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host · 04-09-2006, 09:29 PM

I want to contrast the efforts of earlier posters to voice their opposition to veteran and well respected White House correspondent, and now political columnist, Helen Thomas, with the methods I use to argue in opposition to political support for a John McCain presidential bid.

The comments posted against Helen Thomas simply insinuated that it is obvious that Ms.Thomas lacks integrity or the ability to report factually or reliably.

Notice that no evidence is posted to back their claims about Ms. Thomas.
I would not expect anyone to simply "take on faith", comments that I make in regard to the integrity, trustworthiness, amd suitability of John McCain. In contrast to the undocumented "shots" levied here against Helen Thomas, I offer some research to back my contention that John McCain lacks integrity to the point that I could never back him as a candidate for elected office.

It is not possible for me to know McCain personally. I am limited to observing reports of McCain's consistancy and his ethical standards. All I can know "is what I read in the papers", preferrably as close to the source as possible. In the case of McCain, his family, and his "new hire", Terry Nelson, reports from Arizona, New Hampshire, and Texas seem appropriate.

My previous documentation concerning McCain was posted recently, here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...in#post1999605

I offer more documentation in opposition to a McCain canidacy.....

Quote:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/19...ugs/index.html
How Cindy McCain was outed for drug addiction
When an attempt to get tough with a whistleblower backfired in 1994, the McCain spin machine went into overdrive, and the candidate's wife confessed to problems the media was already poised to reveal.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Amy Silverman

Oct. 18, 1999 | PHOENIX -- GOP presidential candidate John McCain's wife Cindy took to the airwaves last week, recounting for Jane Pauley (on "Dateline") and Diane Sawyer (on "Good Morning America") the tale of her onetime addiction to Percocet and Vicodin, and the fact that she stole the drugs from her own nonprofit medical relief organization.

It was a brave and obviously painful thing to do.

It was also vintage <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/10/12/salter/index.html">McCain media manipulation.</a>
I had déjà vu watching Cindy McCain on television, perky in a purple suit with tinted pearls to match. It was so reminiscent of the summer day in 1994 when suddenly, years after she'd claimed to have kicked her habit, McCain decided to come clean to the world about her addiction to prescription painkillers.

I believe she wore red that day. She granted semi-exclusive interviews to one TV station and three daily newspaper reporters in Arizona, tearfully recalling her addiction, which came about after painful back and knee problems and was exacerbated by the stress of the Keating Five banking scandal that had ensnared her husband. To make matters worse, McCain admitted, she had stolen the drugs from the American Voluntary Medical Team, her own charity, and had been investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The local press cooed over her hard-luck story. One of the four journalists spoon-fed the story -- Doug McEachern, then a reporter for Tribune Newspapers, now a columnist with the Arizona Republic (and, it must be added, normally much more acerbic) -- wrote this rather typical lead:

"She was blonde and beautiful. A rich man's daughter who became a politically powerful man's wife. She had it all, including an insidious addiction to drugs that sapped the beauty from her life like a spider on a butterfly."

What McEachern and the others didn't know was that, far from being a simple, honest admission designed to clear her conscience and help other addicts, Cindy McCain's storytelling had been orchestrated by Jay Smith, then John McCain's Washington campaign media advisor. And it was intended to divert attention from a different story, a story that was getting quite messy.

I know, because I had been working on that story for months at Phoenix New Times. I had finally tracked down the public records that confirmed Cindy McCain's addiction and much more, and the McCains knew I was about to get them. Cindy's tale was released on the day the records were made public.

But the story I was pursuing was not so much about Cindy McCain's unfortunate addiction. It was much more about her efforts to keep that story from coming to light, and the possible manipulation of the criminal justice system by her husband and his cohorts. The irony is that Cindy's secret would have stayed secret if John McCain's heavy-hitting lawyer, John Dowd (of D.C.'s Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld; his most recent claim to fame was serving as co-counsel for fellow partner Vernon Jordan during impeachment) hadn't heavy-handedly pulled out all the stops to protect the McCain family.

Dowd tried to get back at the man on Cindy McCain's staff, Tom Gosinski, who had blown the whistle on her drug pilfering to the DEA. But in the course of trying to get local law enforcement officials to investigate Gosinski -- Dowd and the McCains considered him an extortionist; others might call him a whistleblower -- Dowd set in motion a process that would eventually bring the whole sordid story to light. When that maneuver backfired, the McCain media machine went into overdrive to spin the story.

