D.A. Takes Pride in Long Career, Feels He’s Made Mark as Crusader

Ed Miller would rather not be thought of as an institution.

His mark in public life, he says, has been made as a crusader against institutions--big business, prevailing political interests and the powers behind dangerous crime.

He describes himself as a “do-gooder” from way back. Raised in an arch-conservative, Republican, Los Angeles-area household, he was student body president and valedictorian of his high school class. He went east to college, to Dartmouth, and was exposed to “a much different perspective”--an experience he credits with forming the liberal social views that contrast with his no-nonsense attitudes about crime.

Miller has no heroes. But he had inspirations. As a young man, he studied the works of Carey McWilliams, the muckraking social critic whose economic histories of California reinforced Miller’s pro-underdog instincts. He became a Democrat in the ‘50s, fed up with the stagnation of the post-war years and drawn to the activist, opportunity-creating policies of John F. Kennedy.

Miller spent three years after college as a pharmaceuticals salesman, then entered UCLA Law School. Joining the San Diego city attorney’s office in 1959, he undertook what he calls his first crusade. Miller represented city residents in utility rate cases, fighting the imperial San Diego Gas & Electric Co. on behalf of the little guy.

‘You Just Believe It’

Lionel Van Deerlin, then a television commentator, liked the young attorney. “As a reporter, you have some people who, when they tell you something, you don’t even bother checking it. You just believe it,” Van Deerlin said. “He was one of them.”

In 1966, Van Deerlin, as a congressmen, was San Diego’s highest-ranking Democratic elected official. When Washington decided to create a federal court district in San Diego, Van Deerlin recommended Miller, who had ascended to the No. 2 job in the city attorney’s office, as the first U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California.

It was an eye-opening appointment for a self-acknowledged “naive” bureaucrat. Working with a young deputy from the state attorney general’s office, Richard Huffman, Miller and his tiny staff began fishing in kettles that had not been stirred in San Diego for decades.

A federal investigation of bookmaking and related police corruption led to the loftiest heights of the community’s civic leadership. Russell Alessio--a scion of the family empire that at times controlled Caliente race track, the Hotel del Coronado and other area businesses--was indicted on gambling charges. More than 100 San Diego police officers were called before a grand jury. Police Chief Wesley Sharp retired during the investigation.

As Sharp drove away from police headquarters for the last time, Internal Revenue Service investigator David Stutz jotted down the license number on the chief’s car. It turned out to be registered to the C. Arnholt Smith-controlled Yellow Cab Co., a business regulated by Sharp’s department.

Much of the wrongdoing was within the jurisdiction of Dist. Atty. James Don Keller, who had held the office since 1948. But Keller’s office was unhelpful in the investigations--interfering in the Russell Alessio case by arresting a key federal informant and dragging its feet in presenting facts about the burgeoning Yellow Cab scandal to a grand jury.

Decided to Run

Even before the 1968 election of President Richard M. Nixon ejected him from the appointive U.S. attorney’s post, Miller had made up his mind to run for district attorney.

“I came to the conclusion that the C. Arnholt Smith and Alessio interests were dominating the political scene and that we had a serious problem in San Diego with respect to the political structure,” Miller recalled.

A cadre of business leaders outside the old-line power network had reached the same conclusion. Attorney Thomas Hamilton, financiers Malin Burnham, Robert Peterson and Richard Silberman and others became the core of Miller’s support in the 1970 race.

“It was the beginning of a broader establishment in San Diego,” Silberman said.

Keller announced his retirement, but endorsed his top assistant, Robert L. Thomas. Smith’s largess underwrote Thomas’ campaign, while Miller’s challenge had the flavor of a populist--though equally well-financed--crusade.

“It was made very clear to the public that what we were after was integrity versus the good-old-boy syndrome,” said Stutz, who later would be Miller’s special assistant and now is a deputy district attorney.

Dragged to factory gates in the early mornings and to bowling alleys late at night by a young Los Angeles lawyer named John Van de Kamp, his unofficial campaign manager, Miller eked out a narrow, 7,000-vote victory.

Miller’s antipathy for the old crowd was reflected in the dogged local prosecution of Smith in the mid- and late 1970s, after a federal conviction that to Miller fell far short of bringing the financier and Nixon crony to justice.

His promises of proactive and pro-consumer investigations led to the establishment of an array of special units that set the national standard for county prosecutors: a fraud unit, an organized crime task force, a unit to prosecute career criminals, a victim-witness assistance program and an independent Bureau of Investigations that wags dubbed “Ed Miller’s police force.”

‘Ultimate Change’

Miller, an uncharismatic figure whose friends describe him with words like “shy” and “deliberate,” is anything but shy in assessing his role in opening up and cleaning out San Diego politics.

“Without seeming immodest,” he says, “I think I was the person responsible for the ultimate change.”

Nearly 20 years later, Miller still sees himself as a crusader--though today’s crusade, he says, is against the corrupting influence of methamphetamine, not a corrupt political system. He bristles, in fact, at the suggestion that the old crusader has become the grayest eminence of the Establishment he once set out to slay.

“A very good friend of mine said that to me a year ago, and I was a little nonplussed,” Miller reflected. “I’m an independent operator. I don’t take orders or directions from anyone--economic interests or otherwise.”

But it doesn’t look that way to everyone.

“He is the Establishment,” said former County Supervisor Jack Walsh, who supported Miller even though he was indicted, and later cleared, in the Yellow Cab cases. “Gradually, like a lot of people who stay in public office a long time, they’re unaware they’ve become part of it.”