Betrayal, deceit, corruption and John McCain

By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
http://www.usvetdsp.com

November 14, 2007

Last week, Sen. John McCain launched on fellow Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani criticizing the former New York City mayor because Bernie Kerik, police commissioner under Giuliani, was indicted and accused of fraudulent dealings.

"A president's judgment matters and Rudy Giuliani has repeatedly placed personal loyalty over regard for the facts," declared McCain, suggesting that Giuliani's support of Kerik showed a serious lapse in judgment.

Kerik, 52, according to a 16-count federal indictment, received cash and gifts for lobbying regulators on behalf of a New Jersey construction and waste-management firm. Prosecutors allege that Kerik cheated on taxes and lied to investigators--including those recommending him for a cabinet-level post on behalf of President George W. Bush.

McCain has forgotten his own history of involvement with betrayal, deceit and corruption

When McCain returned to the United States in 1973 after more than five years as a prisoner of war, he found his wife was a different person. Carol McCain, once a model, had been badly injured in a car wreck in 1969. The accident "left her 4 inches shorter and on crutches, and she gained a good deal of weight." Despite her injures, she had refused to allow her POW husband to be notified about her condition, fearing that such news would not be good for him while he was being held prisoner.

But, just a couple years later, McCain, while pondering a future in politics, met Cindy Hensley, an attractive 25-year-old woman from a very wealthy politically-connected Arizona family. While still married to Carol, McCain began an adulterous relationship with Cindy. He married Cindy in May 1980 -- just a month after dumping his crippled wife and securing a divorce.

McCain followed his young, millionairess wife back to Arizona. Not long after settling in, the former POW newlywed was introduced to Darrow "Duke" Tully, publisher of the conservative and powerful Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette.

Tully, who quickly became a close friend of McCain, wasted no time in using the power of his newspapers to jump start McCain's political career. His newspapers endorsed McCain's first run for Congress and touted him as successor for retiring Sen. Barry Goldwater.

Described as "equal parts cowboy, commando, swashbuckler and elegant tycoon" by the Chicago Tribune, Tully was "a George Patton who drove a Corvette, a Randolph Hearst who flew an F-16, a John Wayne in aviator glasses and Air Force dress blues."

Tully appeared to have a lot in common with his close friend, former Navy combat pilot and war hero McCain. Tully boasted of his 100 missions over Vietnam, retiring from the Air Force as a lieutenant-colonel. Tully's military service, according to Tully, included air combat in Korea, where he once was forced to crash land his P-51 Mustang fighter and spent time in a hospital as a result--so he said. His smashed front teeth were replaced with stainless steel, he also said.

Tully, just like his friend McCain, claimed he had received the Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross and the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry.

Tully painstaking groomed McCain for public office. He introduced him to the influential and gave him guest column space in The Arizona Republic. He manipulated endless favorable references from the paper's other columnists. McCain, in turn, honored Tully by asking him to be godfather of one of his children

However, the day after Christmas 1985, it was revealed in the Chicago Tribune, that McCain's close friend Duke Tully had "an imagination as big as his ego."

Tully had never even been the military.

At the same time McCain's political ambitions were being assisted by Tully, he had cultivated political relationships with developer and future Arizona governor Fife Symington III and lawyer, politician and banker Charles Keating Jr.

When Goldwater did not to run for re-election to the Senate in 1986, McCain's powerful new friends quickly catapulted him into Goldwater's Arizona senate seat.

In the senate, McCain managed to stay low key until suddenly he found himself on television trying to explain himself as one of the "Keating 5," five senators who became enmeshed in the scandal involving the collapsed Lincoln Savings and Loan and the financial machinations of Charles Keating.

Keating was convicted of federal fraud and racketeering charges and in 1997, McCain's friend Symington was forced out of office after being convicted on seven counts of fraud.

For years McCain has successfully cultivated a false facade as the "straight-talking" politician unsullied by big-money influence of special-interest groups. He has shrewdly manipulated most of the national press corps into ignoring (or forgiving) facts that expose him as a disreputable character and enemy of the truth..

Reports from a variety of U.S. publications exposed McCain's true scandalous character

The Arizona Republic - October 17, 1989" . . . both in telephone conversations with reporters and on a live radio talk show, the Republican senator was far from calm. He was agitated. Angry. And the way he dealt with unpleasant questions was to bully the questioners . . . 'You're a liar,' McCain snapped Sept. 29 when an Arizona Republic reporter asked him about business ties between his wife, Cindy McCain, and Keating . . . 'That's the spouse's involvement, you idiot,' McCain sneered later in the same conversation. 'You do understand English, don't you?' ". . . Not content with just bullying reporters, McCain tried belittling them: 'It's up to you to find that out, kids.' . . . McCain wasn't talking to liars. He wasn't talking to juveniles. The senator was talking to two reporters."

