and Chair of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley before the start of a game at Michie Stadium on Dec. 12, 2020, in West Point, N.Y.<\/p>\n \nPhoto: Dustin Satloff\/Getty Images<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/p>\n Miller suffered a literal misstep his first day on the job: Walking into the Pentagon, he tripped and nearly fell on the steps in front of the mammoth building. That prompted laughs online<\/a>,\u00a0but the bigger issue was the entourage that surrounded him as he took charge of the nearly 3 million soldiers and civilians in the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n He was accompanied by a murderer\u2019s row of Trump loyalists. Patel was his chief of staff. Ezra Cohen, a controversial analyst, got a top intelligence post. Douglas Macgregor, a Fox News pundit, became a special assistant. Anthony Tata, a retired general who called Obama a \u201cterrorist leader,\u201d was appointed policy chief. Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was reportedly<\/a> so alarmed that he told Patel and Cohen, \u201cLife looks really shitty from behind bars. \u2026 And if you guys do anything that\u2019s illegal, I don\u2019t mind having you in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller, when I asked about his advisers, waved off the concerns and said, \u201cComplete misappreciation of those people.\u201d<\/p>\n Cutting the U.S. footprint overseas was one of his top priorities, the residue of his long journey through the forever wars. It was a big part of his support for Trump, who was far more critical of those wars than most politicians. In the 2016 primaries, Trump distanced himself from other Republicans by accusing the George W. Bush administration of manufacturing evidence to justify the Iraq invasion. \u201cThey lied,\u201d Trump declared<\/a> at a debate in South Carolina, drawing boos from the Republican audience. \u201cThey said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none, and they knew there were none.\u201d This was an occasion on which Trump\u2019s political interests\u00a0\u2014 trying to embarrass front-runner Jeb Bush, the brother of the former president\u00a0\u2014 aligned with something that was actually true.<\/p>\n Once he got to the White House, though, Trump didn\u2019t make a lot of changes. Since 9\/11, the generals who oversaw America\u2019s wars had resisted when civilian leaders said it was time to scale back. And Trump actually quickened the tempo of some military operations by offering greater support to the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen<\/a> and taking an especially hawkish position on Iran. But he was stymied on Iraq and Afghanistan, not just by active-duty generals at the Pentagon, but also by the retired ones he appointed to such key posts as national security adviser, chief of staff, and secretary of defense. They were all gone by the final act of his presidency.<\/p>\n By the time Miller left the Pentagon when President Joe Biden was sworn in, U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq had been cut to 2,500 troops<\/a>\u00a0in each country (from about 4,000 in Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq). The approximately 700 soldiers based in Somalia were withdrawn. But that would not be Miller\u2019s most memorable legacy.<\/p>\n It was mid-afternoon on January 6, 2021. A pro-Trump mob had bashed its way through police barricades and invaded the Capitol<\/a>. Ashli Babbitt had been shot dead. The rioters who occupied the Senate chamber included a half-naked shaman wearing a horned helmet and carrying a spear. Where was the National Guard?<\/p>\n Miller was the one to know, which is why he was on the phone with Nancy Pelosi at 3:44 p.m.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI was sitting at my desk in the Pentagon holding a phone six inches away from my ear, trying my best to make sense of the incoherent shrieking blasting out of the receiver,\u201d he writes on the first page of his book. \u201cHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi was on the line, and she was in a state of total nuclear meltdown. To be fair, the other members of congressional leadership on the call weren\u2019t exactly composed either. Every time Pelosi paused to catch her breath, Senator Mitch McConnell, Senator Chuck Schumer, and Congressman Steny Hoyer took turns hyperventilating into the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n That passage in Miller\u2019s five-page introduction got a bit of attention on social media<\/a> when it was first excerpted<\/a> in January, and not all of it was positive. Wonkette described<\/a> Miller\u2019s account as \u201cverifiably false\u201d and pointed its readers to a video<\/a> released by the January 6 committee showing Pelosi and other congressional leaders speaking in urgent but calm voices with Miller. They asked him to send troops immediately and demanded to know why it was taking so long. Pelosi is intense but not melting down; McConnell, Schumer, and Hoyer are not hyperventilating.