Johnny We Hardly Know Ye: Part I
The McCain fortune is closely tied to the assassination slaying of an investigative reporter by the corrupt Arizona political elite.
This may sound like the type of wild rant used in an attempt to swiftboat Obama, but, in fact, it is a well documented story. It is so accepted as common knowledge in Arizona that few consider it worth repeating.
John McCain did not plant the bomb, but his fortune comes from the people who did.
The true-life crime drama starts with Kemper Marley, a "prominent" Arizona rancher and liquor salesman. With politicians in his pocket, he was too big to be concerned about the law.
Marley was named to the Arizona Racing Commission, but had to resign because of his ties to the Mafia. Arizona Republic Reporter Don Boles reported on this story and other unsavory activities by Marley.
Least this seem like an unseemly rant, let us allow the New York Times to tell the story in Marley’s 1990 obit.
In 1976 Don Bolles, an investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic who specialized in crime, was killed by a bomb concealed beneath his car. John Harvey Adamson, the only person whose conviction in the slaying has been upheld, said in court documents that he had been hired by Max Dunlap, a wealthy contractor who had been reared by Mr. Marley, to kill Mr. Bolles for writing articles damaging to Mr. Marley.
Mr. Dunlap, along with James Robison, a former convict who Mr. Adamson said had detonated the bomb, were convicted of first-degree murder in November 1977. The convictions were overturned by the Arizona Supreme Court, which held that defense lawyers had not been given a significant opportunity to cross-examine Mr. Adamson. They were not retried.
Wikipedia, with an item written later, relates that Dunlap was re-tried and convicted of murder.
Marley was never convicted and died of cancer in 1990.
I was temporarily away from Arizona at the time of the Bolles murder, but was and continue to be horrified that our politics in the Copper State have this incident in common with the worst dictatorships of Latin America.
This is how McCain’s fortune is tied to the notorious killing:
Jim Hensley returned from World War II as a hero, having been shot down several times while serving as a bombardier. He and his brother, who had both been associated with Marley before the war, returned to Marley’s employ. They were soon in trouble as Wikipedia mentions.
In 1948, both brothers were prosecuted by the federal government and convicted of multiple counts of falsifying liquor records in a conspiracy to conceal illegal distribution of whiskey against post-war rationing regulations. Jim Hensley received a six-month sentence (later upheld but suspended by an appeals court) while his brother received a year in federal prison, and both were fined.
Since the Hensleys never ratted out Marley, he rewarded them when they were released from prison. In addition to serving as front men for Marley and the Mafia in the illegal ownership of a New Mexico race track, Jim Hensley was set up in a beer distributorship with ties to Marley and other people of influence. It grew rapidly.
Enter another shot-down aviator from a later war: John McCain started an affair with Jim Hensley’s 25-year-old daughter, Cindy, and divorced his crippled wife. McCain then married the hoodlum’s daughter and now doesn’t know how many houses the couple owns -- courtesy of the fortune her father built under Marley’s patronage.
The real-life crime drama underscores the central lesson McCain has taken from life: People of wealth and influence can get away with virtually anything, and deserve all they can get.
(This three-part biography of McCain begins after his well-known war service, which we thank him for. The next chapter will deal with Duke Tully, the phony who created McCain’s political persona in his own image. It will conclude with McCain’s whoring for lobbyists, both during the Keating Five scandal and up to the present day.)