Arizonans recall run-ins with McCain

PHOENIX -- Frustrated that a massive telescope project he backed had hit a snag in 1989, Sen. John McCain lashed out at a U.S. Forest Service supervisor, threatening his job if he failed to help get approval for the project.

McCain over the years denied making the menacing comment, but newly surfaced government documents indicate that his anger boiled over to the point where he did.

The incident with the forest official wasn't the first or last time McCain became irate at someone he felt stood in his way.

From environmental activists to former high-ranking Republican officials in his home state, a diverse group of Arizonans have vivid memories of heated skirmishes with the Republican presidential candidate.

Some of them are among McCain's biggest detractors. They say his temper prompts rash decisions. Others have since become McCain supporters. They believe his strong personality is an asset.

Passionate. Resolute. Firm.

Temperamental. Erratic. Unstable.

When it comes to John McCain, it all depends on who's talking.

For Arizona activists and a handful of former federal government officials, a long controversy over the Mount Graham telescope project in southeastern Arizona provided a series of quintessential John McCain moments.

The flare-ups started in the late 1980s, around the time that McCain and four other senators were under investigation for improper relationships with Charles Keating Jr., an Arizonan who oversaw a failed savings and loan institution.

As the Keating Five scandal played out in national headlines, McCain, on a much smaller stage, fought for what eventually became the world's largest optical telescope.

But for years, work on the Mount Graham International Observatory was delayed over concerns -- many later proved legitimate -- that the project could jeopardize a species of red squirrel and encroach upon land considered sacred by American Indian tribes.

The Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, was called on by McCain and Sen. Dennis DeConcini, an Arizona Democrat, to study the project.

In an interview with the Review-Journal, former GAO manager Joe Gibbons said McCain proceeded to interfere with the agency's work, "going bananas" and "steamrolling the GAO" to get his way.

McCain had already shown a willingness to throw his weight around, according to some involved in the Mount Graham project.

At one point, he targeted Jim Abbott, a U.S. Forest Service supervisor he blamed for slowing progress on the observatory.

McCain was alleged at the time to have told Abbott that he would be "the shortest-tenured forest supervisor in the history of the Forest Service" if he didn't help the project move forward.

Federal law prohibits threats that obstruct or impede the work of federal employees.

McCain, when confronted with the allegation in the early 1990s, adamantly denied threatening Abbott and railed against anyone who accused him of misconduct. Abbott later backed McCain's story.

But Gibbons and other GAO investigators charged with examining the scientific fights over the project also reached conclusions about related personal clashes.

An internal GAO memo from 1990 obtained by the Review-Journal refers to McCain's "admitted threat" to the forest supervisor. The memo was designed to remain between the GAO and McCain's office. Its contents have never been made public before.

"I wouldn't have written that without something material in my hands," former assistant GAO director Bob Robinson said when asked about the document he authored.

The McCain campaign declined to discuss McCain's conduct in the matter.

In 1992, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics ruled that McCain had committed "no impropriety" in the Mount Graham situation.

But Robin Silver, an Arizona physician who battled with McCain over the telescope project, said the GAO memo is troubling.

"The document shows that McCain is willing to lie in public instead of admitting he's wrong," he said. "What makes him mad is facing facts that are inconvenient."

Silver and Bob Witzeman, another Arizona environmental advocate, said McCain got to the point where he'd turn bright red at the mere mention of Mount Graham.

"There was a lot of screaming and a lot of obscenities," Silver said of a meeting he and Witzeman had with McCain in 1992. "We brought him cold hard facts to prove he'd made a mistake, and instead of acknowledging that, he got in our faces."

Las Vegan Sig Rogich, a Republican strategist and McCain supporter, said negative views of McCain's temperament are fueled by misconceptions: "He is his own man and he is fair. And I have heard him on more than one occasion appreciate and accept other points of view."

But Rogich added that McCain "is not afraid to ruffle feathers if he believes that's what it takes to get the job done."

McCain addressed his own temper in a 2002 memoir.

"My temper has often been both a matter of public speculation and personal concern," he wrote. "I have a temper, to state the obvious, which I have tried to control with varying degrees of success because it does not always serve my interest or the public's."

Ironically, says McCain biographer Robert Timberg, fellow Republicans backing George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential primary were the first to make McCain's temperament a national issue.

