Back in 2000 in the SC primary some dirty tricks were played on John McCain, saying his adopted daughter was his illigetimate child. He vowed never to let anyone get away with something like this without fighting it again.

This Politico story shows what McCain is doing to fight back and fight back hard on the accusations in NY Times hit piece.

Quoting Politico:

The New York Times posted its long-awaited story tonight on John McCain’s alleged relationship with a telecom lobbyist. Both McCain and the woman in question denied having a romantic relationship….

…In the piece, McCain is quoted as telling Times editor Bill Keller that he never did anything unethical. Top McCain advisers, including his former Senate chief of staff Mark Salter also say on the record that there was nothing inappropriate done legislatively.

McCain’s campaign tonight issued a tough statement blasting the Times for their decision to publish the piece, using similar language from a preemptive strike they released after word first leaked on Drudge.

“It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign,” said communications director Jill Hazelbaker, in a prepared statement sent about an hour after the Times posted their story online. “John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

“Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.”…

…The four Times reporters primarily involved with the McCain story, along with top editors, were in lock-down Wednesday night..

Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet, when contacted by Politico, wrote in an e-mail: “I am going to pass for now. The story speaks for itself.”

Reporter David Kirkpatrick echoed a similar line when reached by phone: “I think the story speaks for itself. This one I can’t help you with.”

Executive editor Bill Keller and political editor Dick Stevenson did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.

Reporters Jim Rutenberg, Stephen Labaton, and Marilyn Thompson - who’s leaving the paper - also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

We remember so many NY Times reporters making up stories from whole cloth, being believed, and then being fired after other people did the investigative work the Times should have done.

McCain has hired Washington lawyer Bob Bennett, a Democrat, to fight these sorts of accusations aggressively.

Let’s hear what he has to say:

Hat tip to Mac of Macsmind for the video.

I chose to update and bump ~J’s~ original post rather than beginning one anew as those who have not had the opportunity to follow this story from its inception should have the opportunity to do so. Sue

*UPDATE 1:John McCain speaks on the issue of Ms. Iseman:

Lots more information available at the home page of the link above including a question about Mike Huckabee’s knowledge (or not) that this story was being floated for publication.

*UPDATE 2: If this from Byron York was any or all of the basis for assuming an affair on the part of Senator McCain and Ms. Iseman then the NYT should be considered no more than a gossip rag.

I just got off the phone with John Weaver, the former top McCain campaign official who is now an informal adviser to the campaign. I asked him about his 1999 meeting on the campaign’s behalf with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. He said he “had no reason to think” that McCain might have been having an affair with Iseman, but he was concerned about word he had heard suggesting that Iseman was telling associates she had connections with McCain. “This was a woman who was saying that she had special influence with John’s committee staff and with him,” Weaver told me. “I didn’t believe that was the case.”

“When you hear back from several people that this person is saying they can get anything done, then that is alarming,” Weaver continued. So Weaver met with Iseman, at a Union Station restaurant, and told her to back off. He told me he didn’t exactly say, “Get lost,” but that that was the gist of it. “The discussion lasted all of five or six minutes in which I told her to cut that stuff out,” Weaver told me. “I said, ‘You need to stop this.’” Iseman’s response, according to Weaver: “She was not happy.”

Read the balance, it is most illuminating on the tactics at the NYT.

And this from the good Captain:

Let’s talk about the other supposed intervention — the one claimed by the two staffers who won’t go on the record. John Weaver and Mark Salter have been McCain’s two top men for ages, and were during this period of time. The Times needs to explain how two lower-level staffers could have gotten access to John McCain during a presidential primary race to stage an intervention over his personal life and his ethics without either Weaver or Salter of them being involved — and both of them categorically deny it ever happened. Wouldn’t it have been Weaver and/or Salter that would have had the access to do that kind of intervention, and not two mid- or low-level staffers?

The Times either needs to produce the staffers or retract the story. It’s appalling.

How could one disagree? If there is truth to this story then let the accusers come out of the shadows. Patrick Hynes offered one of the reporters with whom he has had past dealings an opportunity to clarify the story on his radio show:

At 6:51 AM this morning, I e-mailed Jim Rutenberg– whom I know and have interacted with in the past–to invite him onto my radio program “Meet the New Press” on Saturday morning to discuss the sourcing of his New York Times hit piece on my client John McCain.

At 7:24 AM Rutenberg declined my invitation in an e-mail and indicated—without my even asking—that no one else at the Times was likely to come on, either.

It seems very odd to me that after having “broken” (broken, indeed) a big story about a major national figure, a story that is capable of impacting the 2008 presidential election, no one at the Times has any interest in discussing the story any further, especially considering so many have expressed such deep skepticism about its sourcing and the value of its content.

What a disgrace.