It's a story of unintended consequences. It's also a story of power politics and media manipulation that's very un-McCain-like -- if you believe his national media hagiography.

But both of Cindy McCain's staged, teary drug-addiction confessions have been <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/10/18/arizona/index.html">vintage John McCain</a>. 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 (Cindy is his second wife). 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.

This is the story of a time that strategy backfired, and yet the McCain machine still managed to contain the damage.

. Next page | <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/10/18/drugs/index1.html">"I am working for a very sad, lonely woman"</a>

Quote:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...tm?POE=NEWISVA
Once-foe McCain makes a friend of Bush dynasty
Posted 4/9/2006 10:27 PM
By Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY

........But McCain is dead serious about making sure that if and when he runs for the GOP nomination, this time he'll win. He's lining up some of the people responsible for Bush's success — among them Terry Nelson, who ran Bush's massive turnout organization in 2004; longtime Bush family fundraiser Tom Loeffler of Texas; and at least a dozen South Carolina activists and officials who were in the Bush camp and want to "get involved with McCain early," says McCain adviser Richard Quinn.........

Quote:

http://webarchive.unionleader.com/ar...?article=62039
Granite Status - October 20, 2005

Granite Status: Keough says Ray must go over staffer controversy
By JOHN DiSTASO
Senior Political Reporter

......TOBIN'S BOSS

Last week, we reported former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and two Indian tribe clients of indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff each gave $5,000 checks to the state Republican Party just a few days before the GOP's illegal Election Day 2002 phone-jamming operation, which happened to cost $15,600.

Chuck McGee, the now-jailed former state party executive director, has told the federal court he detailed the plan to now-indicted James Tobin, and that Tobin put McGee in touch with a Republican consultant to set it up. Tobin has pleaded innocent to all federal charges against him.

Republicans say the plan went no higher than McGee. Democrats believe national higher-ups may have known about it in advance.

Only those involved know for sure. But just for the heck of it, we note that the record shows Tobin's boss in 2002 was one Terry Nelson.

The New York Times reports Nelson was recently identified in the DeLay indictment as the recipient of a $190,000 check in illegal corporate campaign contributions and a list of Republican candidates for the Texas Legislature for whom the money was intended. .......

Quote:

http://www.unionleader.com/article.a...3-65395f7767fc

Granite Status: Meridian to guide Coburn race for governor

By JOHN DISTASO
Senior Political Reporter
Thursday, Mar. 23, 2006

.......CALLING KEN?

In the days before and after the state Republican Party’s 2002 Election Day phone-jamming scheme, the man who now chairs the Republican National Committee was the White House director of political affairs.

And a Democratic-affiliated advocacy group says that court records show Ken Mehlman’s office received more than 75 telephone calls from now-convicted phone-jam conspirator James Tobin from Sept. 30 to Nov. 22 of that year.

The Senate Majority Project, a brainchild “527” of former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, wonders why Tobin called the White House so often. Tobin at the time worked for the Republican National Committee and the affiliated National Republican Senatorial Committee — and a hot race that year was the New Hampshire Senate contest between Republican John Sununu and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen.

On election morning, a telemarketer hired by the state GOP jammed the telephones of five state Democratic and one firefighters union get-out-the-vote phone banks.

Former state GOP executive director Chuck McGee admitted masterminding the scheme and served seven months in jail last year for it. Tobin was found guilty in December of federal telephone harassment charges for acting as a middle man. An appeal is expected if the trial court in Concord turns down his request for a new trial.

“All we have is the phone number and the fact that calls were made to the White House,” says SMP executive director Mike Gehrke, a former high-level Clinton administration staffer. “But we also know from the court record that a lot of other calls about the scheme were going on. For a period of time, this was the hot topic.

“With that many calls, I believe it’s inconceivable that there wasn’t some knowledge of this at the White House,” Gehrke said. “At the very least, it is evidence that there needs to be a bigger net cast here before the end of this case.”

Meanwhile, John McCain has hired Tobin’s old boss at the RNC, Terry Nelson, as an adviser to his Straight Talk America PAC.

Nelson was identified in the Tom DeLay indictment as the recipient of a $190,000 check in illegal corporate campaign contributions and a list of Republican candidates for the Texas Legislature for whom the money was intended.

In 2002, Nelson was Republican National Committee national political director while Tobin was both RNC New England political director and Northeast political director of the GOP senatorial committee.

