This diary is about how far John McCain went to cover up a serious family scandal.
This diary is not about the underlying scandal. It is not about the family member who was implicated. That family member is not running for office. What he or she did is irrelevant to learning how John McCain might exercise his responsibilities as President.
All we need to know is that there was a scandal, it was serious, and there was a whistleblower. John McCain had the story spun to his liking in the media and had the whistleblower destroyed.
Some of you will already know, or be able to discover, the roots of this story. I am leaving them out intentionally and beg you to do the same. Whatever salacious backstory exists merely distracts from the critical issue: how -- and how well -- John McCain may cover up scandals as President. If some smart-ass raises those facts in comments, I will either hide-rate or ignore them; I ask that you do the same. Again: this diary is not about any underlying offense, but about a cover-up.
So, I beg your cooperation. Let's keep this diary about John McCain ... and Tom Gosinski, whose life he hired agents to ruin -- with evident success.
An embarrassing crisis that strikes a President usually involves official wrongdoing. As President, one thing that John McCain may be in a position to do someday is to request and implement a cover-up of wrongdoing. I submit that it is a question of legitimate interest to ask how willing he is to do so, how far he will go, and what damage he is willing to leave in his wake. We need to know what John McCain does when things get tough for him -- as they inevitably would in office. Does he tell the truth -- or spin and suppress it? If the latter, does he get away with it? That is what matters here.
To get a sense of what John McCain may be liable to do when, as President, he might feel the need for a cover-up, we can look towards his actions in the early 1990s when he hired agents to discredit a whistleblower named Tom Gosinski.
The following account is based on this 1994 story from the Phoenix New Times and a 1999 update from Salon, both written by the journalist Amy Silverman. Those stories gives away the facts that I'm not mentioning. Those facts, and those stories beyond what I include here, are not necessary to the argument made in this diary. I include the citations because, by site rules and general ethics, I am required to do so. I have done my best to summarize Silverman's writing so as not to run afoul of copyright considerations; in some cases, however, there are not many ways of imparting the same information. Please assume that the credit for any fact-digging in what follows belongs to her, except where indicated.
(1) What Tom Gosinski knew
In the early 1990s, a relative of McCain headed a non-profit organization that I will simply call "the Non-profit." It did good works and by and large evidently did them well. Tom Gosinski was, from September 1991 to January 1993, the Non-profit's director of government and international affairs.
In that role, Gosinksi worked closely with, and grew close to, McCain's relative. He traveled to Bangladesh, Vietnam, El Salvador and Florida (after Hurricane Andrew.) He was, among other things, party to that relative's sensitive efforts to in a matter very close to McCain's heart.
On July 20, 1992 -- exactly 16 years ago today, and the reason I chose today as the day to publish this diary -- Tom Gosinski was made aware that the relative may have become involved in some illegal and politically embarrassing activities. The illegal activities were in many respects not all that uncommon, but no less unsavory for that. The relative's personal wealth and power provided insulation from legal consequences.
That's all I'm going to say about the underlying matter that, as an independent journalist prepared to publish a story about it, required a cover up. We need not and should not discuss it further here.
Gosinski kept a journal during this time period that increasingly turned to the topic of workplace strife. His entry for July 20 documented a call from a doctor who visited El Salvador with the Non-profit and who believed that he had been ensnared by the relative in an illegal act. Subsequent entries document Gosinski's knowledge of other likely illegal acts and of confused attempts to explain away those acts.
By the end of September, Gosinski was emotionally prepared to leave the Non-Profit if things didn't change. In October, the relative was reportedly confronted about the illegal actions and pledged to cease them. There is conflicting information about how quickly they ended. Details of the underlying offenses began to trickle out. The relative called for a federal investigation into the accusations that had been made. Things continued to deteriorate within the Non-profit. On January 15, 2003, Gosinski was fired, ostensibly because the organization lacked funds to continue to pay him.
By the following month, Gosinski had become concerned that he too may have been unwittingly implicated in the relative's illegal actions -- a suspicion that was later borne out. He contacted the relevant federal agency. He was told that, based on his suspicions, he had to cooperate with an agency investigation of the matter. He did so. By this time, he was running low on cash and working two full-time jobs.
