Irvine POW disputes McCain's Vietnam claim

Retired Marine colonel is angered by the presidential candidate's statements that he helped the enemy while the two were in a Vietnamese prison camp.


Martin Wisckol / Orange County Register

Former Orange County supervisor Edison Miller is lashing out at John McCain, saying the presidential candidate falsely fingered him as a turncoat who was "actively aiding the enemy" while the two were imprisoned during the Vietnam War.

"He lied about me," said the Irvine resident, who retired as a Marine Corps colonel shortly after the war. "The attacks on my character and integrity are totally without merit or justification. I did stand up and say the war was wrong. I would speak against the war, but I never spoke against my country. And I gave up no secrets."

In McCain's book, "Faith of My Fathers," the Republican presidential candidate writes about two "camp rats" who "had lost their faith completely."

"They not only stopped resisting but apparently crossed a line no other prisoner I knew had even approached," McCain wrote. "They were collaborators, actively aiding the enemy."

While McCain did not name the two in the book, Miller and Walter Eugene Wilber are identified as the POWs in question in a June 15 New York Times story on McCain's 1974 essay about POW traitors. Miller said the newspaper story brought McCain's claims to his attention.

But controversy over Miller's POW behavior is nothing new, with Miller and Wilber both making regular appearances in Vietnam POW literature.

Additionally, the issue erupted with the 1979 appointment by Gov. Jerry Brown of Miller to county supervisor, filling the vacancy created when Ralph Dietrich was forced from office by a bribery conviction. The appointment roused protests from the county's state legislators from both sides of the aisle.

Miller's POW record then became the centerpiece of Bruce Nestande's successful campaign against the incumbent in 1980............