Nelson and Tobin then moved to the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign — Nelson as campaign political director and Tobin as New England chairman.

Dismissing the notion that Nelson had anything to do with phone-jamming, New Hampshire McCain strategist Michael Dennehy said of Nelson, “We’re happy to have him.”........

Quote:

http://www.talkcheck.com/johncarlson...ffersdirtypast
<div class="title" id="CONTENT_COPY_TITLE">
McCain Denies Knowledge of Staffer's Dirty Past
</div>
 
<div class="text" id="CONTENT_COPY_TEXT">
Josh Marshall's new website had an <a href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000137.php">interesting piece</a> earlier this week that pointed out how that maverick reformer John McCain had recently hired a rather dirty Republican operative. And as luck would have it, Senator McCain swung into Seattle today to promote the futile campaign of the Republican candidate for the Washington State senate race. Somewhere in between fundraisers the campaign finance reformer found time to stop by and help a local right-wing radio host with a different effort: the <a href="http://www.talkcheck.com/johncarlson/2006/02/14/johncarlsonchangestuneonmccain">campaign</a> to sell McCain to the local Republican base.

 
One clever caller decided to take advantage of McCain's appearance to try and get some "straight talk" on the senator's recent hire:
 
<blockquote>
CALLER: Thanks, I had a question for the senator. For a reformer, I'm kind of curious why he would hire a guy like Terry Nelson as a senior advisor.
 
Here's a guy who was actually in the indictment of Delay on his money laundering charges. When he was at the RNC, he agreed to take the corporate contributions from Delay's PAC and then recycle them back into the Republican congressional races.
 
And he was also, this guy Nelson was also the supervisor for James Tobin, who was the guy convicted last year for helping jam the Democratic get-out-the-vote phone lines in New England a couple years ago.
 
So I'm curious why would you hire someone with such a shady background?
 
MCCAIN: None of those charges are true.
 
CALLER: Do you believe what was actually written in the indictment from Texas?
 
MCCAIN: No.

 
CARLSON: All right.
 
[nervous laughter]
 
MCCAIN: I will check it out. But I've never heard of such a thing. I know that he was a grassroots organizer for President Bush year 2000 and 2004, and had a very important job in the Bush campaign as late as 2004, but the other charges I will go and look and see if any of them are true, but I've never heard of them before.
</blockquote>
<a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/mccain20060321.mp3">Audio</a>
 
Isn't it amazing how a few blogs can know more about McCain's senior advisor than McCain himself? I'll leave a few references that should speed up the good senator's "research", courtesy of <a href="www.talkingpointsmemo.com">TPM Media</a>:
<ul><li>The Delay indictment that lays out Nelson's role in money laundering is available <a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/delay-reindictment/?resultpage=3&">here</a></li>
<li>The witness list that shows Nelson's connection to the phone jamming scam is available <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/tobin-witness-list/?resultpage=2&">here</a></li>

</ul>
</div>
</div>

John McCain promised to "go and look and see if any of them are true" in regard to accusations levied against his hiring of campaign advisor, Terry Nelson. MCCain has not followed through by commenting further about his hiring of Nelson.

Quote:

http://webarchive.unionleader.com/ar...?article=59053
News - August 13, 2005

RNC has paid Tobin's legal bills since indictment
By JOHN DiSTASO
Senior Political Reporter
Bellwether Credit Union

CONCORD — The Republican National Committee began making huge payments to accused 2002 telephone jam conspirator James Tobin's private lawyers a week after he was indicted by a federal grand jury, records show.

According to RNC financial disclosures, it paid the high-powered Washington law firm Williams and Connolly $162,646 on Dec. 9, 2004, eight days after a grand jury charged that Tobin had aided former state GOP executive director Charles McGee in setting up an operation to jam voter-turnout telephone banks at Democratic and labor union offices throughout the state.

Five more disbursements were made on May 19, 2005, the same day a new indictment against Tobin was made public. Those five disbursements added up to $559,736, for a total of $722,382.

The Telegraph of Nashua reported yesterday that the RNC made another payment, of $164,260, to Williams and Connolly on June 15, although this could not be independently verified in a New Hampshire Union Leader review of monthly RNC financial disclosure reports.

If there was a seventh payment, the total expenditure by the RNC to Williams and Connolly since Tobin was indicted would be $886,632.

After refusing for nearly a month to comment on its arrangement with Tobin, the RNC confirmed on Wednesday that it has been paying for Tobin's lawyers.