Gosinski became convinced that he had been wrongfully terminated due to his suspicions, which he had shared with colleagues, about the relative's actions. Almost a year after his termination and cooperation with the federal investigation, starting the statute of limitations in the face, he filed a lawsuit making very general accusations against the relative. (He evidently had not wanted the story to become public if it could be avoided.) He was, however, unable to fund the lawsuit; this eventually led his attorney to withdraw. Gosinski was unable to find another attorney willing to take on the McCain family. The lawsuit would eventually expire due to his failure to prosecute it.
(2) What John McCain did about what Tom Gosinski knew
An honest man, faced with the certain knowledge that a close relative had admitting to committing felonies, might have admitted them in full. (In this case, the wealthy relative was in the process of obtaining what can only be described as extremely favorable treatment from authorities.)
A prudent man, knowing that the relative had fired someone who had been unwittingly drawn in to criminality and who had had to cooperate with authorities as a result, might have settled the wrongful termination suit -- indeed, given the ample resources at his disposal, might have done so on generous terms, given the damage caused to the whistleblower's life and career.
A petty, hot-headed, and vindictive man might have used his political connections with local prosecutors to discredit and destroy the whistleblower.
A sly and conniving man might have used his media connections to keep the story, if not quiet, at least spun highly sympathetically.
John McCain is neither honest nor prudent -- but he is petty, hot-headed, and vindictive, and either sly or conniving himself or readily able to hire others who are. And thus the story of Tom Gosinski gives us a preview of how whistleblowers might be treated in a McCain Administration.
When Tom Gosinski filed his wrongful termination lawsuit in January 1994, he did not include specific allegations about McCain's relative in his suit. (Those specifics would already be known to the defendant.) What he wanted was compensation for the wrong done to him. In February, Gosinski's lawyer wrote the relevant defense attorney, asking for a $250,000 settlement.
The McCain counterattack began almost immediately. The key players were an attorney named John Dowd and a political strategist named Jay Smith, who was John McCain's Washington campaign media advisor. These were not McCain's relative's contacts; they were John McCain's own contacts. The actions of these hires demonstrate how John McCain runs a cover-up.
John Dowd was a partner with the politically hyperconnected law firm Akin Gump and a heavy hitter in Arizona politics. As John McCain's lawyer he had arranged an impressively lenient settlement in the Keating Five case. When Republican Arizona Governor Fife Symington was sued by the federal Resolution Trust Corporation for $210 million, he again managed a federal settlement. His methods included vicious attacks the governor's accusers, including challenging an enterprising local reporter to a fistfight – an offer that, once accepted, had the desired effect of getting the reporter taken off the story.
What Dowd did to whistleblower Gosinski was to call McCain's political ally, Republican Maricopa County Attorney Richard Romley and accuse Gosinski of attempted extortion for seeking the $250,000 settlement. Romley began an extortion investigation of Gosinski
The federal government was already investigating the underlying crimes. Normally, the underlying crimes would be sent by the federal government for Romley to prosecute. Because those crimes involved allegations of transporting contraband out of the country, the federal investigators could opt to retain jurisdiction. This was good news for McCain – federal laws guaranteed complete confidentiality, even throughout a federal pretrial diversion program which allowed the accused to avoid jail time. Rather incredibly, McCain's relative was able to do so. Dowd earned his fees there.
Dowd sent a letter to Romley on April 28, 1994, detailing McCain's the embarrassing crimes of McCain's relative and explaining that revealing them was the threat underlying Gosinksi's extortion. When an edited version of the report, jarred loose by a public records request by a local alternative weekly, came out on August 22, it contained this acknowledgment of these crimes. (Because Gosinski had been unwilling to go on the record with any reporters and unable to fund his lawsuit, this was the only reason that the facts were eventually divulged.) More than a quarter of the official report contained Dowd's characterization of the events, including testimony from Gosinski's co-workers at the non-profit that he had expressed his intention to profit from knowledge of McCain's relative's crimes. (Gosinski denies this testimony. It would be puzzling if it were true, given that at the point he filed his lawsuit he had already been cooperating with federal investigators for almost a year.)
So, in summary, McCain's hired gun was able to trump up a spurious charge of extortion against Gosinski, get the local prosecutor to investigate it, arrange for a suspended sentence of what I think one could fairly say would be a series of felonies – and manage to keep it all under wraps, had he not made the mistake of sending a letter documenting the underlying crimes into what would become the public record.
