MCCAIN'S WIFE LIKELY WON'T BE PROSECUTED

MCCAIN'S WIFE LIKELY WON'T BE PROSECUTED

STOLE DRUGS FROM CHARITY

Published on Tuesday, August 23, 1994

© 1994 The Arizona Republic

By Martin Van Der Werf and Susan Leonard, The Arizona Republic

Cindy McCain apparently won't be prosecuted for stealing painkillers from her charity, but the wife of the U.S. senator from Arizona still faces a civil lawsuit filed by a former employee whose tip led to an investigation of her by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The fired employee, Thomas Gosinski, in turn, is being investigated for suspected extortion by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office at the request of McCain's lawyer.

''This is a shakedown,'' McCain's attorney, John Dowd wrote in asking the county attorney to pursue the extortion allegation.

McCain admitted in a series of media interviews Monday that she became addicted to the painkillers Percocet and Vicodin. She said she used the drugs from 1989 to 1992 and acknowledged that she had stolen some pills from the American Voluntary Medical Team, a charitable organization of which she is president.

Gosinski's lawsuit alleges that McCain, wife of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., ordered him to conceal ''improper'' acts and ''misrepresent facts in a judicial proceeding.''

Gosinski, 35, worked as the fund-raising director for the American Voluntary Medical Team from September 1991 to January 1993.

Investigative documents released Monday by County Attorney Rick Romley after a public-records request from The Arizona Republic contain a letter from Gosinski's former attorney, Stanley Lubin, offering to settle the lawsuit for a quarter of a million dollars.

Although the language in the lawsuit is vague, with no mention of drugs, the settlement proposal addressed to Cindy McCain states, ''It is clear that you made it appear that Mr. Gosinski was ordering the drugs, many of which were controlled narcotics, in an effort to hide your personal use of them.''

The letter also states that Gosinski ''has done what he could to keep the sensitive matters from exposure.''

Dowd called the offer extortion, and he asked Romley to investigate. The case is pending.

Lubin said Monday night that his letter was nothing more than a standard settlement offer and that he finds Dowd's actions offensive.

''If Dowd claims my letter constitutes extortion, then he is a flat out liar,'' Lubin said. ''We were trying to settle a potential piece of litigation that would have been very embarrassing and that had substantial merit. I always make that kind of effort to settle out of court.''

Lubin said that he never expected to actually collect $250,000 from Cindy McCain and added that it's common for lawyers to ask for more than they actually expect.

''I made it very clear to Dowd that we were prepared to settle for a lot less,'' he said.

McCain's spokesman, Jay Smith, said that when she refused to settle, Gosinski tipped off the Drug Enforcement Administration, which began its investigation in January.

Smith said the McCains will fight the lawsuit, and there will be no efforts to settle it.

Gosinski refused to comment Monday night.

Refuses interview

Cindy McCain refused to be interviewed by The Republic, but issued a statement saying she began taking painkillers in 1989 after back surgery.

''I occasionally supplemented my supply by taking extra prescription drugs which were obtained by the American Voluntary Medical Team,'' her statement said.

McCain's medical team, founded in 1988, flies doctors to areas around the world where medical help is needed, distributing drugs and performing emergency medical procedures.

McCain told her husband about her addiction in January.

She granted selective interviews about her drug addiction after receiving an ''agreement'' Wednesday that she would not be prosecuted, Smith said.

That agreement was signed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for Arizona, which had been investigating the allegations in tandem with the DEA.

Virginia Mathis, chief assistant U.S. attorney for Arizona, said she could not confirm that there was an investigation. However, she specifically denied that McCain had completed a diversion program designed to avoid prosecution. McCain told the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson that she had completed such a program.

The program, called ''deferred prosecution,'' usually lasts 18 months and involves non-violent offenders with no record who are willing to pay full restitution.

Romley's report indicates McCain's drug problem was known by some workers for the charity. Gosinski made jokes about her moods depending on whether he thought she had taken drugs that day, the report says.