Williams and Connolly, which in the past represented Bill and Hillary Clinton and former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, has had at least three attorneys working on the Tobin case. Most of the paperwork on Tobin's behalf at U.S. District Court carries the names Dane H. Butswinkas, Dennis M. Black and Tobin J. Romero.

Tobin also has local counsel, Brian Tucker of Rath, Young and Pignatelli of Concord. Thomas Rath, a member of the RNC, has declined to comment on the arrangement, but several attorneys not involved in the Tobin case said this week that when a New Hampshire firm works as local counsel with a Washington firm, the Washington firm makes payment to the local firm.

Tobin has pleaded innocent to four conspiracy charges, including a charge that he conspired to deprive Granite Staters of their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. His trial is scheduled for December.

Tobin allegedly committed the federal offenses while working as a regional political director for the RNC-affiliated National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, which was working to get Republicans elected to the Senate. A key 2002 Senate race on which Tobin focused was John E. Sununu's victorious campaign against Democratic former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen...........

......Yesterday, a high-ranking Republican source insisted that the leadership of the New Hampshire Republican Party was taken by surprise by the RNC's confirmation that it has been subsidizing Tobin. The leadership was described by the source as the congressional delegation — Sununu, Sen. Judd Gregg and Reps. Charles Bass and Jeb Bradley — as well as local RNC members Rath and Nancy Merrill and party chairman Warren Henderson.

The source said efforts were being made yesterday by unspecified members of that leadership group to obtain more details from the RNC about the decision to foot Tobin's legal expenses. Tobin is a former employee of the RNC and is currently employed by DCI Group, a lobbying firm also based in Washington.

The RNC, meanwhile, put a lid on information about Tobin. The Union Leader yesterday asked Danny Diaz, the RNC's deputy communications director:

* When Tobin joined the RNC, when he left and what positions he held.

* At what point did Williams and Connolly begin representing Tobin

* Who approved paying for Tobin's legal expenses, and when

* Who signed off on individual disbursements made to Williams and Connolly.

Diaz said that while he would "look into" those questions, he would have no comment beyond those made by another RNC spokesman earlier this week.

Tracey Schmitt, confirming the subsidy, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Tobin is a "longtime friend who has served both as an employee and an independent contractor for the RNC," and, "This support is based on his assurance and our belief that Jim has not engaged in any wrongdoing.".....

Quote:

http://www.unionleader.com/article.a...b-711a864a079e
Fourth man charged in phone-jamming scheme

By HOLLY RAMER
The Associated Press
Monday, Mar. 27, 2006

Concord – The former co-owner of a telemarketing firm yesterday pleaded not guilty to participating in a Republican scheme to jam Democrats' get-out-the-vote phone lines on Election Day 2002.

Shaun Hansen, 34, of Spokane, Wash., was indicted by a federal grand jury on March 8, but the charges were not made public until his arraignment yesterday.

Hansen is charged with conspiring to commit and aiding the commission of telephone harassment. Prosecutors say he was paid $2,500 to have employees at Idaho-based Mylo Enterprises place hundreds of hang-up calls to phone lines installed to help voters get rides to the polls on Nov. 5, 2002. Among the contests decided that day was the close U.S. Senate race in which Republican Rep. John Sununu beat outgoing Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen.

Three others have been convicted for their roles in the scheme.

Former state Republican Executive Director Chuck McGee pleaded guilty to devising the idea of jamming the lines and served seven months in prison. Allen Raymond, former president of Virginia-based GOP Marketplace LLC, pleaded guilty to executing the plan and is serving a three-month sentence.

James Tobin, who had served as New England chairman of President Bush's reelection campaign, was convicted in December of telephone harassment charges and faces up to five years in federal prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced in May..........

Elphaba, why would John McCain, hire, and then, even after he was alerted by a caller on John Carlson's radio show, more than two weeks ago, (if in fact, McCain di not know about Terry Nelson's background, beforehand) keep Terry Nelson, a man connected with the "stench" of two "Ops", that will end up costing the RNC, Tom Delay, and James Tobin, very dearly, in dollars and in prison sentences served. Shouldn't McCain be distancing himself from scandals like Tom Delay's money laundering indictment, and the New Hapshire/RNC "phone gate" scandal. These reports, over a twenty year span of time, indicate to me that McCain is either too ethically challenged, too stupid...or both...to be supported as a candidate for any elected office.