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There is a grim determination to Sen. John McCain as he rises to address the Republican faithful. He moves stiffly through the heavy air of the gymnasium, his war injuries still evident.
There is his sore right knee, broken years ago when he ejected from a bomber over North Vietnam. There is his aching right shoulder, shattered by his captors. There is his hair, turned prematurely white by mistreatment and malnutrition.
Then there are his political wounds.
There is the edge McCain carries that led to angry outbursts with reporters during the Keating Five scandal. The defiant tone in his attacks on pork-barrel spending and calls for campaign-finance reform.
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He had dug up old newspaper clips that showed Jim Hensley had been an underling to well-known power broker Kemper Marley Sr., a rich rancher and wholesale liquor baron with ties to the 1976 car-bomb murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles.
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But for McCain, it's not about falling down. It's about getting up again.
Moments before he rose to speak, the lights had dimmed, and patriotic images had flashed on a screen: an American flag, a pilot in a flight suit, a senator shaking hands with President Reagan.
"At a time when America is searching for heroes to lead us," a narrator intoned, "it has the genuine article in John McCain."
Those are the scripted themes of McCain, 63, as he sets out on his carefully calculated campaign for the GOP nomination for president - genuine hero, proven leader, man of integrity in a wayward time.
But McCain is no comic-book hero, drawn in two dimensions.
He's sometimes driven by courage and duty, sometimes by anger and pride.
"I think life is a series of contradictions," said Jay Smith, who worked on McCain's first four campaigns. "Life is complex. Who among us is so simplistic that you can just pigeonhole?"
Certainly not McCain.
In recent years, he's become a champion of campaign-finance reform. More than a decade ago, he took free trips to the Bahamas with savings and loan tycoon Charles Keating. He continues to take big money from interests before his committees.
He's amassed a rogues' gallery of troublemaking former pals - Keating, Gary Hart, John Tower, Fife Symington, Duke Tully - who hardly square with his ambitions as a reformer.
As a senator, he's pilloried tobacco companies, though his wife owes her personal millions to beer sales.
He has romanced the national press while warring with Arizona reporters.
He prides himself on his personal integrity yet admits he wasn't faithful to his first wife, Carol, who was injured in a horrific car accident while McCain was in Vietnam.
He courts the veteran vote yet is despised among veterans who believe there are still POWs alive in southeast Asia.
He was hawkish on Kosovo, yet as a freshman congressman, he opposed Reagan's sending of Marines to Lebanon.
Some say McCain's seemingly principled positions - as on tobacco and campaign-finance reform - are all for show, helping him build his maverick image with a windmill tilt or two.
"In both instances (tobacco and campaign-finance reform), he took positions that were doomed to failure and stuck to them," said Grant Woods, former Arizona attorney general and an early McCain protege.
"In terms of federal legislation, we're in the same position today that we were in five years ago. I wonder what the point of that is. If you truly want to accomplish something on the issue, you've got several ways to go, and this one has produced nothing - and by nothing, I mean nothing."
INTENSE, LIKABLE
Spend any time around McCain and you quickly find that he is well-read, intense, likable. He can talk Robinson Crusoe or Saturday Night Live. He can lead the bull session or just listen. One minute he is chatting about a Sports Illustrated story he read about Bobby Allison ("One of the greatest NASCAR drivers ever, and he's living on the charity of others") and the next he is shaking his head over World War I and the Battle of the Somme ("That's the argument for media coverage. They never would have put up with it").
While at the Naval Academy, McCain let some subjects slide, spending his time reading history and literature and, of course, howling at the moon. He graduated fifth from the bottom of his class.
McCain's sense of humor, sometimes indelicate, gets him in trouble. Back when he entered politics, he once referred to the Arizona retirement community of Leisure World as "Seizure World." More recently, it was a crude joke about Chelsea Clinton that raised eyebrows.
Still, McCain can be funny.
On a recent trip to South Carolina, state director Trey Walker was stumbling his way along the aisle of the moving campaign bus.
"Trey," McCain said, "is on a work-release program."
During an appearance at a Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, McCain appeared at the podium, wearing a jacket ridiculously covered with fake ribbons and medals, and cracked:
"The question I ask myself every morning while shaving in front of the mirror is: OK, John, you're an incredible war hero, an inspiration to all Americans. But what qualifies you to be president of the United States?"
From staffers, McCain inspires a loyalty not often found in Washington. He treats them like extended family, always remembering a child's name or a sick relative. Some have been with McCain for more than a decade.
"It's fun to be around him," longtime aide Deb Gullett says. "He cuts up all the time. If you screw up, you feel worse about it than he does."
Some have snickered about aides combing McCain's hair and dusting off his suit jacket before television appearances. What they do not realize is that McCain cannot do it himself - his shoulders are too damaged.
For exercise, McCain walks. He's hiked nearly every trail in Arizona, from the well-known to the obscure. He often drags along his family and staff.
As with everything else, McCain is a relentless hiker. On a recent trip to Lake Powell, he led his party through a slot canyon where the water was almost over their heads.
Gullett jokingly dubbed it "The McCain Death March" and vowed not to return.
In all this hubbub, McCain's family, including wife Cindy, stays in the background. Cindy has no interest in politics. She has agreed to travel with McCain once or twice a month, but she'd clearly rather be at home raising her four children, ages 14, 13, 11 and 8.
"My job is at home," she says simply.
After a well-publicized bout with an addiction to painkillers in the early 1990s, Cindy no longer reads the newspaper. She keeps up with news by listening to the radio.
These days, Cindy and John go weeks without seeing each other. It's a sacrifice they've made to raise their children in Phoenix.
"There are times I wish he were there on that particular evening," Cindy said. "But I wouldn't change our life in any way."
A LITTLE FREELANCING
On the campaign trail, McCain frustrates his handlers. He doesn't repeat the message often enough, frequently choosing to freelance. And if McCain wants to stand and answer questions, to hell with the carefully prepared schedule.
"We used to try," said John Weaver, McCain's national political director.
"We'd say, 'Senator, we have to go,' and he would just look at us."
The man who earned the nickname "White Tornado" in Congress belies his years by working a schedule that would bury men half his age. While campaigning, his days often last from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.
"I think I can outwork any other candidate," McCain says.
And there is much work to do, he says.
The presidency is broken, and the White House is stained by the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. McCain plans to fix it.
"I'm not running for president to be someone," McCain said recently. "I'm running to do something. This is your country, my friends. And I'm running for president to give it back to you."
