Cindy McCain

'I'M CINDY, AND I'M AN ADDICT'

SENATOR'S WIFE TELLS OF ABUSING PAINKILLERS

Published on Monday, August 22, 1994

By John Kolbe / POLITICAL COLUMNIST

"I'm Cindy,'' she tells her compatriots at their group therapy sessions, ''and I'm an addict.''

For thousands of recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, it is a familiar greeting, a crucial part of the time-honored regimen aimed at ending the cycle of denial that is so common to substance abuse. But in her case, it carries a special measure of poignancy.

Because Cindy has it all. A big house in north central Phoenix. Four beautiful kids. A cabin in Sedona. Several cars in the garage. Trust funds endowed by her wealthy parents. Frequent trips abroad.

And a husband who's a U.S. senator.

After abusing painkillers for three years and keeping her problem secret even from her family for more than a year after quitting the drugs ''cold turkey,'' Cindy McCain finally went public in a candid, and often difficult, interview Friday.

''More than anything, I wanted to be able to face my children,'' she explained, ''for them to know I wasn't lying to them. They're too young to fully understand right now, but someday they will.''

What the 40-year-old senator's wife told was a moving and all-too-familiar tale, told by thousands of addicts everywhere, of hospital visits, growing dependency, erratic behavior, and finally, a loving family, self discovery and recovery. And it's also a story with its own lessons about the high price of public life.

''As surely as John McCain was a casualty of Vietnam (where he was a POW for over five years),'' said a friend, ''Cindy is a casualty of political life. But now she is fighting to save herself.''

Her ordeal began in 1989, when she underwent back surgery twice for ruptured discs. But the operations failed to ease the pain, and Cindy feared that ''by the time I was 40, I'd be in a wheelchair.''

While she was in the hospital, something else happened that would play a major role in the months to come - the controversy over her husband's involvement and personal friendship with financier Charles Keating erupted. His ensuing fight for political survival would dominate their lives, and impose huge pressures on Cindy, until Senate hearings ended in early 1991.

As the family bookkeeper, she was unable to find records of her reimbursement to Keating for three vacation trips to the Bahamas on Keating's corporate plane. The apparent lack of reimbursement - which wasn't resolved until the records turned up months later - became a key ethical charge against the senator.

''It wasn't my fault,'' she said, ''but at the time, you couldn't convince me. (Alabama Sen.) Howell Heflin even told me it was my fault.'' She winced at the memory.

With the pain continuing, and exacerbated by the family's emotional stress, she increasingly leaned on Percoset and Vicodin prescribed by different doctors, each of whom was unaware of how many drugs she was getting from the others.

''It's almost as if you're eating your young,'' she explained. ''You know it's not helping the pain, but it's like a wheel rolling downhill. You can't stop.''

She also dipped into supplies from the American Voluntary Medical Team, a charitable group founded in 1987 that she heads and with which she's traveled to scenes of human suffering around the world. (She recently returned from five days with Rwandan refugees in Zaire, where the team is still on duty.)

It was this use of AVMT drugs, discovered during a Drug Enforcement Administration audit earlier this year that showed irregularities in acquisitions (''we're sloppy bookkeepers,'' she admitted), that eventually led to an investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office. It was later concluded without any charges being filed. Finally, as John's re-election campaign was reaching a climax in late 1992 and the Keating charges were being recycled, her parents noticed her erratic and often cranky behavior, and asked her if drugs were involved.

''I can't imagine how much courage it took for them to do that,'' she recalled. ''At first, of course, I denied it, as most dependent people do. Finally, I admitted I had been taking some pills (she was up to 15 or 20 a day), but I still said I didn't have a problem. A person who's dependent never believes he's taking that much.''

Despite the denials, it proved to be the turning point in her battle: ''I'd never seen either of my parents cry before. That was enough for me. I just laid them (drugs) down.'' She never picked them up again, which she finds ''remarkable'' even now.

But the pain persisted, and it wasn't until her obstetrician diagnosed the source in January 1993 and performed a hysterectomy that the pain finally went away.

Still, although she had quit taking the drugs, her dependency remained a secret. ''John never knew,'' she said, as tears welled up. ''I don't know what that says about our marriage. But of course, I don't see much of him, since he's in Washington all week. And I'd get psyched up for the weekend so he wouldn't notice anything.''

In January, a year later, the secret finally came out, as she talked with Washington lawyer and friend John Dowd (who shepherded McCain through the Keating hearings). Because Cindy ''couldn't find the words'' to tell her husband, Dowd picked up the phone and called.

''I was stunned,'' said John McCain. ''Naturally, I felt enormous sadness for Cindy, and a certain sense of guilt that I hadn't detected it. I feel very sorry for what she went through, but I'm very proud she was able to come out of it. For her, it was like the Keating affair had been for me - a searing experience, and we both came out stronger. I think it has strengthened our marriage and our overall relationship.''