"There certainly was an effort as far back as 1999, when McCain was an enemy of the Republican establishment, to portray him as a wack job by virtue of the time he was in (a POW) prison," Timberg said.

This year, the perception of McCain as a hothead has re-emerged. And again, it was a fellow Republican whose words helped bring the issue back to the forefront.

In late January, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., told the Boston Globe that the thought of McCain being president "sends a cold chill down my spine."

"He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me," Cochran told the newspaper.

Cochran later endorsed McCain, but ever since the Mississippi senator made his remarks, his words have been cited often. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada even carries a copy of Cochran's quote in his wallet.

Cochran articulated what some Arizonans say they've long felt.

Jon Hinz said he got an early taste of McCain's temper while serving as executive director of the Arizona Republican Party. The most memorable encounter came on the night in 1986 when McCain was elected to the U.S. Senate in a landslide.

After his acceptance speech, McCain flew into a rage because he felt the podium he was standing on made him seem short, Hinz said. The Republican official had to come between McCain and a campaign worker who McCain was loudly scolding and poking in the chest.

In the course of time, Hinz said he developed a strong opinion about the meaning of such incidents.

"It's not a temper issue, it's an integrity issue," Hinz said.

But some McCain supporters, even those who have sparred with him, say they have a different understanding of how McCain operates.

Former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson, a Democrat, went nose to nose with McCain in 1992 in a dispute over a federal land issue. A few years later, Johnson commented that McCain's "volatility borders in the area of being unstable."

He has since softened his view.

"He came to me in 2005 and apologized," Johnson said. "When you have a dispute with McCain, it's always passionate. He's aggressive in putting his position out there."

McCain's outbursts have occasionally gone beyond the political realm.

Jimmie Bacco, a former federal air marshal based in Las Vegas, told the Review-Journal earlier this year that McCain berated him on a flight from Washington, D.C.'s Reagan National Airport in 2002 for enforcing a federal regulation.

A few weeks after his interview with the Review-Journal, Bacco spoke directly to the McCain campaign. He then changed his story, first downplaying it and then recanting it altogether.

But in an earlier detailed account of what happened, Bacco said McCain became angry and profane when he was told he couldn't leave his seat to use the lavatory until the plane had been airborne 30 minutes, a Federal Aviation Administration rule at the time.

Bacco said McCain told him the rule "was meant to be broken."

Both men later apologized for the argument, Bacco said.

Transportation Security Administration spokesman Greg Alter said his agency couldn't locate a copy of a report Bacco said he filed about the incident, but added that such "non-actionable" reports might no longer be on file. Several of Bacco's former colleagues say they recall Bacco talking about the incident when it happened in 2002.

Rick Gorka, a regional spokesman for the McCain campaign, told the Review-Journal that the incident wasn't newsworthy before later saying "the whole story is a lie."

Timberg, the author who followed McCain around for months while working on his 1999 biography, calls McCain "a genuinely decent person."

"I never saw McCain bully anybody, but I could see him getting in somebody's face," Timberg said.

McCain supporters say they think the 72-year-old has become more measured in recent years, a mellowing due in equal parts to concerns about his temperament and to the omnipresence of television cameras.

But Wes Gullett, of Phoenix, a longtime McCain friend and former aide, said concerns about his temper won't change who McCain is.

"John McCain's not a politician who's just going to tell you what you want to hear," Gullett said. "He's not a blubbering crybaby. ... If lefties and French apologists are worried about McCain being hotheaded, then I think they need to find something else to worry about."

Gullett, who introduced McCain's wife, Cindy, at the Republican National Convention in August, said the Republican candidate's passion should be admired, not scorned.

"This is a guy who's going to go to (Russian Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin and say you can't invade those little guys and push them around," Gullett said.

It's that in-your-face approach that scares McCain's adversaries.

"We're not talking about Joe Sixpack here," Silver said. "We're talking about a guy who could have his hand on the button."

Tough and forceful?

Crude and bullying?

With McCain, consensus is elusive.

As Rogich says: "His detractors call it angry. I call it passionate. They call it temperamental. I call it determined. They say it is erratic. I view it as creative."

Contact reporter Alan Maimon at amaimon @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0404.