It seems that McCain's ethics are even worse than we thought. A new story at The New Repubic strongly suggests that Keating bought and paid for McCain at the very beginning of McCain's political career, and further, McCain was involved in unethical leaking of the Senate investigation, a violation which could have resulted in expulsion from the Senate.
The New Republic:
The investigator of those leaks now says that he does not doubt that they came from McCain or his team. A reporter who possessed evidence in the Keating case now says he believes that McCain was the source and got away with it. Finally, a senator who has emerged as a key backer of McCain's presidential campaign turns out to have authored a letter stating flatly that McCain was the source of the damning leaks. Put together, a large record of evidence now points in the direction of Senator McCain.
.
Stories were planted in the Los Angeles Times, the Arizona Republic, and other outlets selectively publicizing the involvement of other members of the "5", including Don Riegle, Alan Cranston, and Dennis De Concini.
In the Keating affair, there existed all manner of documents, some that hurt each senator, and others that helped. The leaked documents reoriented the entire direction of public scrutiny to McCain's benefit.
This reorientation was significant because McCain was in many ways a natural suspect in the entire affair. McCain and Keating had been friends as early as 1981. He was the only senator who took personal gifts from Keating, including nine trips to Cat Cay, Keating's island in the Bahamas. Cindy McCain and her father were also involved with Keating in an Arizona real estate development called the Fountain Square Project. "I always thought McCain had by far the worst case facts," said one senior government official. None of the other Keating Five senators had a close personal relationship with Keating.
You have to read the story. McCain seems to have escaped through a combination of stonewalling, fingerpointing, his "I was POW" story, leaking, lying, and journalistic confidentiality:
Washington Times reporter Jerry Seper told a congressional staffer that he heard a taped conversation between McCain and Paul Rodriguez, his colleague at the Times who wrote many of the stories containing the leaks, and that he had also received independent information confirming McCain as the source of the leaks.
The "REAL" John McCain has been partially revealed during this campaign, and had circumstances been different, he would have been thoroughly hided.
He's disgusting.
Plz, AZ, gObama!! Let's give John McCain the kick in the ass he's deserved for twenty years.