McCain says his background makes him qualified to be president. He is the son and grandson of admirals. He flew Navy attack bombers in Vietnam. He spent close to six years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. He served two terms in the House of Representatives and was elected to his third Senate term last year.
He's not in awe of the top job.
"I'm obviously aware of the enormous responsibilities," he said. "But I don't find it intimidating."
Most Americans have yet to meet John McCain. With Texas Gov. George W. Bush leading the polls, the national press has been content to sketch McCain as a caricature:
Former prisoner of war. Crusader for reform and breath of fresh air in Washington. One of the Keating Five, but the media tone on that seems to be, who cares, really?
"Since McCain is not yet a threat, nobody is talking much about his negatives," Woods said. "Because of the Bush phenomenon, (McCain's) avoided scrutiny. He'll stay under the radar just because we really don't have a race."
THE POW FACTOR
Tilton, N.H. - At Oliver's Diner, a woman shyly walks up to McCain, her eyes moist.
"I've been waiting 30 years to meet you," she says, and thrusts out her hand.
McCain looks down. The woman is holding a stainless steel POW bracelet, embossed with the lettering LCDR JOHN McCAIN III 10-26-67.
"I'm very touched," McCain says. "Very touched."
Judy Tilton says she started wearing McCain's bracelet when she was 7 years old. It was given to her by her father, a retired lieutenant colonel in the National Guard.
Tilton said she first noticed McCain when he was elected to the Senate.
"I thought, 'Wait a minute, I know him,' " she said. "Every time he came to New Hampshire, I thought, 'Maybe I'll meet him.' "
When she saw a notice for the breakfast, Tilton decided it was time.
"It was terrific," she said. "I've been waiting a long time."
McCain knows that being a war hero is not enough to be elected president. But it doesn't hurt.
His military experience gives him a trump card over a generation of draft dodgers and National Guardsmen, those who avoided the war that stole much of McCain's youth.
After all, it was McCain who turned down an early release offered because his father was an admiral. McCain knew it was a propaganda ploy.
It was McCain who rotted in prison and was beaten to a pulp while Bill Clinton studied at Oxford and George W. Bush flew National Guard jets in Texas.
This gives McCain instant credibility on two key campaign issues, foreign policy and national defense, that make Bush and other non-combatant candidates a little queasy.
To tell his story, McCain doesn't need to drag out his medals, which include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross and a fistful of others. His experiences were chronicled in a book, The Nightingale's Song, by Robert Timberg, as well as an A&E special that might have been titled John McCain: Hero or God? McCain just released his own book about his family and his Vietnam experience, Faith of My Fathers.
That book conveniently ends with his release from North Vietnam, skipping the less ennobling things that happened later.
His war story, and the bluntness of his personality that goes along with it, appeal to people.
Among them is his New Hampshire driver, Frank Cartier, a 28-year-old Manchester firefighter and Gulf War veteran whose unit led the 1st Marines into Kuwait City.
Cartier had always admired McCain and became his first volunteer in New Hampshire when he saw a blurb in the local paper. Cartier said McCain impressed him right off the bat.
Cartier said most candidates would just shake your hand and look to the next person. Not McCain.
"I was wearing my Marine tie clip," Cartier recalled. "And he looked me right in the eye and said, 'Thank you for serving.'
"As a Marine, you get a sense of who you would want to lead you into battle. I would gladly take the hill for John McCain."
This is the kind of impact McCain hopes to have, to bring younger voters back into the fold. As he campaigns, McCain often notes that the last election had the lowest voter turnout among 18- to 26-year-olds of any election in history.
"It is a shameful thing, my friends," McCain said, "when young people say we are corrupt. But to a certain extent, they are correct."
McCain also is attracting others into the fray, people who have never participated before. One is Rick Kamp, a 50-year-old marketing executive who hosted a meet-and-greet for McCain at his home in Concord, N.H.
Kamp rented a tent for the back yard and brought in a bartender and mountains of sandwiches for the guests, who would be tapped for donations before the end of the evening.
By the time things got started, it was raining in Concord. The crowd squeezed into Kamp's living room. As McCain spoke with a C-Span camera crew looking on, Kamp and his wife beamed.
"This is my maiden voyage in political activism," Kamp said.
Kamp, who sought out the McCain campaign on his own, said he wanted to support a candidate who is willing to take tough stands and fight for what he believes in.
"He's not the type who needs an overnight poll to tell him what to think or what to say on any given day," Kamp said. "I like that."
Despite the adulation, McCain says there is one thing he might change about his public persona: He doesn't want to be the "POW Candidate."
That may be strategy disguised as humility.
"I'm sure he doesn't want to be the POW candidate, but it's an integral part of his resume," said Jay Smith, who runs a public relations firm in Washington. "It's something people respond to for positive reasons.
"You use what you can use."
At every McCain rally, there are large posters of McCain as a young pilot, standing next to his bomber. In South Carolina, when McCain was introduced in stifling meeting halls, the speaker would note that "John McCain spent five and a half years in a place much smaller and hotter than this."
In his speeches, McCain spins stories about being a POW, though usually about other brave prisoners. He often notes that he was not a hero but served in the company of heroes.
"It doesn't take a lot of talent to get shot down," McCain is fond of saying. "I was able to intercept a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane."
When he talks of the war, or about another soldier's courage, it reminds people he is no phony.
In a speech before the state Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in New Hampshire, McCain recalled the tale of Mike Christian, a fellow POW who used red and white cloth to sew an American flag inside his prison uniform. Every night, the POWs hung up Christian's shirt and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.
One day, the North Vietnamese guards found the flag. They took Christian from the cell and beat him severely. When he was returned, his ribs were broken and his face badly bruised. The other POWs cleaned up Christian the best they could.
Later that night, as McCain struggled to sleep on the concrete slab that was his bed, he looked over into the corner of the room.
"There, beneath that dim light bulb, with a piece of white cloth and a piece of red cloth and his bamboo needle, his eyes almost shut from the beating that he had received, was my dear friend Mike Christian, making another American flag."
CHAPTER II: JOHN WAYNE McCAIN
Annapolis, Md., 1955 - Midshipman John McCain and his roommate, Frank Gamboa, are eating lunch at the mess hall at the U.S. Naval Academy when a first classman, a "firstie" in Naval parlance, begins dressing down a Filipino steward.
"He was just being nasty to him," Gamboa recalls. "(The firstie) was obviously not in a happy mood."
