[Vision2020] You have not tried to find Barack Obama’s drug dealer

[No Weatherman]

Dear Mr. Keller:

I represent Cindy McCain. I write to appeal to your sense of fairness,
balance and decency in deciding whether to publish another story about
her. I do this well knowing your obvious bias for Barack Obama and
your obvious bias hostility to John McCain. I ask you to put your
biases and agendas aside.

I understand that Cindy is in the public eye, but you have already
profiled her extensively (Jennifer Steinhauer reported), written about
her financial situation (including an editorial on her tax returns)
and about her role at Hensley and Company.

I am advised that you assigned two of your top investigative reporters
who have spent an extensive amount of time in Arizona and around the
country investigating Cindy's life including her charity, her
addiction and her marriage to Senator McCain. None of these subjects
are news.

I am also advised that your reporters are speaking to Tom Gosinski and
her cousin Jamie Clark, neither of whom are reliable or credible
sources. Mr. Gosinski has been publicly exposed as a liar and
blackmailer on the subject of Cindy McCain. Jamie Clark has very
serious drug and stability issues and has failed in a number of
attempts to blackmail Cindy. She is simply not credible.

In 1994, Mr. Gosinski drafted a civil complaint for damages claiming,
among other things, that Cindy had defamed him with prospective
employers after he was discharged from AVMT. Those allegations were
utterly false. He was unable to produce any prospective employers and
Cindy had not discussed his deficiencies as an employee with anyone
outside of AVMT. Indeed, his termination was demonstrated to be
appropriate and when he was let go, Cindy gave him severance pay. When
confronted with this evidence, his lawyer resigned. Gosinski never
filed the complaint in Court and could produce no evidence to support
any of its allegations. He attempted to have Cindy pay him $250,000 in
exchange for not filing the complaint. Cindy refused and made his
attempt to extort her public.

Thereafter, he amended his complaint to allege that Cindy asked him to
commit perjury in the adoption proceed involving Bridget McCain. The
notes of Cindy's counsel and the official transcript of the adoption
proceedings clearly demonstrate that Gosinski's was never asked to lie
and did not falsely testify in the proceeding. His allegation was an
utter fabrication. Gosinski further alleged that Cindy used his name
to obtain pain killers for her own personal use. The records of AVMT
show that Dr. Max Johnson, licensed by the DEA to order drugs,
directed the use of employee names on the prescriptions. The drugs
obtained using Mr. Gosinski's name were used and donated on an AVMT
trip to El Salvador. They were not used by Cindy.

These allegations and efforts to hurt Cindy have been a matter of
public record for sixteen years. Cindy has been quite open and frank
about her issues for all these years. Any further attempts to harass
and injure her based on the information from Gosinski and Clark will
be met with an appropriate response. While she may be in the public
eye, she is not public property nor the property of the press to abuse
and defame.

It is worth noting that you have not employed your investigative
assets looking into Michelle Obama. You have not tried to find Barack
Obama's drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, Dreams of My
Father. Nor have you interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and
determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them. Thus, there is a
terrific lack of balance here.

I suggest to you that none of these subjects on either side are worthy
of the energy and resources of The New York Times. They are cruel hit
pieces designed to injure people that only the worst rag would
investigate and publish. I know you and your colleagues are always
preaching about raising the level of civil discourse in our political
campaigns. I think taking some your own medicine is in order here.

I ask you to let Cindy McCain carry on in her usual understated,
selfless and dignified way. The fabrications and lies of blackmailers
are not fit to print in any newspaper but particularly not in The New
York Times.

Sincerely,

John M. Dowd
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
http://gretawire.foxnews.com/2008/10/18/you-have-not-tried-to-find-barack-obamas-drug-dealer/#comment-2506254