McCain's State Department letter was dated Nov. 15, 1991. It briefly explains Fowler's situation and asks Assistant Secretary Elizabeth Tamposi of the Office of Consular Affairs to look into his case.

In 2005, The Star published an interview with James B. Fowler who admitted publicly for the first time that he shot Jimmie Lee Jackson, during a melee in February 1965 in the west Alabama town of Marion. Fowler insisted it was in self defense.

Jackson's death a few days after the shooting proved pivotal for organizers of the civil rights movement, leading indirectly to the Selma-to-Montgomery march and, many historians argue, the passage by Congress of the landmark Voting Rights Act in August 1965.

Fowler, whose trial was scheduled to start this month until a judge delayed it Monday, has a complex and varied background. He fought in the Vietnam War, he has said, to avenge his brother's death. He later worked with military prosecutors to expose a murder-for-hire plot in Southeast Asia. He raised a family in Thailand and in Alabama, and for about five years in the early 1990s, he was in a Thai prison cell after being arrested for heroin trafficking.

It was during this time that John McCain came into his life.

The letter from McCain to the State Department briefly explains Fowler's situation and asks Tamposi to look into his case.

"There are several requests I would like to make on behalf of Mr. Fowler within existing statutes and regulations," McCain writes.

McCain goes on to say that he would like to know the status of the case and the action taken by the State Department on his behalf, that he wanted officials to look into the circumstances surrounding Fowler's arrest and to take steps to see that his rights are protected and to look into the conditions in which he is imprisoned.

All told, I think this story may be a net gain for McCain.  After all he's down to little more than rallying the racists & crazies at this point.