You Won't Read This Story In the Washington Post Today

It's been scrubbed. (Of course, their IBM Selectric tech team couldn't figure out that if you were going to pull the article, you needed to pull all the places where the article got archived, like The Google [right now it's the last result on page 1, and that will change as more blogs cover this story] and Yahoo Buzz!. And their own website, which still has an active link to the scrubbed story, which people have been leaving comments on.)

What story, you ask? Tom Gosinski, the former director of government and international affairs for the American Voluntary Medical Team, a nonprofit organization headed by Cindy Hensley McCain, gave a videotaped interview (two excerpts from YouTube are at the end of this post) to the press yesterday alleging that John McCain used his Senate staff and position to cover up his wife's drug use, and that he intervened with the Drug Enforcement Agency to prevent her being prosecuted.

Basically, Cindy McCain was stealing pain medication that was supposed to be going to the children her charity served. She had a huge painkiller addiction (taking 30 to 50 pills a day) and started forging prescriptions on the prescription pads of doctors who volunteered for the charity, and because she was taking so many, used the names of her employees to get even more pills. Gosinski found out she had forged his name on a prescription, complained and got fired.

McCain has always claimed he didn't know about Cindy's drug abuse, but Gosinski says this is nonsense as he picked her up from the hospital in 1991 after she overdosed. Gosinski also says McCain through his Senate office got Cindy McCain a diplomatic passport, which allowed her to pass through Customs without having her bags searched. After Gosinski got fired, McCain got a political buddy of his, Maricipa County Attorney Rick Romley, to open an investigation into Gosinski. So Gosinski, the man whose name was forged onto prescriptions so Cindy McCain could get drugs illegally, he gets investigated; John McCain used his position and influence to shut down the investigation of his wife, the actual criminal. If she hadn't been married to a Senator, she would have gone to jail, as Arizona has some of the harshest mandatory minimum sentences for drug use in the country.

Not exactly the rosy picture the Republicans painted of the McCains at their disgusting convention last week.

And it looks like McCain is still wielding his powerful position to keep the truth about his wife's abuse out of the public eye.


Matt Stoller, OpenLeft: Did McCain Tamper with the Drug Enforcement Agency to Protect His Career?

dailykos: Whistleblower Says McCain Hid Wife's Drug Abuse