The "Miller Method of Misdirection" has made it's way to the floor of the United States Congress. During my lengthy law enforcement career I served as an investigator in administrative cases involving Command Rank Officers. One of my frequent interviewees was a Captain named Miller. Whether talking to him about his secretary running an overtime scam or his failure to manage his subordinates, Captain Miller always had a reason that we should really be focusing on someone else. At the start of the questioning Miller would pull a file from his desk and say something like, "Did you guys know that the Lieutenant in C.I.D. rigged a public drawing for a new car so that his best friend would win?

Previous to me the investigators would take the bait and be distracted by the juicy plumb being offered and leave Miller to continue his misfeasance. The first time he pulled that with me I dubbed it "The Miller Method of Misdirection" and posed a question to the Captain. "If this was such an important event and you knew that it was going on, why did you wait until now to come forward with evidence?" I never got an answer and Miller got fired.

Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of the First District of Texas stood on the floor of the House after the stock market plummet of February 27, 2006 and blamed the Democrats. The Democrats? George W. Bush and the Republican controlled Congress have set the policies for the past 6 years that govern our economic engine. The Democrats have held a majority in the House and a slight majority in the Senate for 6 weeks.

Gohmert and his GOP gang are not alone. Fox News regularly uses the "MMM" for such topics as "Why Osama bin Laden is at large." Amazingly a recent broadcast faulted Bill Clinton for the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan because Bill Clinton failed to "get" Osama bin Laden in 1998 . . .BEFORE 9-11 when George W. Bush was President, not to mention the intervening 6 years of Bush failures.

Bad guys seem to win because they are brazen liars and there seem to be a number of ignorant audience members who believe their outlandish excuses. Another thing I learned in Law Enforcement is that when you out a criminal organization and get them in separate rooms they all pull out their "MMM" files on one another and the house cleaning begins. Prison bars are stronger than skulls and bones.

Learn more about this author, Derek Snow.
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