<\/p>\n When I met Miller in Westport, I asked if he was aware of this discrepancy. He became slightly agitated.<\/p>\n \u201cThe one they show is a different call,\u201d he replied. \u201cThe one used [by] the\u00a0January 6\u00a0committee is a later phone call where they\u2019re much calmer. The first call was frantic. Like literally losing their shit. \u2026 So that\u2019s bullshit, dude.\u201d<\/p>\n He told me to look into it.<\/p>\n The January 6 committee released partial footage of two calls that show Pelosi speaking with Miller. The first call, according to the time stamp on the committee\u2019s video<\/a>, occurred at 3 p.m. The sequence begins with Pelosi sitting near Schumer, who is holding a cellphone and saying, \u201cI\u2019m going to call up the effing secretary of DOD.\u201d The next shot shows Schumer, Pelosi, and Hoyer huddled around the phone talking with Miller in measured voices; McConnell is not shown in this clip. The second call for which the committee released some footage is the one Wonkette pointed to. The participants in this second call are the ones mentioned by Miller in his book: McConnell is in this footage, along with Pelosi, Schumer, and Hoyer. There are no meltdowns. The committee\u2019s time stamp for this call is 3:46 p.m., which is a nearly exact match for the time Miller provides in his book: 3:44 p.m.<\/p>\n What this means is that the phone call Miller described in his book almost certainly is the one Wonkette pointed to and did not occur the way Miller describes, unless there is an incriminating portion of the video we have not seen, which is what Miller claims. Yet that seems unlikely because there is no mention, in the multitude of testimonies and articles about that day, of Pelosi melting down at any moment. And that makes another passage in Miller\u2019s introduction problematic too.<\/p>\n \u201cI had never seen anyone \u2014 not even the greenest, pimple-faced 19-year-old Army private \u2014 panic like our nation\u2019s elder statesmen did on January 6 and in the months that followed,\u201d Miller wrote. \u201cFor the American people, and for our enemies watching overseas, the events of that day undeniably laid bare the true character of our ruling class. Here were the most powerful men and women in the world \u2014 the leaders of the legislative branch of the mightiest nation in history \u2014 cowering like frightened children for all the world to see.\u201d<\/p>\n Except they weren\u2019t cowering. They had been evacuated by security guards to Fort McNair because a mob of thousands had broken into the Capitol screaming \u201cWhere\u2019s Nancy?\u201d and \u201cHang Pence!\u201d Miller makes no mention in his book of the speech Trump delivered on January 6 that encouraged his followers to march on the Capitol. There is no mention of the fact that while Pelosi and others, including Vice President Mike Pence, urged Miller to send troops, Trump did not; the commander in chief did not speak with his defense secretary that day. Although Miller has elsewhere gently described Trump\u2019s speech as not helping matters, his book mocks the targets of the crime rather than criticizing the person who inspired and abetted it.<\/p>\n \u201cPrior to that very moment, the Speaker and her Democrat colleagues had spent months decrying the use of National Guard troops to quell left-wing riots following the death\u00a0of George Floyd that caused countless deaths and billions of dollars in property damage nationwide,\u201d he writes. \u201cBut as soon as it was her ass on the line, Pelosi had been miraculously born again as a passionate, if less than altruistic, champion of law and order.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Miller\u2019s anger is real, but his target is poorly chosen, which is the story of America after 9\/11.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n This is unbalanced because the violence in the summer of 2020 \u2014 on the margins of nationwide protests that were overwhelmingly peaceful \u2014 did not endanger the transfer of power from a defeated president to his duly elected successor. The buildings that were attacked were not the seat of national government. And there weren\u2019t \u201ccountless deaths\u201d \u2014 there were about 25<\/a>, including two men killed by far-right vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The rhetoric in Miller\u2019s book has the aroma of reheated spots<\/a> from Fox News.<\/p>\n The\u00a0contours of his political anger comes into clearer focus after reading a passage from his chapter on Iraq. He recalled his pride in the swift capture of Baghdad, but as he flew home in a C-17 aircraft, he couldn\u2019t fully enjoy the triumph, couldn\u2019t really unwind. \u201cThe further we got from the war zone, the more my stress turned into burning white-hot anger,\u201d he wrote. He returned to an empty house in North Carolina \u2014 his family was in Massachusetts for the July\u00a04\u00a0holiday \u2014 so he worked out, drank some beer, and read a lot. It didn\u2019t help much. There was, as he put it, \u201ca rage building inside me\u201d that was directed at two groups. The first was the group he regards as the instigators, \u201cthe neoconservatives who bullied us into an unjust and unwinnable war.