CBS newsman John Miller is negotiating his exit as a senior correspondent to join his old friend Bill Bratton back at the Police Department, a reliable source tells me.
Miller has twice left the news business to serve under Bratton, first in the NYPD and later during the veteran top cop’s stint as commissioner of the Los Angeles Police Department.
In the past two years, Miller has been a prominent presence discussing national security and crime on “CBS This Morning” and on the “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley.”
“John has been doing great on television,” commented a close friend, “but at heart, he’s a ‘buff.’
“He wants the badge, the gun and the adrenaline — to be in the center of the action.”
Miller is expected to land a top intelligence or counterterrorism role with Bratton.
“As of this minute, it’s a 99.44 percent done deal,” says my source of the likelihood Miller will bolt CBS for Bratton II.
A CBS News spokesman declined comment.
The veteran newsman had been rumored for a top post under Bratton even before Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio officially gave Bratton the NYPD commissioner job.
Miller has long worked both sides of the yellow tape.
He left NBC in 1994, after two decades in journalism, to take a post as Bratton’s deputy commissioner for public information during the Giuliani administration.
He resigned that gig a year later, after feuding with Giuliani, who wanted him to reorganize the public-information staff — a directive Miller refused to follow.
He landed back at ABC in 1995, working as a correspondent and co-anchor to Barbara Walters on “20/20.’’
In January 2003, he was summoned again by Bratton and headed the LAPD’s counterterrorism and criminal intelligence units.
While there, Miller launched the Automated Critical Asset Management System, a terror-target risk-assessment program that’s now used by several other states.
In LA, Miller enrolled in the police academy, attending part-time. After seven months, he was sworn in by his buddy Bratton.
“It was the proudest day of his life,” Bratton recently told Men’s Journal.
By 2005, Miller had left the LAPD for a job with the FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
In 2011, CBS lured him back to television.