Revisiting McCain's Keating 5 history [View All]

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Revisiting McCain's Keating 5 history
At one time, John McCain said the worst thing that ever happened to him, Vietnam included, was the so-called Keating 5 scandal. "The Vietnamese," he would...

By Los Angeles Times

At one time, John McCain said the worst thing that ever happened to him, Vietnam included, was the so-called Keating 5 scandal. "The Vietnamese," he would say, "didn't question my honor."

Among McCain's earliest benefactors in Arizona was Lincoln Savings and Loan chief Charles Keating Jr., who filled McCain's campaign coffers with more than $100,000 and hosted the McCains multiple times at his vacation home in the Bahamas.

Keating expected his largesse to be rewarded, and when federal regulators began looking into Lincoln's questionable lending practices and investments in the late 1980s, he turned to five senators whose coffers he had lined — Alan Cranston of California, Donald Riegle of Michigan, John Glenn of Ohio and both Arizona senators, Dennis DeConcini and McCain.

McCain attended two meetings with regulators at Keating's request. McCain's view was that he was seeking information on behalf of a constituent who was an important employer in his state. The regulators' view was that they were being pressured to act favorably for Keating.

Lincoln's collapse, the biggest of many savings and loan failures, cost taxpayers $2.6 billion. Keating spent four years in jail, before his sentence was overturned on a technicality, and the Keating 5, as the senators came to be known, lived under an ethical cloud for years.
more:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008157607_mckeating04.html