\u201d The second was Congress \u201cfor abrogating its constitutional duties regarding the declaring, funding, and overseeing of our nation\u2019s wars.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller\u2019s homecoming was reenacted by a generation of bitter soldiers, aid workers, and journalists. His list of culprits is a good one, though I would\u00a0add\u00a0the names of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney\u00a0to the top, because they issued the orders that destroyed Iraq. Their omission from Miller\u2019s list, combined with his rant against Pelosi, reveals how his outrage follows a strange path, focusing on a political party that, while energetically backing the wars, was not the one that started them. And Democrats did not foment the storming of the Capitol either.<\/p>\n Miller\u2019s anger is real, but his target is poorly chosen, which is the story of America after 9\/11.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A video of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on a phone call with Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, is played during a hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack, in Washington, D.C. on October 13, 2022.<\/p>\n \nPhoto: Alex Wong\/Getty Images<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/p>\n Just as the Watergate scandal had its 18-minute gap<\/a>, there\u2019s a now-infamous gap of more than four hours between the storming of the Capitol and the arrival of National Guard troops around 5:30 p.m. Miller is at the center of the controversy because the singular status of the District of Columbia means the Pentagon controls its National Guard \u2014 and Miller was the Pentagon boss on January 6.<\/p>\n The January 6 committee, which deposed Miller and other military and police officials, said in its 814-page final report<\/a> that it \u201cfound no evidence that the Department of Defense intentionally delayed deployment of the National Guard.\u201d The committee blamed the delay on \u201ca likely miscommunication\u201d between multiple layers of civilian and military officials. The abundant depositions reveal that the committee was being extremely kind when it chose the word \u201cmiscommunication.\u201d Soldiers have a special word to describe what seems to have happened at the Pentagon: a clusterfuck.<\/p>\n At 1:49 p.m., as pro-Trump demonstrators beat their way past police lines, the head of the U.S. Capitol Police force called the commander of the D.C. National Guard, Gen. William Walker, and notified him there was a \u201cdire emergency\u201d and troops were needed immediately. Walker alerted the Pentagon, and a video conference convened at 2:22 p.m. among generals and civilian officials, though not Miller. Walker told the January 6 committee<\/a> that generals at the Pentagon \u201cstarted talking about they didn\u2019t have the authority, wouldn\u2019t be their best military advice or guidance to suggest to the Secretary that we have uniformed presence at the Capitol. \u2026 They were concerned about how it would look, the optics.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201coptics\u201d refers to the Pentagon being sharply criticized after National Guard soldiers helped suppress Black Lives Matters protests in the capital on June 1, 2020. Lafayette Square, just outside the White House, was violently cleared<\/a> in a controversial operation that even involved military helicopters<\/a> flying low at night to disperse protesters. At one point, Trump triumphantly emerged from the White House with a retinue that included Defense Secretary Esper and Milley; later, both men apologized<\/a> for allowing themselves to be connected to the crackdown. After that debacle, the Pentagon was reluctant to involve troops in any crowd control in the capital, and local leaders made clear<\/a> that they opposed it too; there was no appetite to amass troops that Trump might misuse.<\/p>\n Yet the storming of the Capitol, taking law enforcement by surprise, created an emergency that justified using the Guard. As Walker told the committee, \u201cI just couldn\u2019t believe nobody was saying, \u2018Hey, go.\u2019\u201d Walker testified that he admonished the generals and officials on the 2:22 p.m. call: \u201cAren\u2019t you watching the news? Can\u2019t you see what\u2019s going on? We need to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy \u2014 who two months earlier had to Google Miller\u2019s name to figure out who he was \u2014 testified<\/a> that he joined the 2:22 p.m. call and then ran a quarter mile through Pentagon hallways to Miller\u2019s office, arriving there out of breath (\u201cI\u2019m a middle-aged man now,\u201d he told the committee. \u201cI was in a suit and leather shoes.