Gamboa hardly notices this exchange, but young John McCain is paying close attention. Since the steward is an enlisted man, he cannot fight back. The firstie is being a bully, a no-no at the Naval Academy.
The man outranks everyone at the table. McCain and Gamboa are barely past being plebes, the school's lowest rank. Fearing trouble, other underclassmen eat quickly and leave. The browbeating continues.
Finally, McCain can take no more.
"Hey, why don't you pick on someone your own size?" McCain blurts out.
There is a moment of silent shock at the table.
"What did you say?" replies the firstie.
"Why don't you stop picking on him?" McCain says. "He's doing the best he can."
"What is your name, mister?" snaps the firstie, an open threat to put McCain on report.
"Midshipman John McCain the Third," McCain says, looking straight at the upperclassman. "What's yours?"
The firstie saw the look in McCain's eyes. And fled.
"The guy got so flustered he just got up and left the table," Gamboa recalls.
A FAMILY IN SERVICE
John McCain had plenty to live up to at the Naval Academy.
There was his grandfather, Admiral John "Slew" McCain, Class of 1906, a grizzled old sea dog who commanded aircraft carriers in the Pacific during World War II.
Slew McCain's peers at the Naval Academy were Chester Nimitz and William "Bull" Halsey, who would become major commanders during World War II. One of Slew McCain's first assignments was as executive officer on a gunboat in the Philippines commanded by Nimitz.
"They would hunt and fish, and every now and then they would stop in for their mail," the younger McCain said recently in a TV interview. "Can you imagine?"
In the 1930s, the military passed a regulation that aircraft carriers could be commanded only by aviators. Already in his 50s, McCain's grandfather went to flight school.
He crashed five airplanes but got his wings and went on to command a carrier. He eventually would rise to command all U.S. carriers in the Pacific, under Halsey. Planes under Slew McCain's command participated in a number of battles, including Leyte Gulf, and once sank 49 Japanese ships in a day.
According to his grandson, McCain was the quintessential combat officer - a throwback, a gregarious, beloved commander who didn't worry whether his uniform was pressed. But the war, and his lifestyle, taxed his health.
"He had a very hard life to start with," the younger McCain recalled recently. "He smoked and he drank and he didn't take care of himself. Also, the strain of operations in World War II was immense."
When the Japanese surrendered aboard the USS Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945, Slew McCain was there. He can been seen in the famous picture, standing in the front row of U.S. officers. He was 61 years old, but he looked 80.
In fact, he had been sick for two weeks, at least since a cease-fire was called on Aug. 15, 1945. Around that time, the elder McCain talked with John Thach, who recalled the conversation in the book Carrier Warfare in the Pacific.
McCain had been staying in his sea cabin, popping his head out only occasionally.
"Admiral, you don't feel very well, do you?" Thach asked.
"Well," McCain responded, "this surrender has come as kind of a shock to all of us. I feel lost. I don't know what to do. I know how to fight, but now I don't know whether I know how to relax or not. I am in an awful letdown. I do feel bad."
On the day of the surrender, the old man would see his son, John S. McCain Jr., a submarine commander. The younger McCain had been given the job of escorting Japanese submarines into Tokyo Bay. Father and son posed for a picture aboard the Proteus, a submarine tender.
It was the last time John McCain Jr. would see his father alive.
Four days after the surrender aboard the Missouri, the elder McCain flew back to Coronado, Calif. Thach went to visit him and noted that he looked even worse. A few minutes into the visit, McCain said he wanted to lie down.
Thach went to San Diego to visit his father-in-law. A short time later, he got a phone call.
John "Slew" McCain had died of a heart attack.
He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, next to his brother, William Alexander McCain, a cavalry officer known as "Wild Bill."
Bill McCain, who graduated from West Point, chased Pancho Villa with Gen. Blackjack Pershing, served as an artillery officer during World War I and attained the rank of brigadier general.
In his new book, Faith of My Fathers, McCain details his Scotch-Irish roots, noting that his great-aunt was a descendant of Robert the Bruce, an early Scottish king.
On this continent, McCain's roots date to the American Revolution. An early ancestor, John Young, served on Gen. George Washington's staff. After the family moved to Mississippi, a number of McCain's ancestors fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy.
McCain's grandfather grew up on the family plantation in Carroll County, Miss. He attended the University of Mississippi, then entered the Naval Academy.
'HE WAS A TOUGH GUY'
Like his grandfather, John McCain was no scrubbed angel when he reached the Naval Academy in 1954. At Episcopal High, a private boarding school in Alexandria, Va., McCain was a rebel, earning the nickname "McNasty" from classmates who didn't dare cross him.
At 5-9, McCain was an excellent lightweight wrestler in high school. One of McCain's school friends, Malcolm Matheson, said McCain was no bully but took no guff.
"I always got along with him, but he was a tough guy," Matheson said. "He was small but feisty. He's always been that way. . . . If you messed with him, you probably would end up on the wrong side of it."
Despite his rebellious nature, McCain was destined to attend the Naval Academy, like his grandfather and his father (Class of '31) before him.
Ron Thunman, who commanded McCain's plebe, or first-year, class, said he had no idea that McCain came from an old Navy family but said the young man immediately impressed him. The plebe battalions competed in sports, McCain as a boxer.
What he lacked in skill, he made up for in ferocity, Thunman said.
"I got a real kick out of him," Thunman said. "It was clear that nobody was going to take him down without a hell of an effort."
Thunman said he noticed McCain had a quick mind and a good sense of humor. He quickly emerged as a leader in his group.
"He stood out because he was just one of those people that you liked and you got a chuckle out of," Thunman said. "He was somebody who was always moving at top speed in one direction or another. He was never one to hang back."
A free spirit, McCain chafed under the strict rules of the academy. Each year, he was always in the "Century Club," students with more than 100 demerits.
It was mostly small stuff - messy quarters, unshined shoes, reporting late to formation, things like that, recalls Gamboa, who roomed with McCain for three years.
"He and I, we got a lot of demerits," Gamboa said. "It was almost impossible not to."
McCain's grades were good in the subjects he enjoyed, such as literature and history. Gamboa said McCain would rather read a history book than do his math homework. He did just enough to pass the classes he didn't find stimulating.
"He stood low in his class," Gamboa said. "But that was by choice, not design."
On weekends, everyone wanted to hang out with McCain, who grew up around Washington and knew all the best parties. And with his good looks, McCain attracted plenty of women.
