The Whistleblower in the Cindy McCain Drug Scandal Speaks

After a long public silence, Tom Gosinski, the whistleblower in the Cindy McCain drug scandal, is speaking out. And what he has to say about John McCain is damning. Matt Stoller's got the goods, which you can read here.

As you probably know, during the 1990s Cindy McCain was addicted to prescription drugs, and was busted for stealing drugs from the medical charity she ran. If that was the end of the story, it would be sordid and sad, but not really a political issue, and not anything that's especially damaging to McCain. Practically every family I know has been touched with substance abuse in one form or another.

But there is much, much more to the story than that. For example, McCain lied about when he first became aware of Cindy's addiction -- he says he didn't find out until 1994. But Cindy, who was consuming  up to 50 Vicodin and Percocet pills a daily, had overdosed in 1991, and McCain knew about it (he visited her in the hospital and pressured the hospital to keep Cindy's overdose a secret).

Far more damaging, though, is that, as Stoller puts it, "it appears that McCain used his Senate staff and resources to cover upCindy's drug use, and potentially to prevent the Drug Enforcement Agency from investigating his wife's theft of illegal prescription drugs."

Stoller sums it up: