From Medical Correspondent Eileen O'Connor

December 5, 1999
Web posted at: 12:56 a.m. EST (0556 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Besides successful treatment for skin cancer and some arthritis, the medical records of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain support his personal physician's statement that he is in excellent health.

Along with Dr. Eliot Sorel, an independent psychiatric expert, CNN reviewed more than 40 years of McCain's physical and psychological evaluations. Sorel is a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University Hospital.

While he says he is not able to give a full evaluation based on the documents alone, Sorel finds the former Vietnam prisoner of war fit to serve.

The records were released to dispel what McCain's supporters have called a "whispering campaign" by opponents on Capitol Hill suggesting that McCain's rumored temper reflected emotional instability brought on by his years as a POW.

McCain has called it something else. "I do feel passionately about issues. I do feel passionately about right and wrong," he said.

Doctors noted that while imprisoned, McCain "learned to control his temper better, to not become angry over insignificant things; not to go to the mat over some minor provocation," the records said.

"It seems that the senator had been able to rely on his excellent defensive mechanism as well as use of fantasy and creating a psychological order in his mind to withstand the torture and the stress of captivity," Sorel said.

According to the records, McCain has said that immediately after his release from military prison in Hanoi there were "times when very realistic or frightening memories" came back to him. But McCain "can successfully put these memories out of his mind," the medical records said.

There is "nothing in the records to tell or to say that if he does have a temper that that has interfered with his good judgment or in making decisions," Sorel said.

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