"We used to call him John Wayne McCain," Gamboa said. "He was graying at the temples, and it made him more dashing. . . . It was a real adventure living with John."
McCain's bio in the academy yearbook said it all:
"Sturdy conversationalist and party man. John's quick wit and clever sarcasm made him a welcome man at any gathering. His bouts with the academic and executive departments contributed much to the stockpiles of legends within the hall."
One such bout almost ended in disaster.
The further cadets rose in the academy, the fewer demerits they were allowed. Naturally, McCain was pushing the limit as his senior year neared an end.
McCain already had been skirting the rules. He and some friends had bought a television, which was prohibited. They would gather in their rooms on weekends, watching boxing on Friday nights and a Western, Maverick, on Sundays. The men kept the TV hidden in a "pipe locker," a space between the dormitory rooms that housed plumbing, heating and ventilation.
"One day, the company officer got to crawling around in there, and he found the TV," Gamboa said.
Normally, all the men involved would play a game similar to "paper, rock, scissors" to determine who would get the demerits. But Gamboa and the others wouldn't let McCain take the chance - the 30 demerits from the TV would get him kicked out.
"He wanted to, but we just insisted," Gamboa said. "The guy who took the demerits (a model midshipman named Henry Vargo) had none."
McCain also offered advice to the lovelorn. More than one midshipman made his way to McCain's room to ask for advice on a romantic relationship.
One evening, Gamboa was writing a thank-you letter to a date (a custom in those days), when McCain came up and snatched the letter away.
"This is a terrible letter," McCain said. "Did you have fun with her? Do you want to see her again? Here, I'll tell you what to say."
Gamboa and McCain remain close to this day. The friendship says something about McCain, notes Gamboa, a first-generation Mexican-American.
When the two met at the Naval Academy, they had nothing in common. Gamboa was the son of immigrant parents from a little town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. McCain was the son and grandson of naval officers and attended private schools in Virginia.
But to McCain, race and status meant nothing, Gamboa said.
"I don't think John McCain had even been associated with Hispanics or any minorities, given where he lived and the school he went to, but yet he picked me, a Mexican-American, to be his roommate," Gamboa said.
"I've heard the comment that he has always done well with minorities. He's the most colorblind person I've ever met in my life.
"He treats me like a brother."
CHOOSING A CAREER
As the men graduated from the Naval Academy, they had to make a choice as to what branch of service they would enter, the Navy or the Marines.
Gamboa said he always knew what McCain would pick.
"There was never any question in our minds that he was going to be flier," Gamboa said. "He was an adventurous spirit, and that's what he would do."
For McCain's roommates - Gamboa, Keith Bunting and Jack Dittrick - it was still an open question. Until they met Jack McCain, John's father.
During World War II, the elder McCain won the Silver Star while commanding two submarines: the USS Gunnel, which sunk freighters and battled Japanese destroyers in the Pacific; and the USS Dentuda, which was on hand at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.
While his son attended the Naval Academy, Jack McCain was living in nearby Washington, working as the Navy's senior liaison officer to Congress.
On weekends, John McCain and his roommates would go to his father's house, where the elder McCain would chomp cigars and tell them about the Navy.
"Every time we went to John's house, we would get a blue and gold pep talk from Jack McCain," Gamboa said.
Jack McCain was not subtle. To his friends, he was known as "Good Goddamn McCain."
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Speaking to the Annapolis Class of 1970, Jack McCain made light of the antiwar slogan "make love, not war," by noting that naval officers "were men enough to do both," according to Faith of My Fathers.
"He was the best naval officer I ever met in my life," Gamboa said. "I think that's where John got his love of history, from his father. His father's den was filled ceiling to floor with books, and the majority were on history."
Jack McCain made a big impression on the midshipmen. McCain and his roommates joined the Navy, and all reached the rank of captain - Bunting as a submariner, Dittrick as an aviator and Gamboa on surface ships. John McCain went to flight school.
During training, McCain had several close calls, including a crash in Corpus Christi Bay and a collision with power lines in Spain. In both cases, he emerged virtually unscathed.
In 1964, while stationed in Pensacola, Fla., McCain started a relationship with Carol Shepp, a tall Philadelphia model he met while at Annapolis.
The next year, the two were married in Philadelphia. John soon adopted Carol's two sons from a previous marriage. In 1966, they had a daughter, Sydney.
A year later, McCain was sent to Vietnam as a bomber pilot on an aircraft carrier. Carol would not see her husband again for almost six years.
CHAPTER III: THE CROWN PRINCE
"THE PLANTATION," HANOI, AUGUST 1968 - John McCain sat on a stool, his teeth broken, his body battered from a savage beating, his arms tied behind him in torture ropes.
A guard entered the room.
"Are you ready to confess your crimes?" he asked.
"No," McCain replied.
Every two hours, one guard would hold McCain while two others beat him. They kept it up for four days.
Finally, McCain lay on the floor, a bloody mess, unable to move. His right leg, injured when he was shot down, was horribly swollen. A guard yanked him to his feet and threw him down. His left arm smashed against a bucket and broke again.
"I reached the lowest point of my 5 1/2 years in North Vietnam," McCain would write later. "I was at the point of suicide."
What happened next is chronicled in The Nightingale's Song, by Robert Timberg:
"(McCain) looked at the louvered cell window high above his head, then at the small stool in the room. He took off his dark blue prison shirt, rolled it like a rope, draped one end over his shoulder near his neck, began feeding the other end through the louvers."
A guard burst into the cell and pulled McCain away from the window. For the next few days, he was on suicide watch.
McCain's will had finally wilted under the beatings. Unable to endure any more, he agreed to sign a confession.
McCain slowly wrote, "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors."
He would never forgive himself.
"I had learned what we all learned over there," he would write later. "Every man has a breaking point. I had reached mine."
BRUSH WITH DEATH
Lt. Cmdr. John McCain was not thinking about a cell in the Hanoi Hilton when he took off in his A-4E Skyhawk from the USS Oriskany on the morning of Oct. 26, 1967.
As a pilot, McCain had led a charmed life, surviving a bad accident on the USS Forrestal about two months before.
The Forrestal was stationed in the Tonkin Gulf, preparing for a mission. McCain was strapped into his jet, warming up the engine. Suddenly, a missile on another plane misfired, shooting across the deck and slamming into McCain's fuel tank. The missile didn't detonate, but the impact spilled hundreds of gallons of highly flammable aviation fuel on the deck. McCain's plane was engulfed in smoke.
As a fire blazed beneath him, McCain scrambled out of the cockpit, then dropped and rolled through the burning aviation fuel. Slapping out the fire on his flight suit, McCain started back to assist another pilot.
Then the first bomb exploded.
Flaming shrapnel whizzed across the flight deck. One man was decapitated; others were burned beyond recognition. McCain was knocked backward, and small pieces of metal peppered his chest. As the crew frantically fought the fire, more bombs and planes exploded.
In the end, 134 men lost their lives, and the Forrestal was almost abandoned. McCain's injuries were minor.
After the accident, McCain transferred from the Forrestal to the Oriskany, another aircraft carrier.
On Oct. 26, McCain would fly his 23rd sortie over Vietnam, joining a 20-plane mission to bomb a power plant in Hanoi, the North Vietnamese capital, which had been off-limits to U.S. attacks.
An officer warned McCain to be careful, that some of the pilots might not return.
"Don't worry about me," McCain said.
Hanoi was well-defended against air attack. As McCain approached his target, surface-to-air missiles the size of telephone poles filled the sky. Suddenly, his instrument panel lit up. A missile had locked on to his plane.
McCain dropped his bombs and began to pull up. Suddenly, a missile sheared off his right wing, sending his plane spinning toward earth, out of control. McCain ejected, breaking his right leg and both arms. He regained consciousness as he settled into a small lake in the center of Hanoi.
McCain's battered body sank 15 feet to the bottom of the muddy lake. He managed to kick his way to the surface with his one good leg, but his equipment dragged him back down. Finally, as he went down for a third time, McCain used his teeth to inflate his life preserver and bobbed to the surface.
North Vietnamese pulled McCain from the lake, stripping off his clothes. McCain felt a twinge in his right knee and was horrified to see his leg bent at a 90-degree angle.
"My God, my leg," McCain said.
A man slammed a rifle butt down on McCain's right shoulder, shattering it. Others bayoneted him in the foot and groin.
Eventually, he was thrown onto a truck and taken to Hanoi's main prison. He was placed in a cell and told he would not receive any medical treatment until he gave military information. McCain refused and was beaten unconscious.
On the fourth day, two guards entered McCain's cell. One pulled back the blanket to reveal McCain's injured knee.
"It was about the size, shape and color of a football," McCain recalled.
Fearful of blood poisoning that would lead to death, McCain told his captors he would talk if they took him to a hospital.
"They brought in this doctor we called Zorba, and he examined me, took my pulse and turned to this other guy we called The Bug and said something in Vietnamese, and The Bug said, 'It's too late, it's too late,' " McCain said.
"I said, 'If you take me to the hospital, I'll get well.' Zorba took my pulse again and shook his head, and The Bug said, 'It's too late.' And they took me back to my cell."
About two hours later, McCain's cell door burst open, and The Bug rushed in, saying, "Your father is a big admiral. Now we take you to the hospital."
It had taken some time, but the North Vietnamese figured out that McCain's father, Jack, was a major Naval commander for the United States. They started calling McCain "The Crown Prince."
MAINTAINING SILENCE
McCain was moved to a filthy hospital, where blood and plasma were administered. He recovered a little but was still in sorry shape.
Soon, McCain was told that a Frenchman wanted to talk to him and would take a message back to McCain's family.
Before the meeting, the North Vietnamese tried to set McCain's shattered right arm, which was broken in three places. Without anesthetic, a doctor using a fluoroscope worked on the arm for 90 minutes, with McCain screaming in pain. The arm had two floating bones, and the doctor could not set it properly.
Finally, the doctor gave up and wrapped a cast around McCain from his neck to his waist and down his right arm to his wrist.
They moved McCain to a new room with clean white sheets. Soon afterward, a North Vietnamese known as The Cat arrived. He was the commander of all prison camps in Hanoi.
Through an interpreter, The Cat told McCain that "the French television man is coming."
It was at that point that McCain realized his visitor was a journalist.
"I don't think I want to be filmed," McCain said.
The Cat wouldn't be dissuaded. He told McCain that he needed two operations and that he would not get them if he didn't say he was grateful to the Vietnamese people and sorry for his crimes.
The French TV crew arrived, led by a reporter named Francois Chalais. On the film, which was shown later on CBS television, McCain looks drugged. He wasn't. He was in agony from the abortive attempt to set the bones in his right arm.
McCain told Chalais that his treatment was satisfactory. This upset The Cat, who stood behind McCain and told him to say he was grateful for humane and lenient treatment. McCain refused. When The Cat pressed it, Chalais broke in.
"I think what he told me is sufficient," he said.
On the film, McCain told his wife, Carol, and his children that he was getting well and that he loved them. When the North Vietnamese insisted that McCain call for a quick end to the war, Chalais waved them off.
"How is the food?" Chalais asked.
"Well, it's not Paris, but I eat it," McCain replied.
The interview ended, and McCain was taken to his dirty room. The North Vietnamese operated on his knee, accidentally cutting the ligaments on one side. Throughout his stay as a POW, McCain could never walk right. Among his fellow POWs, he earned the nickname "Crip."
BLAME THE AMERICANS
After six weeks in the hospital, McCain was taken to a prison camp known as The Plantation and placed in a cell with George "Bud" Day and Norris Overly, both Air Force majors.
Taking one look at McCain, Day was convinced that the North Vietnamese had brought McCain to their cell to die and planned on blaming the Americans.
"He was extremely skinny, and he was just about filthy," said Day, a lawyer in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. "He had food and drink and liquids run all over his face. He had a pretty good beard . . . he probably weighed less than 100 pounds.
"He was in this great big white cast, and his hair was snow white. He just looked like he was absolutely on the verge of death."
Day said McCain's injured right arm jutted from his body cast like a stick "sticking out of a snowman."
But more than anything else, Day remembers McCain's eyes.
"His eyes were extremely bright, they had that real fever luster," Day said. "I just took one look at him and had no qualms that he was going to die, and soon."
Despite his poor condition, McCain still was happy to see fellow Americans. The men spent the night whispering among themselves.
By 6 a.m., Day was convinced that McCain had a decent chance to live, providing the fever did not get him. Slowly, McCain began to recover.
"He was just a very determined guy with a lot of spirit," Day said. "It's kind of like when you see a horse, a young colt, and you just know this is a strong-spirited animal. You could see all that in him."
McCain, it seemed, was too tough to die.