As for Cindy, she had the ''first good night's sleep I'd had in two or three years'' after their conversation. ''It's very liberating to talk about it.''

Yet, although she had been off drugs for 16 months, she wasn't satisfied. ''I wanted to know what happened to me,'' she said. ''I was afraid it would happen again. I'd laid it down, but I hadn't explored myself.''

Days later, she entered a Wickenberg clinic for a weeklong rehabilitation program. (Since she had kicked the habit, she required no lengthy detox procedures.) Now, she attends twice-weekly meetings of Narcotics Anonymous, which she expects to do the rest of her life.

So why, we wondered, is she making a painful ordeal so terribly public?

''If what I say can help just one person to face the problem, it's worthwhile,'' she answered. ''They should know it's OK to be scared. It's OK to talk about it. And there's nothing wrong with staying home, car-pooling and potty-training a 3-year-old.''

Just as Lt. Cmdr. John McCain once returned from the awful oblivion of a Vietnamese prison camp, so has Cindy McCain come back from her own ''living hell. It's as if you've gone to the bottom of a volcano, and come back out.''

CINDY MCCAIN: SHOULD WE BE PROUD? NO WAY

Published on Wednesday, August 24, 1994

By Bill Hart / THE PHOENIX GAZETTE

Are you proud of Cindy McCain?

Her husband, Sen. John McCain, is. He said he's ''extremely proud of Cindy's courageous battle to recover from her health problem.''

Gov. Fife Symington is proud, too. He even elevated his emotion to a state duty:

''All Arizonans should be proud and supportive of this remarkable woman,'' he said.

I don't want to be rude, but: Why?

Not, I think, because she's a drug addict and an admitted thief.

McCain revealed this week that she was addicted to pain pills for two years. She also said she stole drugs from an organization she created to provide emergency medical services around the world.

McCain said she started taking pills - eventually up to 15 or 20 a day - in 1989 after surgery left her in pain. She was also bearing the stress of the harsh publicity over the McCains' link to convicted financier Charles Keating Jr.

She said she's remained drug-free since 1992, with one brief lapse.

Hers is a sad tale, but hardly distinctive; addiction and thievery are pretty common these days.

In fact, about one of every four inmates in Arizona's bloated, fantastically expensive prison system is locked up on drug charges. That, by the way, is thanks to mindlessly punitive anti-drug policies supported by officials like, well, like Sen. McCain and Gov. Symington.

But don't worry, Cindy McCain won't go to prison. Prison is for bad people, not for those with ''health problems.''

So. Maybe we're supposed to be proud of McCain simply for admitting her misdeeds.

Maybe. Except that her addiction apparently was something a lot of people knew about and that was likely to become broad public knowledge soon anyway.

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration had been investigating, and a former employee of McCain's medical team had filed a lawsuit against her over the issue.

McCain herself reportedly said that her motive in going public was to beat the rumor mill.

So it can't be that either. Should we be proud at the bold way McCain went public?

Don't think so. Guided by an entourage of advisers, McCain cleverly pre-empted bad publicity by breaking the news through a selected handful of media outlets.

She did this only after completing private treatment, and only after reaching an agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office that ensured she would not be prosecuted if she entered a diversion program.

So why are we supposed to be proud of Cindy McCain?

Answer: We're not.

Sympathetic, supportive, tolerant - sure. I don't doubt McCain's physical and mental pain, the power of her addiction, the remorse she feels.

But proud? Sorry.

That suggestion, I'm afraid, is the product of ''spin,'' of a careful campaign to deflect public attention away from the awkward facts of addiction and theft, and onto the appealing made-for-TV drama of confession.

A campaign, in other words, to limit the political damage.

It is, once again, the ritualized praising of a celebrity criminal - based upon the murky idea that members of the elite ''suffer'' enough merely by admitting guilt.

To which I say: No sale.

Not that I want Cindy McCain to go to jail. I'm not even sure she should be punished; if we imprisoned all the secret addicts among Arizona's privileged classes, we'd need more prisons than even Sam Lewis could dream of.

I just wonder why we should be praising her while siccing the cops and the media and the child-welfare workers on all the poor Jane Does who turn to crack to cope with their stresses - stresses perhaps worse even than bad press.

I wonder why I couldn't hear our leaders' calls for sympathy and tolerance amid their shouts for heavier weapons and harsher attacks in the War on Drugs.

I wonder about the thousands of noncelebrity wretches struggling alone against alcohol or heroin or whichever ''health problem'' plagues them, ignored if not punished by society.

I wish Cindy McCain well, but I'll save my cheers for them.

MCCAIN'S WIFE LIKELY WON'T BE PROSECUTED

STOLE DRUGS FROM CHARITY

Published on Tuesday, August 23, 1994

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.

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