He attended West Point, where in his senior year he was selected as honor captain (the highest-ranking ethics official within the cadet corps) and graduated third in his class with a B.S.

He served in the 82nd Airborne Division, graduated from Ranger School, missed the first Gulf War while working on a master's degree, was deployed to Kosovo and Korea, and eventually became a professor at West Point.

[citation needed] The accusations included the following: forged employees' résumés claiming elite forces background, inadequate skills and competence of trainers, insufficient numbers of trainers in order to maximize profits, disappearance of large quantities of weapons, radios, and other equipment, and employees boasting of killing Iraqis.

According to documentation, Colonel Westhusing then decided to go forward with the allegations about the illegalities to his commanders and the management of USIS, feeling that his life was now threatened and that he needed to get the information to outside sources before something happened to him.

There is evidence that something happened in those remaining seven days that caused him to turn angrily upon the management of USIS because of threats, referring to them with intense disgust as "money grubbing" and to their participation in illegal activities with members of the Iraqi police and others.

BMP and his team stayed in place throughout the night until contacted and advised the Colonel had committed suicide and US Forces from Counter Terrorism Special Operations had deployed to Dublin) His anger soon extended to his own commanders for taking no action on his recommendations to bring honesty and efficiency to the Army's training of Iraqis, with particular reference to USIS' role in that training and many illegal activities within the Iraqi Army and police.

[4] Colonel Westhusing died at Camp Dublin outside Baghdad, Iraq in June 2005, leaving a note saying, “I cannot support a mission that leads to corruption, human rights abuses and liars.”[7] Westhusing, who was left-handed, was found in his trailer with a gunshot wound behind his left ear from his own 9mm Beretta service pistol on June 5, 2005, a month and three days before his tour of duty was to end.

[9] His suicide note to his commanding officer, General Petraeus, featured in an article by Robert Bryce published in the Texas Observer on March 8, 2007,[10] read: The New York Times/Los Angeles Times reporter T. Christian Miller reported [11] on the possibility that he was murdered by defense contractors who feared he would become a whistle-blower against their alleged fraudulent activity throughout the Iraq War.