"John was not going to help the Lord take him out," Day said. "If the Lord was involved in taking him out, John was resisting all the way. If the Lord was helping him, John was giving Him 100 percent of his effort."
In the first days, McCain could not wash or feed himself without help. The task of nursing McCain fell to Overly, since Day had been tortured in ropes and had little use of his hands.
"I've got to give Norris a lot of credit," Day said. "Norris took care of John like a baby, like it was his own child. There was no question that he loved John. He did things for John that only a parent would do for their children."
Occasionally, North Vietnamese dignitaries would stroll by to gawk at the prize prisoner. Since McCain's father was an admiral, the North Vietnamese thought McCain's family was very wealthy. They would ask how many corporations his father owned. McCain just laughed.
Slowly, he was nursed back to health. McCain's infections were healing, now that he could wash regularly. Soon, he could hobble around in his cell for a few minutes at a time.
After a time, Overly was removed from the cell and placed with two other prisoners who were going to be released early.
Early release was forbidden by the military's Code of Conduct. To prevent the enemy from subverting prisoners or using them as propaganda tools, officers were to accept release in the order they were captured. That meant that the first man to be released should have been Navy Lt. Everett Alvarez, who had been shot down on Aug. 5, 1964.
Nevertheless, Overly and two others accepted early release. The other POWs soon dubbed the practice the "Fink Release Program."
McCain has spoken with Overly only once since the war, during a short phone conversation after McCain was released in 1973. But Day, who won the Medal of Honor for his service in Vietnam, has made his peace with Overly.
"If I had been in (Overly's) shoes, maybe I would have done things differently than I did," said Day, who retired from the Air Force in 1976 as a full colonel.
"I came back from Vietnam all crippled up and all screwed up, and a lot of that could have been avoided if I had given the gooks a lot of the stuff they were really pushing me for.
"I didn't think it was the right thing, so I didn't do it."
Once McCain was able to walk on his own, Day was moved out. For two years, McCain would be alone in his cell, which he described in U.S. News & World Report after his release:
"My room was fairly decent-sized - I'd say about 10 by 10. The door was solid. There were no windows. The only ventilation came from two small holes at the top in the ceiling, about 6 inches by 4 inches. The roof was tin, and it got hot as hell in there.
"The room was kind of dim - night and day - but they always kept on a small light bulb so they could observe me."
CODE TALKERS
In October 1968, McCain heard some noise in the cell behind him at The Plantation and began tapping on the cell wall, a common way for POWs to communicate. The call-up sign was the five-tap "shave and a haircut," and the other prisoner would answer with two taps.
For two weeks he got no answer, but finally two taps came back. Using a cup to the wall, McCain could hear the other prisoner and managed to give him the tap code. He finally gave McCain his name - Ernie Brace. For awhile, all Brace could do was tap out "I'm Ernie Brace" and then collapse into sobs.
Brace was a decorated former Marine who had flown more than 100 combat missions in Korea. He had been accused of deserting the scene of an aircraft accident, was court-martialed and received a dishonorable discharge.
But that didn't keep Brace out of the war. As a civilian pilot, he flew for a CIA-backed airline and was shot down over Laos.
Brace had spent 3 1/2 years in a bamboo cage with his feet in stocks and an iron collar around his neck. During the ordeal, he almost lost the use of his legs. He escaped three times, and when he was captured the third time, he was buried in the ground up to his neck.
After a year had passed, McCain and Brace were communicating with other prisoners in the camp, shuttling messages back and forth with the tap code.
On Dec. 9, 1969, a guard jerked open Brace's cell door. The incident is recounted in Brace's book, A Code to Keep.
"You are in bad trouble for communicating," the guard said. "You are being taken to a harsher place."
Blindfolded, Brace was put into a truck with soldiers and other prisoners. As the vehicle rolled through Hanoi, Brace felt someone tapping a message on his thigh.
"Hi," said the message. "I John McCain. Who U?"
Brace said tears began forming in his eyes as he grabbed his friend's hand, squeezing out the answer.
"EB here."
Offered early release, Brace turned it down, citing the military code. He was the longest-held civilian POW in Vietnam.
AN OFFER TO GO HOME
In June 1968, McCain was taken to an interrogation room where The Cat awaited him. He was joined by another man, "The Rabbit," who spoke very good English.
The Cat spent two hours in seemingly aimless conversation, telling McCain about how he had run French prison camps in the early 1950s. He said that he had released some prisoners early and that they had thanked him later. He also mentioned that Norris Overly had gone home "with honor."
All of sudden, The Cat blurted out: "Do you want to go home?"
McCain told him he'd have to think about it. He'd been hit by a bout of dysentery and was in poor shape. He was losing weight.
But McCain knew the real reason the North Vietnamese wanted to release him. He was the son and grandson of admirals (his father, Adm. Jack McCain, had been made commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific in July 1968.) McCain's release would help the North Vietnamese propaganda machine.
McCain realized that the Code of Conduct gave him no choice. Alvarez, who was being held elsewhere, was supposed to be the first man released. McCain couldn't let down his father and grandfather.
"I just knew it wasn't the right thing to do," he said. "I knew that they wouldn't have offered it to me if I hadn't been the son of an admiral.
"I just didn't think it was the honorable thing to do."
Three days later, McCain met with The Cat again. The North Vietnamese turned the screws. The Cat told McCain that President Johnson had ordered McCain home. McCain asked to see the orders. The Cat didn't have any.
Then the North Vietnamese commander produced a letter from McCain's wife, Carol, saying, "I wished that you had been one of those three who got to come home."
McCain calmly told The Cat that the prisoners must be released in the order they were captured, starting with Alvarez.
On the Fourth of July, McCain had a final sit-down with The Cat and The Rabbit.
"Our senior officer wants to know your final answer," The Rabbit said.
"My final answer is the same," McCain said. "It's no."
"That is your final answer?"
"That is my final answer."
The Cat, who had been seated behind a pile of papers, grabbed a pen and snapped it in half. Ink spurted all over the desk. He rose and kicked the chair over behind him.
"They taught you too well," he said, then left, slamming the door.
Before long, McCain would find himself tied to a stool, and the guards would literally beat the "black air pirate" confession out of him.
McCain's account was confirmed in a cable from Averell Harriman, who was President Johnson's envoy to the Paris peace talks. Harriman had tea with a Vietnamese official, who mentioned that McCain had refused early release.
A CHRISTMAS SERVICE
On Christmas Eve 1968, about 50 POWs, including McCain, were herded into a room decorated with flowers for a makeshift church service.
