Alan Maimon of the Las Vegas Review-Journal documents several instances where John McCain has behaved abusively toward people, especially in Arizona. In particular, he found evidence that McCain had lied when he denied threatening to get a federal employee fired if he did not bend to McCain's will. Such threats are illegal.

Here's the relevant part of the article, which ought to be read in full. It relates to one of McCain's pet projects, the Mount Graham International Observatory in Arizona, whose construction was delayed because it encroached on land sacred to Native Americans and also threatened an endangered species. In the late 1980s McCain began pushing around those he blamed for obstructing the project and asked the GAO to investigate the delays. Then he began abusing GAO employees according to former GAO manager Joe Gibbons, who in an interview with the Review-Journal described McCain as "going bananas".

Frustrated that a massive telescope project he backed had hit a snag in 1989, Sen. John McCain lashed out at a U.S. Forest Service supervisor, threatening his job if he failed to help get approval for the project.

McCain over the years denied making the menacing comment, but newly surfaced government documents indicate that his anger boiled over to the point where he did.

[...]

At one point, he targeted Jim Abbott, a U.S. Forest Service supervisor he blamed for slowing progress on the observatory.

McCain was alleged at the time to have told Abbott that he would be "the shortest-tenured forest supervisor in the history of the Forest Service" if he didn't help the project move forward.

Federal law prohibits threats that obstruct or impede the work of federal employees.

McCain, when confronted with the allegation in the early 1990s, adamantly denied threatening Abbott and railed against anyone who accused him of misconduct. Abbott later backed McCain's story.

But Gibbons and other GAO investigators charged with examining the scientific fights over the project also reached conclusions about related personal clashes.

An internal GAO memo from 1990 obtained by the Review-Journal refers to McCain's "admitted threat" to the forest supervisor. The memo was designed to remain between the GAO and McCain's office. Its contents have never been made public before.

"I wouldn't have written that without something material in my hands," former assistant GAO director Bob Robinson said when asked about the document he authored.

In 1992 the toothless Senate Ethics Committee ruled that McCain committed "no impropriety" in regard to the observatory project. But this newly revealed document shows that he did threaten a federal official, and then lied about it.

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