\u201d). At 3:04 p.m., Miller gave a verbal order for the mobilization of the D.C. Guard. It was an hour-and-a-quarter since the Capitol Police\u2019s first plea for help, but it would take more than two additional hours for the troops to get there. This is the delay Miller has been particularly blamed for, though it does not appear to have been his fault alone.<\/p>\n Miller regarded his 3:04 p.m. order as final; Walker and his direct civilian commander, McCarthy, now had a green light to move troops to the Capitol, Miller testified<\/a>. Some troops were already prepared to go there, according to the committee report. A ground officer, Col. Craig Hunter, was ready to move with a quick reaction force of 40 soldiers and about 95 others who were mostly at traffic control points in the area. Despite Miller\u2019s 3:04 p.m. order, it would be hours before Hunter would be told to roll. Members of the Washington D.C. National Guard arrive to keep rioters away from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n \nPhoto: Samuel Corum\/Getty Images<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/p>\n The committee\u2019s report includes a 45-page appendix that\u2019s a catalogue of recriminations among Walker, McCarthy, Miller, and others. Their depositions offer conflicting accounts of what was said in chaotic conversations that day, and they even disagree about whether certain conversations took place. They also express contrary views on who had the authority to issue orders, precisely what orders were needed, and what some orders even meant. The depositions were taken under oath, so despite their contradictions, they are the best record we have about what happened and far more reliable than most of the books and interviews that some of the principals have produced.<\/p>\n McCarthy prioritized the time-consuming task of drawing up an operational plan that doesn\u2019t appear to have been necessary because Hunter\u2019s troops were already equipped for riot control and knew what to do and where to go. McCarthy also spent a lot of time talking on the phone to politicians and journalists, as well as joining a press conference. As he told the committee, “So it went into the next 25 minutes of literally standing there, people handing me telephones, whether it was the media or it was Congress. And I had to explain to all of them, \u2018No, we\u2019re coming, we\u2019re coming, we\u2019re coming.\u2019 So that chewed up a great deal of time.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Walker said he couldn\u2019t reach McCarthy to find out whether he had permission to send his troops to the Capitol. Testifying<\/a> on April 21, 2022, Walker said he was never called by McCarthy and was unable to contact him directly because the work number he had for McCarthy didn\u2019t function:\u00a0An automated message said, \u201cThis phone is out of service.\u201d One of his officers happened to have McCarthy\u2019s private cellphone number, but there was no answer on it. \u201cThe story we were told is that he is running through the Pentagon looking for the secretary of defense,\u201d Walker testified. \u201cThat\u2019s why he wasn\u2019t answering his phone.\u201d (McCarthy insisted in his testimony that they had talked.)<\/p>\n The delay wasn\u2019t due to faulty telecommunications alone. McCarthy told the committee that he believed he needed another order from Miller, beyond the one issued at 3:04 p.m., before he could tell Walker to move. Miller issued an additional order at 4:32 p.m., but McCarthy failed to immediately inform Walker; the order didn\u2019t reach the National Guard commander until 5:09 p.m., when a four-star general happened to notice Walker in a conference room and said, \u201cHey,\u00a0we have a green light, you\u2019re approved to go.\u201d By the time Walker\u2019s troops arrived at the Capitol,\u00a0the fighting was over, and they were asked to watch over rioters already arrested by the bloodied police.<\/p>\n Toward the end of his testimony to the January 6 committee, Miller was asked why Walker had not scrambled his troops sooner. \u201cWhy didn\u2019t he launch them?\u201d Miller replied. \u201cI\u2019d love to know. That\u2019s a question I was hoping you\u2019d find out. \u2026 Beats me.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Christopher Miller poses for a portrait in between media interviews at his home office on Tuesday, February 7, 2023. His book “Soldier Secretary” was released that day.<\/p>\n \nPhoto: Alyssa Schukar for The Intercept<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/p>\n One of the people I interviewed for this story was Paul Yingling, who, in 2007, became famous in military circles for writing an article titled \u201cA Failure in Generalship<\/a>.\u201d Yingling was serving as an Army officer at the time and broke the fourth wall of martial protocol by calling out his wartime commanders. In a line that\u2019s been quoted many times since \u2014 Miller repeated a variation of it to me \u2014 Yingling wrote, \u201cAs matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.\u201d<\/p>\n Yingling wasn\u2019t particularly flattered by Miller\u2019s embrace of his idea. Miller is right about the generals, Yingling said, but \u201cmuch of the criticism he\u2019s made has been made elsewhere earlier and better. \u2026 It\u2019s not original work.