The North Vietnamese were intent on milking the ceremony for every bit of PR value. Cameramen moved around the room, filming the ceremony. Flash bulbs popped in the background.
Meanwhile, McCain and other prisoners were busy exchanging information. One of the guards, conscious that he was being filmed, smiled while he told McCain to stop talking.
McCain cursed the guard and kept briefing another prisoner.
"I refused to go home," McCain said. "I was tortured for it. They broke my rib and rebroke my arm."
McCain pressed on, and the guards kept trying to quiet him.
"Our senior ranking officer is Colonel Larson," McCain said.
"No talking!"
McCain cursed them again and flashed his middle finger toward the camera.
He was taken back to his cell, where he waited for his beating. It didn't come until the day after Christmas.
In May 1969, the North Vietnamese asked McCain to write a letter to U.S. pilots asking them not to fly over North Vietnam. When he refused, they made him stand for hours and hours.
When McCain tired and sat down, a guard jumped on his injured leg. McCain was back on crutches for the next 18 months.
In late 1969, things began to look up for the POWs for the first time. President Nixon had taken office in January. During the Johnson administration, released POWs weren't allowed to talk about bad conditions in the prison camps for fear that such complaints would make things even worse for the men still being held.
That changed under Nixon.
In August 1969, under pressure, the North Vietnamese began releasing sick and injured prisoners. Among them were Navy Lt. Robert Frishman, who had a badly injured arm, Air Force Capt. Wes Rumble, who was in a body cast with a broken back, and Navy Seaman Doug Hegdahl, who had lost 75 pounds.
The men held press conferences, telling the horrifying details of torture and mistreatment. After that, treatment of POWs began to improve.
By fall, the torture had almost stopped. The food improved. The guards seemed almost friendly.
McCain's barred cell door had been covered with wood to keep him from looking out and from getting any ventilation. But in fall 1969, the board was removed at night to cool McCain's cell. And prisoners were allowed to bathe more often.
"It was all very amazing," McCain would write later.
In December 1969, McCain was moved to the Hanoi Hilton. There he met with a Cuban journalist who asked McCain general questions about the war. After the interview, a photographer came in and started snapping pictures, though McCain had said he didn't want his picture taken. After that, he refused to meet with visitors.
In June 1970, McCain was moved into a room called "Calcutta," which had no ventilation. There, McCain suffered from heat prostration and another bout of dysentery and was cut to half rations.
In December 1970, McCain was moved to a room that housed 45 to 50 prisoners. In February 1971, the prisoners defied their captors and held a church service. When the men presiding over the service were taken away by guards, the men started singing The Star Spangled Banner very loudly.
Fearing a riot, the guards rushed in with ropes and subdued the men. A few days later, McCain and others were moved to a punishment camp the prisoners called Skid Row. Though the conditions were filthy, McCain said, the prison was a piece of cake compared with conditions in 1969.
In 1971 and 1972, conditions gradually improved. McCain, whose weight had dropped to 105 during his first years in Hanoi, began to regain some of his health. He was allowed to exercise, which eased the boredom and made it easier to sleep.
"He was crippled but mentally fierce," recalled Orson Swindle, who roomed with McCain for the last two years of their incarceration. "He was stiff-legged and had awkward movement of both arms. He did the funniest push-ups I've even seen.
"One of his arms was sort of crooked . . . he did push-ups with a tilt to it."
The men were in a big room with a large concrete slab in the center and a 3-foot-wide, horseshoe-shape path around the slab. They would exercise by walking along the path.
"When John would run in place, it was sort of humorous to watch him," Swindle said. "One leg would bend, and the other wouldn't. It was a sight to behold."
To entertain themselves and the other men, McCain and Swindle organized "Sunday Night at the Movies" - retelling, and in some cases performing, scenes from Hollywood films they had seen.
One of their favorites was One-Eyed Jacks, a Marlon Brando movie in which Brando is beaten by a worthless sheriff played by Slim Pickens. McCain and Swindle especially loved the part where Brando calls Pickens a "scum-sucking pig."
In December 1972, McCain had a front-row seat to a full-scale bombing attack on Hanoi.
"It was the most spectacular show I'll ever see," McCain later wrote in U.S. News and World Report. ". . . The bombs were dropping so close that the building would shake. The SAMs were flying all over, and the sirens were whining - it was really a wild scene."
Though the bombing had been conceived by Nixon, the actual orders had been given by McCain's father, Jack.
McCain's father never wrote him during the war because of the propaganda value of such a letter. He did, however, try to pass McCain a secret message once, according to a passage in Faith of My Fathers.
In letters to his wife, McCain was using a fairly obvious code to send messages back to the States. Naval intelligence, fearing that McCain would be caught, apprised the admiral.
Adm. John McCain Jr. sent a hidden message in a letter Carol wrote to McCain: "JUNIOR URGES CAUTION PLEASE STOP THIS."
The younger McCain never saw it, because the North Vietnamese withheld Carol's letters.
By January 1973, McCain had been moved back to The Plantation. The prisoners sensed that the war was nearing its end. The guards hardly bothered them.
Around that time, McCain was playing bridge with Swindle and two others when he was dealt a perfect hand. But McCain made a rookie mistake and lost his advantage. The other men teased him unmercifully.
Finally, McCain stopped talking to Swindle, who slept right next to him on the floor. This went on for several days.
"We would be walking on the path, and I would say, 'Hi, John,' and John wouldn't respond," Swindle said.
Then one day, the guards came in and ordered Swindle to pack his gear. As one of the first pilots captured, Swindle was in line to be released.
As Swindle was being ushered out, a frantic McCain rushed up to his side.
"John comes running up and says, 'Orson, Orson, I've really been a jerk the last few days.' I said, 'I don't even want to talk to you,' and I turned away.
"Then I looked back at him and winked, and I had a big grin on my face, and I said, 'I'll see you at home.' "
In March, McCain joined a group of prisoners who were put onto trucks and driven to Gia Lam Airport in Hanoi. McCain said he didn't believe he was leaving until he actually spoke with an American in uniform.
It was the best day of his life.
"At the time, it wasn't that overwhelming. It was one of those things that you had anticipated for so long, nothing could have lived up to my expectations," McCain said. "It's like when a kid waits for Christmas, and then it arrives, and it can't quite live up to what he expected."
One by one, The Rabbit read off their names, and they boarded the plane.
McCain's long ordeal was over.
