Opiate for the Mrs.

Dowd, after agreeing to a phone interview with New Times on Monday afternoon, changed his mind. Jay Smith and John and Cindy McCain did not respond to requests for interviews.

As is his habit, Tom Gosinski rose on Monday, August 22, and turned on a morning news show. He was nearly floored by what he heard.

"They announced that in the next segment they would be discussing Mrs. McCain . . . and that she was a drug addict," he says.

"I had no idea the story was coming out."
After more than two years of tumult, Gosinski felt a tremendous burden slip from his shoulders. That morning, co-workers at America West who had doubted Gosinski's claims approached him to apologize.

"I felt really good that the story was out. . . . I also felt like this thing was coming clean--everything that I had said, everything that I had suggested to the DEA when I first went to them and everything that I had been talking about for a year and a half."
That was Monday. On Tuesday, news of Romley's extortion investigation broke. Reporters flocked to Gosinski's workplace, seeking interviews. By Thursday, the papers were quoting John McCain as calling Gosinski a liar.

By Saturday, Gosinski was almost too rattled to tell his side of the story. But he did. After nearly five hours of answering questions, he struggles to answer a query about his feelings toward Cindy McCain.

"I feel bad for Cindy. And I truly do. Cindy was an addict; she's admitted to it. [But] I don't think that excuses the things she's done to obtain drugs or the way she treated people."