\u201d That wasn\u2019t Yingling\u2019s main beef with Miller; he was incensed over what he regards as a fellow officer\u2019s involvement in an effort to overturn a presidential election. \u201cI don\u2019t think he is aware of his role to this day,\u201d Yingling said. \u201cHe has spun a narrative for himself that justifies his actions on J6. He was in over his head in a political world that to this day he doesn\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n Yingling mentioned the story of Caligula appointing his horse as a consul in ancient Rome. That myth goes to the strategy of discrediting and disempowering institutions by filling them with incompetent leaders (or beloved equines). And Yingling is certainly right that Trump appointed D-list characters to sensitive positions: the internet troll Richard Grenell as acting director of national intelligence, for instance, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a senior White House adviser.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also true that the January 6 clusterfuck seems to have had less to do with malignant decisions by Miller than with a parade of errors by officials under his command. As acting secretary of defense, he failed to ensure that his orders at 3:04 p.m. and again at 4:32 p.m. were carried out with greater speed, though Miller says he didn\u2019t want to micromanage his subordinates. There may have been an element of subconscious bias, too.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m African American,\u201d Walker told the committee. \u201cChild of the \u201960s. I think it would have been a vastly different response if those were African Americans trying to breach the Capitol.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet I hesitate to ignite the tinder around Miller. If we drop a match at his feet and walk away with a sense of satisfaction about the justice we think we\u2019ve delivered, we have not changed or even recognized the political culture that gave us the forever wars and everything that flowed from them, including January 6. At some point in the future, we\u2019ll just have more of what we\u2019ve already endured, and perhaps it will be a variant of militarism and racism that\u2019s more potent still.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At some point in the future, we\u2019ll just have more of what we\u2019ve already endured, and perhaps it will be a variant of militarism and racism that\u2019s more potent still.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Look, for instance, at who Joe Biden chose to fill the seat kept warm by Miller: Lloyd Austin, a retired general who earned millions<\/a> of dollars as a board member<\/a> of defense contractors Raytheon Technologies and Booz Allen Hamilton. Look at Esper, who preceded Miller: He was a lobbyist for Raytheon Technologies, earning more than $1.5 million<\/a> in salary and bonuses. Look at who came before Esper: Jim Mattis, who was on the board of General Dynamics (as well as Theranos, the fraudulent blood-testing firm). And take a moment to read a few pages of Craig Whitlock\u2019s \u201cThe Afghanistan Papers<\/a>,\u201d which uses government documents to reveal a generation of lies from America\u2019s top generals and officials. The professional interests of these people have been closely connected to exorbitant defense spending and \u201coverseas contingency operations\u201d that account for the U.S. devoting more money to its military than the next nine countries combined<\/a> \u2014 all while\u00a0school teachers drive Ubers<\/a> at night and people in Mississippi have to drink bottled water<\/a> because the municipal system has collapsed.<\/p>\n Where are their bonfires?<\/p>\n A year ago, before Biden\u2019s State of the Union address, Miller joined a press conference outside the Capitol that was organized by the GOP\u2019s far-right Freedom Caucus and featured speakers against mask and vaccine mandates. The last to talk, Miller riffed for seven minutes, saying nothing about Covid-19 and focusing on Afghanistan instead. As he recalled being on a mountainside where an errant American bomb killed nearly two dozen U.S. and Afghan soldiers, a woman behind him shifted with visible unease as he angrily described<\/a> in graphic terms what you don\u2019t often hear from former Cabinet members: \u201cI stood there and it looked as if someone had taken a pail of ground meat, of hamburger meat, and thrown it onto that hill. And those were the remains of so many who gave their lives on that day.