CHAPTER IV: ARIZONA, THE EARLY YEARS
In 1979, John McCain came face to face with his future.
He was in Hawaii, attending a military reception. While there, he met a young, blond, former cheerleader named Cindy Hensley.
It was an incredible stroke of luck for McCain.
How fortunate could one man be? Here was McCain, who had his eye on Congress, meeting a young, attractive beer heiress from Arizona, which was adding a congressional district in 1982.
McCain recalls that both he and Cindy fudged their ages at first. McCain made himself a little younger and Cindy made herself a little older. They found out their real ages when the local paper published them. McCain was 43, Cindy 25.
"So our marriage," McCain cracks, "is really based on a tissue of lies."
While they were dating, McCain called Cindy from Beijing, where he was traveling with a contingent from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while she was in the hospital recuperating from minor knee surgery. She thanked him for the lovely flowers in her room, sent from "John."
What McCain didn't tell Cindy was that he hadn't sent the flowers. They were from another John, who lived in Tucson.
"I never thanked him," Cindy notes with a grin.
After a whirlwind courtship, John asked Cindy to marry him. But there were some details to clear out of the way.
McCain needed a divorce from his wife of 14 years, Carol, who had been badly injured in a car accident while McCain languished in Hanoi.
The marriage had been strained by his years of absence, along with McCain's admitted affairs after returning from Vietnam.
In February 1980, less than a year after he met Cindy, McCain petitioned a Florida court to dissolve his marriage to Carol, calling the union "irretrievably broken." Bud Day, a lawyer and fellow POW, handled the case.
1 Posted on 02/05/2000 10:01:12 PST by Wallaby (wallaby@altavista.net)
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To: part 2
"I thought things were going fairly well, and then it just came apart," Day recalls. "That happened to quite a few. . . . I don't fault (Carol), and I don't really fault John, either."
In the divorce settlement, McCain was generous with Carol, the mother of their daughter Sydney and two other children, whom McCain had adopted. Among other things, McCain gave Carol the rights to houses in Florida and Virginia, and agreed to pay her medical bills for life.
Except for signing the property settlement, Carol did not participate in the divorce. A court summons and other paperwork sent to her during the proceeding went unanswered.
In April, the judge entered a default judgment and declared the marriage dissolved.
A month later, McCain married Cindy in Phoenix, and they moved there.
McCain was immediately plugged into Arizona's power elite. Cindy's father, Jim Hensley, owned a Phoenix Anheuser-Busch distributorship that had made him a millionaire many times over.
It was no secret that McCain was interested in a political career. In the six years after he returned from Vietnam, he had been in rehab and then was assigned to a political post, working in the Navy's Senate liaison office in Washington.
While there, McCain made friends with such political movers as Sen. Gary Hart and Sen. John Tower, who was the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee. He also met Sen. Bill Cohen, now the secretary of Defense, who ended up being the best man at John and Cindy's wedding.
In 1981, McCain retired from the Navy, mostly because of his badly injured knees and shoulder, compliments of his North Vietnamese captors. Hensley gave his new son-in-law a job as vice president of public relations, but McCain was soon bored.
"Jim Hensley didn't care about PR," said Bill Shover, a former executive with Phoenix Newspapers Inc. who met McCain in 1981. "When you have the Budweiser franchise, you have a license to steal. You don't need PR."
It didn't take long for McCain to meet wealthy power brokers such as developer Charles Keating Jr. and Fife Symington III, who would later be elected governor. Local pols suggested McCain start slowly by running for the state Legislature, but McCain would have none of it.
Eager to make up for time lost as a POW, McCain wanted Arizona's new congressional seat.
But he had a problem. The new district was in Tucson. For McCain to move from Phoenix to Tucson would open him up to criticism as a carpetbagger.
Fate lent a hand. In January 1982, Rep. John Rhodes retired from the 1st District seat, which includes the East Valley.
On the day Rhodes announced his retirement, Shover got a call from McCain. He could hear noise in the background.
"Where are you?" Shover asked.
"I'm on the freeway," said McCain, who had stopped at a service station to call Shover. "I'm on the way to Mesa to buy a house."
Many have told the tale of John McCain winning the 1st Congressional District by wearing out three pairs of shoes. McCain's footwear definitely took a beating during the race, but it was more greenbacks than soles that swept McCain into the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982.
McCain's first campaign benefited from his wife's personal wealth, some of which had been tied up in a trust set up in 1971 by her parents, Jim and Marguerite "Smitty" Hensley.
In 1981, the trust expired and was dissolved, giving Cindy McCain a half interest in Western Leasing Co., a truck-leasing business controlled by her father, said Trevor Potter, general counsel to the McCain 2000 campaign and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.
In 1982, Cindy McCain received $639,000 from Western Leasing, according to a financial disclosure report filed by McCain. Potter said that figure reflects Cindy's income on paper, not the actual cash she received, which was about $250,000.
In any case, that same year, the McCains lent $169,000 of their own money to the campaign. Western Leasing, in part, made those loans possible, Potter said.
"Her financial assets played a part in allowing them to loan money to the campaign," Potter said. "And her financial assets included the income from Western Leasing."
Western Leasing was not the only income the McCains had in 1982. They earned a combined $130,000 in salary and bonuses from Hensley and Co., the beer distributorship controlled by Cindy's father. John also had his Navy pension, which paid $31,000 a year.
"No one pretends that Cindy had no money at all," Potter said. "It was hers. And it wasn't something Jim (Hensley) had given her for the campaign."
Under 1982 election rules, it was legal for McCain to tap his wife's assets, as well as his own, when making personal loans to the campaign. In 1983, the rules were rewritten, with tighter guidelines on the use of family money.
In the end, including the personal loans, McCain would raise more than $550,000 to win the seat.
AN ALLY IN THE PRESS
McCain had money, and he also had another staunch ally in Phoenix: Darrow "Duke" Tully, publisher of the state's largest newspaper, The Republic.
Upon meeting McCain, Tully regaled him with stories of his own military service as an Air Force pilot in Korea and Vietnam. The two men quickly hit it off and soon were spending a lot of time together. Cindy McCain and Tully's second wife, Pat, also got along well. Both were far younger than their husbands.
Tully had logged many hours in Air Force simulators learning how to fly F-16s. He bragged about a simulated dogfight between him and McCain on the Goldwater gunnery range in southwest Arizona.
"Duke said he had gotten John in his sights and shot him down," Shover recalls. "John couldn't maneuver very well, because of his (formerly) broken arm."
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