Keating Inquiry Appears Different, 17 Years Later

[Heisenberg]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the...rs_differ.html

Keating Inquiry Appears Different, 17 Years Later

Updated 2:56 p.m.
By Michael D. Shear
Sometimes in politics, memories fail.

In a conference call with reporters, attorney John Dowd was asked about a specific part of the Keating Five inquiry, the fact that Cindy McCain and her father had invested in a Keating strip mall.

"It was part of the inquiry, but it did not -- John was unconnected to that and unaware of it at the time, and did not participate in it," Dowd said.

But thanks to the quick research skills of Democratic partisans, here's John McCain's answer to an attorney who asked him about that very investment during the ethics committee hearings in 1991.

"Sometime in 1986, I was told by Mr. Delgado, who was Executive Vice President of my father-in-law's company, that they were going to invest in a shopping center and that the investment -- the project -- was being put together by a subsidiary of American Continental," McCain said. "He later told me that they -- that that had happened. And I had no interest in it and just noted in passing that this investment took place."

The attorney asking the question during the hearing? John Dowd.

[ThaBigP]

[FONT='Times New Roman'][FONT=Verdana]Robert Bennett, the Democrat lawyer serving as special council to the Senate Ethics Committee investigating the Keating five, wanted Senators McCain and John Glenn removed from the investigation since they had obviously done nothing wrong (after over a year of investigation). The ethics committee would not release them from the (then) upcoming hearings. And the reason they told him McCain specifically would never be released from hearings? They did not want to begin public hearings where all the defendants were Democrats. They wanted a "bi-partisan" group of defendants. So in effect McCain was dragged into that mess as an act of political affirmative action. He was the "token" Republican. That was pretty much what Bennett was told by the Ethics Committee.[/FONT][/FONT]

[SuspectCorner]

McCain was rebuked for exhibiting "poor judgment"... but throw a white hat on him.