That is how John McCain likes to run a cover up. Now, enter McCain's other hire, Jay Smith.
Because the report detailing the underlying crimes was to come out on August 22, Smith was brought in to, as lawyer's say, "pull the sting" – inoculating the public against the seriousness of the crimes in question by ensuring that they would come out in the most sympathetic possible way.
Smith selected a number of sympathetic journalists. On August 19, he presented McCain's relative to them for exclusive interviews, with a sob story explaining away the motivation for the crimes in general terms and avoiding the lurid specifics. (The relative's story is recast as a warning to other people who might find themselves in the same situation.) The handpicked reporters agree to embargo the story until August 22, the day the report is due to come out. When the stories come out, they describe the relative's "bravery" and omit any mention of Gosinski or anyone else who was drawn into the crimes. Nor, of course, do they mention the countercharge of extortion.
Unfortunately, Smith's presentation of the relative's story was rippled with inconsistencies and lies – lies about which the political ambitious Senator McCain would well have known. (His own career was hanging in the balance here. It beggars belief that he didn't know what was going on.) The lies included the relative's status with the federal government: claiming that a pretrial diversion program had been completed when acceptance into it had not even yet occurred. They included various inconsistencies about the timeline of the crimes, treatment, and guilty knowledge of them. (Here, as elsewhere, the investigative reporter who wrote the above-lined articles says that everything Gosinski ever said has checked out.)
Most significantly, perhaps, Smith lied about Gosinski's motivation and actions. Gosinski had contacted the federal investigators 11 months before filing his wrongful termination claim. Smith told reporters that Gosinski went to the feds as an act of retribution only after his "extortion attempt" failed.
John McCain knew this. It simply beggars belief that he did not understand what had happened, that he did not understand this critical timeline, and that he did not hear and digest this patent falsification by Smith. And he let this face-saving slander pass without comment or objection. In the Arizona papers on August 25, two days after the news of Romley's extortion investigation leaked out, readers saw a statement by John McCain himself calling Tom Gosinski a liar.
That is the sort of cover-up John McCain is willing to purchase when he is in trouble.
That is something we need to know about John McCain – that he will countenance others' lies, echo them himself, destroy critics, and manipulate the media into upholding the cover-up of activities that could harm him.
We cannot afford another President who is willing to engage in these sorts of activities. Nothing in Barack Obama's past suggests that he is similarly dedicated to lying and suppressing damaging information whenever it suits him. The difference between Barack Obama and John McCain, when it comes to whistleblowers and cover-ups, could not be more stark.
(3) John McCain's modus operandi
I am quoting exactly three paragraphs from Amy Silverman's articles – in this case, the second one, which appeared in Salon – in this diary. (I've edited them slightly to take out any reference to the identity of the person who committed the underlying crimes.) Silverman wrote this shortly after McCain's relative once again made a round of public confessions of past crimes as McCain geared up for his 2000 Presidential campaign. It's as good a conclusion as I could imagine.
Both ... confessions have been vintage John McCain. His MO is this: Get the story out -- even if it's a negative story. Get it out first, with the spin you want, with the details you want and without the details you don't want.
McCain did it with the Keating Five, and with the story of the failure of his first marriage. So what you recall after the humble, honest interview, is not that McCain did favors for savings and loan failure Charlie Keating, or that he cheated on his wife, but instead what an upfront, righteous guy he is.
Candor is the McCain trademark, but what the journalists who slobber over the senator fail to realize is that the candor is premeditated and polished. John McCain shoots from the hip -- but only after carefully rehearsing the battle plan, to be sure he won't get shot himself.
(4) What happened to Tom Gosinski?
I'd like to be able to end this story with a few words about what has happened to the whistleblower Tom Gosinski sixteen years after receiving that fateful call. I can't do so. I found no record of him, based on Internet searches, doing anything or being anywhere after 1994. (I searched on the last name "Gosinski," not simply on his first name.) Various stories on these events can be found in searches, but none of the ones I sample tell anything about Tom Gosinski: whether he is still in Arizona, whether he is working or not, whether he has changed his name, whether he is dead or alive.
If any of you have investigative skills, especially if you live in the Phoenix area, perhaps you can determine what happened to him. It would be interesting to see what he has to say about being the target of a John McCain cover-up. But, meanwhile, it is as if the whistleblower who posed a threat to John McCain's career has completely disappeared.