McCain's national spokesman, Tucker Bounds, defended the decision to limit access. "For very sensible, logistical reasons we will be hosting several reporters from different mediums to review the records," he said, "and it will be an unprecedented amount of transparency into the good health of a presidential candidate."
The records will not include more than 1,000 pages of medical records that McCain released on a limited basis in 1999 during his first run for the White House.
Those documents included reports from McCain's exams at the Robert E. Mitchell Center for Prisoner of War Studies at the Naval Operational Medicine Institute in Pensacola, Fla. They showed that McCain still suffered some physical ailments from injuries received when he was shot down in North Vietnam and spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war. McCain has arthritis in his shoulders and right knee and has difficulty raising his arms above his head. The records did not show signs of psychological illness from that experience.
McCain's communications director, Jill Hazelbaker, said in an e-mail that the 1999 review, also restricted to a small group of reporters, had been "hailed as both serious and thorough."
"While we cannot satisfy all people all the time," she wrote, "we believe we are making Sen. McCain's medical history public in a thoughtful and substantive manner."
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maeve.reston@latimes.com
