Why did John McCain write letters on behalf of Alabama resident and murderer suspect James B. Fowler, who is currently awaiting trial for a slaying dating back to the civil rights era, while Fowler was imprisoned in Thailand on charges of heroin trafficking? This goes beyond any guilt by association game that the McCain camp is playing with Obama. Here, I examine McCain's strange ties with a Civil Rights Villain. More below the fold.
First, who is James Fowler? According to theAnninston Star (a local newspaper in Alabama who has investigated Fowler extensively):
In 2005, The Star published an interview with James B. Fowler who admitted publicly for the first time that he shot Jimmie Lee Jackson, during a melee in February 1965 in the west Alabama town of Marion. Fowler insisted it was in self defense.
Jackson's death a few days after the shooting proved pivotal for organizers of the civil rights movement, leading indirectly to the Selma-to-Montgomery march and, many historians argue, the passage by Congress of the landmark Voting Rights Act in August 1965.
For more on the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson read here.
As the Troopers entered the café they immediately started overturning tables and hitting customers and marchers alike. In the melee, they clubbed 82-year-old Cager Lee to the floor and his daughter Viola Jackson when she rushed to his aid. When her son, Jimmy Lee Jackson, tried to help his mother he was shot in the stomach by a state Trooper.
you can also watch this short video on the slaying:
How did McCain and Fowler's paths cross? According to that original Anninston Star piece:
Fowler, whose trial was scheduled to start this month until a judge delayed it Monday, has a complex and varied background. He fought in the Vietnam War, he has said, to avenge his brother's death. He later worked with military prosecutors to expose a murder-for-hire plot in Southeast Asia. He raised a family in Thailand and in Alabama, and for about five years in the early 1990s, he was in a Thai prison cell after being arrested for heroin trafficking.
It was during this time that John McCain came into his life.
The letter from McCain to the State Department briefly explains Fowler's situation and asks Tamposi to look into his case.
"There are several requests I would like to make on behalf of Mr. Fowler within existing statutes and regulations," McCain writes.
McCain goes on to say that he would like to know the status of the case and the action taken by the State Department on his behalf, that he wanted officials to look into the circumstances surrounding Fowler's arrest and to take steps to see that his rights are protected and to look into the conditions in which he is imprisoned.
McCain also requested that the State Department look into Fowler's claims that "his arrest was the product of a vendetta by a well-connected former member of the U.S. Army and advise me of its validity."
Indeed
I have obtained copies of two letters sent by McCain to government agencies on Fowlers behalf. They can be viewed below:
Why is McCain writing letters on behalf of a suspected (and pretty much confirmed) hate criminal, who does not even reside in his state? Perhaps he feels some strange brotherhood with the man over his service in the Vietnam War? All questions that demand answers.