Did McCain Tamper With the Drug Enforcement Agency to Protect His
Career?

By Matt Stoller, Open Left. Posted September 12, 2008.

McCain appears to have used his Senate staff to cover up his wife's
drug use, and possibly to prevent the DEA from investigating her.

McCain appears to have used his Senate staff to cover up his wife's
drug use, and possibly to prevent the DEA from investigating her.

Video: http://www.alternet.org/story/98503/?page=entire

And it appears that McCain used his Senate staff and resources to
cover up Cindy's drug use, and potentially to prevent the Drug
Enforcement Agency from investigating his wife's theft of illegal
prescription drugs. John McCain certainly used his political
connections to begin a campaign of intimidation against Gosinski,
because at the time -- this was after the Keating 5 scandal -- another
major scandal would have derailed his career. Gosinski stayed quiet
out of fear until today; a recent fight with cancer has strengthened
his resolve. As he told me today, if he can beat cancer, he can go on
the record regarding how the McCains do business.

Gosinski was an employee of Cindy McCain who helped her run her
charity, the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT), in the early to
mid-1990s. At the time Gosinski worked for her, Cindy McCain was
addicted to prescription painkillers, taking between 30 and 50 pills a
day of Vicodin and/or Percocet. She had doctors writing out
prescriptions in other people's names, including Gosinski's. When
Gosinski found one of the prescription slips, he got angry, and Cindy
had him fired. This part of the story is just kind of sad, but not
damning; Cindy McCain was a lonely and bored wife who turned to drugs
in place of what was a loveless marriage full of fundraisers and, in
all likelihood, various infidelities (or so were the rumors Gosinski
heard at the time).

Now, it begins to get dangerous and vicious after Gosinksi was fired.
At first the McCains said they'd help him find a job, but it became
clear to Gosinksi that McCain was using his political connections to
blackball him from another job in Republican politics in Arizona. So
he sued the McCains for wrongful termination and went to the Drug
Enforcement Agency to find out the legal repercussions of having
prescriptions for painkillers written in his name. To retaliate,
McCain then had his political ally Rick Romley open an extortion
investigation against Gosinksi. In the course of that investigation,
it was revealed that the DEA was circling around Cindy McCain and her
charity. It's not clear what they were investigating her for, but it
is clear she was bringing illegal prescription drugs around the world
on a diplomatic passport secured for her by McCain's Senate office.

McCain's Senate staff and Senate resources were intimately involved in
Cindy's work with the charity. John McCain procured her a diplomatic
passport, which meant that her bags were not searched by customs, and
Mark Salter and Torie Clarke were both coordinating with Gosinski on
logistics for the trips abroad. Here's Gosinski on the coordination
with McCain's Senate staff.