According to Romley's records, the team obtained drugs through a doctor who wrote prescriptions using employees' names, including Gosinski's.

Dr. John Johnson, medical director for McCain's charity, told a county attorney's investigator that although he knew it was improper, he had written prescriptions in the names of Gosinski and two other employees of the charity without their knowledge.

He also wrote personal prescriptions for Percocet for McCain, and she had her nanny pick up the presciptions at his home, the investigator reported.

Johnson also told the investigator that McCain kept all of the narcotic drugs in her personal luggage during overseas flights.

McCain said the drugs ''took control of me sometime during the summer of 1992.'' That period was especially difficult, Smith said, because John McCain's Senate re-election campaign ''was heating up, and she had to relive the Keating hearings.''

Keating ordeal

John McCain was one of five senators who were the subject of hearings by the Senate Ethics Committee in late 1990 and early 1991 about their relations with Charles H Keating Jr., former owner of Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, the largest S&L to go bankrupt in the wave of bankruptcies that struck the industry in the late 1980s.

McCain was rebuked by the Ethics Committee for advocating in Keating's behalf after accepting large contributions from him and his co-workers.

Cindy McCain became involved in the investigation because she could not find receipts showing that she and her husband had reimbursed the Keatings for the cost of flying on a corporate jet to a Keating vacation home in the Bahamas. That became a focus of the hearings.

McCain said she quit taking the drugs ''cold turkey'' in the fall of 1992 after being approached by her parents, multimillionaire liquor distributor Jim Hensley and his wife, Smitty, who asked her about her ''erratic behavior.''

McCain said she briefly relied on painkillers again while in the hospital in January 1993 after a hysterectomy. Since then, she has been drug-free, she said in her statement.

Gosinski alleges in his lawsuit that he was fired in January 1993, after being asked ''on numerous occasions'' to ''engage in acts that were improper.''

The acts are not detailed in the lawsuit, but it says that Gosinski ''was responsible for the maintenance of certain sensitive records and the overall operation and integrity of the organization.''

Slander, libel alleged

Gosinski alleges that McCain wrongly terminated him and engaged in libel and slander to keep him from getting another job.

''She has engaged in this conduct in order to gain retribution for his (Gosinski's) refusal to misrepresent facts in a judicial proceeding and to prevent him from providing full and truthful information in a federal proceeding concerning personal matters in which she is involved,'' the lawsuit says.

It is unclear what judicial proceeding Gosinski is referring to in his lawsuit where he alleges he was told to lie. All references to it are redacted from the records released by the county attorney's office.

Kathy Walker, director of operations for the charity, said she heard Gosinski say after a meeting that ''he would blackmail Cindy McCain if he was ever fired,'' according to the county attorney's investigation.

Dowd met with Gosinski on May 4. He and other McCain lawyers repeatedly asked Gosinski to document his allegations, and Gosinski refused.

Gosinski's lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. It has been assigned to a judge but is listed as ''not active'' in county court files.

McCain 'wanted to talk'

McCain has wanted to talk publicly about her addiction for weeks, Smith said, but had been precluded from doing so by the U.S. Attorney's Office, who thought their investigation ''might be impeded if she went public.''

Smith denied that McCain's public admissions had anything to do with Gosinski's lawsuit or the possibility that news organizations might break the news of her addiction and drug thefts. However, he said, the news was bound to leak out. McCain entered a treatment program earlier this year at The Meadows in Wickenburg and attends Narcotics Anonymous meetings twice a week.

Percocet and Vicodin contain acetominophen, a non-aspirin pain reliever available over the counter, and artificial codeine, a stronger, addictive, pain reliever.

John McCain issued a statement Monday saying he is ''extremely proud of Cindy's courageous battle to recover from her health problem.''

''In addition to Cindy's serious back pain, I have no doubt that the inevitable ups and downs of my political career have been rough on her,'' he said.


see more on cindy at..............
http://www.concentric.net/~ronsm/cindy_mccain.html