The Arizona Republic - October 17, 1989 -- "McCain, in a radio talk-show appearance last week condemned disclosures of his family's ties to Keating as 'irresponsible journalism.'"

The Phoenix Gazette, November 13, 1989 -- "Reporters also 'discovered' that the senator's wife and father-in-law invested $359,100.00 in one of Mr. Keating's projects in 1986 . . ."

The Arizona Republic, April 29, 1990 -- "McCain's involvement with Keating . . . when reporters called him with questions last year about previously unknown ties to Keating, an investment by wife Cindy McCain in a Keating shopping center and trips to Keating's Bahamas home, McCain went into a rage."

New Republic, Dec. 31, 1990--"The only Republican of the bunch [the five Senators], John McCain of Arizona wins credit for finally drawing the line. After the second of the two April meetings [with Federal regulators] he told Mr. [Sen. Dennis] DeConcini [D-Ariz.] and Mr. Keating that he wouldn't lean on the regulators any more. Mr. Keating called him a wimp. But before the rupture, Mr. McCain and his family were regular guests of Mr. Keating's on trips to the Bahamas. Mr. McCain reimbursed the owner of Lincoln Savings and Loan for only a small fraction of the cost of these holidays. Yet, he never reported the vacations on Senate disclosure forms, or his income taxes. He said he thought his wife had paid Mr. Keating back. This is hard to believe."

Economist, Mar. 9, 1991--"Mr. McCain, despite his claims of innocense, was the only one of the five who benefitted personally--family holidays in the Bahamas on Mr. Keating's tab."

New Republic, Sept. 9, 1991--Calling McCain part of the "Senatorial Lincoln Brigade," the New Republic reported that Keating, while bankrupting his savings and loan, had channeled $1.4 million to the campaigns or causes of the five senators, who in turn pressured the savings and loan regulators to back off our friend."

Regardie's magazine, April-May 1992 issue. "Ultimately, the fall of Lincoln Savings and Loan will cost the U.S. taxpayers $2 billion. It lost $1 million dollars a day from the time Keating bought it in 1984 until its collapse in 1989, and yet he continued to pay off McCain as 'one of his assets.'"

Cindy McCain escaped prosecution for stealing/using drugs

The Arizona Republic, August 24, 1994 -- "Cindy McCain, the wife of U.S. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, admitted in a series of media interviews Monday that she became addicted to the painkillers Percocet and Vicodin. She said that she used the drugs from 1989 to 1992 and acknowledged that she had stolen some pills from the American Voluntary Medical Team, a charitable organization of which she is president . . . at one point, McCain, 40, was ingesting 15 to 20 pills a day . . . the normal dosage for seriously ill patients is 6 to 10 a day for a short period."

The Phoenix Gazette, August 25, 1994 -- "Cindy McCain was investigated recently by the Drug Enforcement Administration for stealing and using Percocet and Vicodin, both narcotic painkillers from her aid organization . . . the county attorney's report provides a window to drug dealings within Cindy McCain's nonprofit corporation . . . Gosinski also alleged that Cindy McCain abused her husband's office and diplomatic privileges by transporting illegal substances overseas. He also claimed, according to her lawyers, that Cindy McCain tried to prevent him from providing accurate information to the DEA."

Playboy, July 1999. -- "Ms. McCain admitted stealing Percocet and Vicodin from the American Voluntary Medical Team, an organization that aids Third World countries. Percocet and Vicodin are schedule 2 drugs, in the same legal category as opium. Each pill theft carries a penalty of one year in prison and a monetary fine." However, McCain did not face prosecution. She was allowed to enter a pretrial diversion program and escaped with no blemish to her record. Source: James Bovard, Prison Sentences of the Politically Connected.

McCain's Crime family connection

The Arizona Republic Jan. 17, 1995 "About 300 guests turned out Saturday night to celebrate the 90th birthday of Joseph 'Joe Bananas' Bonanno, retired boss of New York's Bonanno crime family. He retired to Tucson in 1968 . . . John McCain, R-Ariz., and Gov. Fife Symington sent their regards by telegram."

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