McCain in Good Health, Records Say

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Medical records of presidential candidate John McCain conclude he suffered no psychological wounds from his 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Hundreds of documents were released Saturday to the Associated Press to counter what McCain aides call a “whisper campaign” engineered by Republican rivals challenging his mental fitness.

“He had a very healthy way of dealing with his experiences,” Dr. Michael Ambrose, director of the Robert E. Mitchell Center for Prisoner of War Studies, said in a telephone interview. The center routinely examines POWs. McCain took a battery of physical and mental tests at the center over a 20-year period after his 1973 release.

“There was never any mental illness,” Ambrose said.

McCain, a senator from Arizona, suffered a dangerous skin cancer six years ago but was declared cured, according to the records that pronounce him in “good physical and mental health.”

A cancerous mole removed from his shoulder in December 1993 was small and had not invaded deep into his skin or spread. The records show no sign of recurrence.

Severe wounds suffered while he was imprisoned in Vietnam left McCain with degenerative arthritis in his shoulders and right knee that may someday require joint replacement, his physicians said. Otherwise, “I found you to be in excellent health,” wrote McCain’s personal physician, John Eckstein, who has conducted annual exams for McCain since 1992.

The campaign plans to release the records Monday, with small sections of his psychological reports withheld from the public because they were deemed personal and irrelevant to McCain’s physical or mental health.

The withheld material, made available to the AP, summarizes McCain’s concerns about his family, as well as a worry that imprisonment cost him 5 1/2 years of his life and his need to catch up. There is no material that would raise questions about his mental fitness in the withheld sections.