Two Companies Put Up Cellular Towers at McCain Ranch

How's this for the governement corruption pretends to be against?

By LARRY ROHTER

Two of the nation’s largest telephone companies, Verizon and AT&T, have installed temporary communications towers at the Arizona ranch of Senator John McCain to provide cellular telephone coverage there, the two companies said Wednesday. But both said they did so for business reasons and not at the request of Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who is on the Senate Commerce Committee.

“The Secret Service is a customer of ours,” said Jeff Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon. “Our contract with them specifically says that when they need service for any reason related to accomplishing their mission, we must do it, at no charge, and provide 24/7 human expertise.”

The Web site of The Washington Post first reported Wednesday on the efforts to bring cellular service to the McCain ranch. It said those efforts began in early 2007 when Cindy McCain, the senator’s wife, asked Verizon to expand service to their residence in Sedona, which is in a sparsely populated valley.

“Mrs. McCain and her staff went through the public Web site as any member of the public would,” said Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign. “No strings were pulled, and there was no involvement of Senate staff.”

Verizon, however, declined that request, Mr. Nelson said, because “it didn’t make traditional business sense.” It was only after Mr. McCain wrapped up the presidential nomination and began receiving Secret Service protection in April that cellular service was installed, not in the ranch house itself, but at a trailer that was the work base for the Secret Service agents protecting Mr. McCain.

“This was meant as a temporary fix,” said Eric Zahren, a spokesman for the Secret Service. “We never spoke on anyone else’s behalf, only in our own interests. At no time were we involved in discussions about a permanent tower to be put up.”

In the case of AT&T, the circumstances were somewhat different because the company does not have a contract with the Secret Service. Claudia Jones, an AT&T spokeswoman, said that after it became clear that Mr. McCain would become the Republican nominee, the company “made a business decision” to install a temporary tower for only the duration of the campaign.

“We anticipated a surge in usage and traffic because of reporters and other visitors who are AT&T customers,” Ms. Jones said. “We sought to locate it in a number of other places, but not a lot of people want a temporary cell tower on their property. So we got permission from the McCain family to locate it on their property.”