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s agree, then, that Miller is a bit askew. One of his encounters with reporters in his final days as defense secretary was described by a British correspondent as a \u201cgobsmacking incoherent briefing\u201d that included the phrase \u201cblah blah bluh blah,\u201d according to the Pentagon\u2019s official transcript<\/a>. But if you\u2019re not askew after going through the mindfuck of the forever wars, there\u2019s probably something wrong with you. It\u2019s an inversion of the \u201cCatch-22\u201d scenario in which the novel\u2019s protagonist, Capt. John Yossarian, tries to be declared insane so that he can get out of the bomber missions that he knows are nearly suicidal, but his desire to get out of them proves he\u2019s sane, so he\u2019s not excused. In an opposite way, generals and politicians who emerge from the carnage of the forever wars without coarse passions, who speak in modulated tones about staying the course and shoveling more money to the Pentagon \u2014 they are cracked ones who should not operate the machinery of war.<\/p>\n So here we are, just a few days away from the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion on March 19, a cataclysm that killed hundreds of thousands of people, cost trillions of dollars, and began with lies. The Pentagon just decided to name a warship the USS Fallujah<\/a>, after the city that suffered more violence at the hands of American forces than any other place in Iraq. And Harvard University has just decided to give a prominent position<\/a> to Meghan O\u2019Sullivan, a Bush administration official who helped design the invasion and occupation of Iraq and since 2017 has been a board member of \u2014 you may have heard this one before \u2014 Raytheon Technologies (for which she was paid<\/a> $321,387 in 2021). It\u2019s been 20 years and thanks in part to journalists who were complicit<\/a> in spreading<\/a> the first lies<\/a> and were rewarded professionally<\/a> for doing so, there has been neither accountability nor learning.<\/p>\n Individual pathologies determine how we medicate ourselves after traumatic events, and I think the politics we choose are forms of medication. Miller opted for service in the Trump administration, and while it strikes me as the least-admirable segment of his life since we met in Kandahar, he\u2019s not an outlier among veterans. For as long as our nation is subordinate<\/a> to its war machine, we\u2019ll be hearing more from them. Forever wars do not end when soldiers come home.<\/p>\n The post Trump\u2019s Last Defense Secretary Has Regrets \u2014 But Not About Jan. 6<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chris Miller, a combat veteran, is battling critics who say he failed to send troops when a mob stormed the Capitol.<\/p>\n The post Trump\u2019s Last Defense Secretary Has Regrets \u2014 But Not About Jan. 6<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[383,14,2851,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022143"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/391"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1022143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1022254,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022143\/revisions\/1022254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1022143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1022143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1022143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"Acting](\"https:\/\/prod01-cdn06.cdn.firstlook.org\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2023\/03\/6445579.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\n![\"Burke,](\"https:\/\/prod01-cdn04.cdn.firstlook.org\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2023\/03\/20220207-IntMiller-0829.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA Historic Error<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Betrayal<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n![\"Acting](\"https:\/\/prod01-cdn06.cdn.firstlook.org\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2023\/03\/6466407.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMore Juice<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n![\"WASHINGTON,](\"https:\/\/prod01-cdn04.cdn.firstlook.org\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2023\/03\/GettyImages-1358136412.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n![\"WEST](\"https:\/\/prod01-cdn04.cdn.firstlook.org\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2023\/03\/GettyImages-1290916753.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMurderer’s Row<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Phantom Meltdown<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n![\"WASHINGTON,](\"https:\/\/prod01-cdn04.cdn.firstlook.org\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2023\/03\/GettyImages-1433185261.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Clusterfuck<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\n![\"WASHINGTON,](\"https:\/\/prod01-cdn05.cdn.firstlook.org\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2023\/03\/GettyImages-1230459029-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n![\"Burke,](\"https:\/\/prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2023\/03\/20220207-IntMiller-0796.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\u201cBlah Blah Bluh Blah\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n