But the hecklers were already in place. Even with Sampley absent, they performed as scheduled. When Bush began his talk, Sampley’s people drowned him out, yelling, and “No more lies!” Bush asked the protestors to please let him finish. They yelled even louder. The exchange continued until Bush lost Ws cool and shouted, “Shut up and sit down!”

The quote made national headlines. It was a triumphant moment for the activists, who used the episode to trumpet their claim that Bush had nothing but disrespect for the families. Sampley jumped to claim credit, threatening more such outbursts if the president did not order the immediate release of all government documents pertaining to MIAs.

But if Sampley and his followers were pleased by the exchange, the National League of Families was highly embarrassed, and also very uneasy. The group’s leaders were afraid that Bush would blame the entire organization for the disruption and that the episode might damage their relations with the government. The League took out newspaper ads apologizing to Bush.

While activists and family members were still abuzz over the confrontation, Sampley was already deep into his next project. It was his most scurrilous 2 to date, a sustained campaign to label Senator John McCain an undercover agent of the KGB.

Sampley, who years earlier had defended Bobby Garwood’s actions as motivated by the need to survive, now accused McCain of being a weak-minded coward who had escaped death by collaborating with the enemy. Sampley claimed that McCain had first been compromised by the Vietnamese, then recruited by the Soviets.

To those who know McCain and are familiar with his behavior in captivity, the charge is ludicrous. McCain resisted his captors to such a degree that he was isolated in a special prison for troublemakers. He repeatedly refused special favors, including early release, and emerged as a spiritual and religious leader for other prisoners. Nonetheless, Sampley was persistent enough in his claims that the press in McCain’s home state of Arizona picked up on the KGB story.

Sampley’s antagonism toward McCain stems from the senator’s failure to live up to Sampley’s idea of how a former POW should embrace the MIA cause. In Sampley’s estimation, McCain’s personal experience should have caused him to champion the search for live POWs, the way it had Red McDaniel. Instead, McCain focused on the more neutral search for “truth,” as well as on the prosecution of charlatans who took money from MIA families.

When McCain took the position that the United States should establish diplomatic relations with Vietnam in return for cooperation on the MIA issue, Sampley was outraged. He believed the United States should not have any dealings with its former enemy. Anyone who said otherwise — specifically, John McCain — was a traitor.

Sampley launched a private war 3 on McCain. He searched into the senator’s background, digging up old school records, military reports, and the like. Among his finds was an obscure clipping from a Cuban newspaper dated 1970. The article contained high- lights of a Cuban psychiatrist’s interview with POW McCain.

The interview itself contains nothing startling. The young McCain boasts of his ability as a pilot, gives a message for his wife that he loves her and that she shouldn’t worry about him, and talks about his father and grandfather, both Navy admirals. He says he had hoped to become both a test pilot and an astronaut.

Several times during the interview, the interpreter has trouble translating from English. McCain, who had been to the Spanish naval academy, supplies the words in Spanish.

Two decades after the fact, Sampley seized on McCain’s use of Spanish as evidence that McCain had collaborated with the Cuban Communists. Sampley even called me at one point to promote his discovery as a news story. When I said there was no case, Sampley just laughed and changed the subject.

Sampley continued his research 4 and eventually unearthed a 1973 interview in U.S. News & World Report in which McCain recounts his capture in Vietnam. In that article, McCain talks of landing in the middle of a lake and of being bludgeoned and bayoneted by an angry mob (the story was well known by the time Sampley found the article; perhaps it was the inspiration for his Wetzel and Tucker stories). McCain also talks about being beaten, tortured, and on the verge of death before finally agreeing to talk to his captors.