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Related CoverageRead the entire Inside Washington feature from this week's magazine.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has said repeatedly on the campaign trail that he never requested, or received, an earmark in annual appropriations bills during his 22 years in the Senate. My friends, it's just not so.

In April 1989, McCain sent a letter [PDF] to then-Sen. James McClure, R-Idaho, asking the ranking Re-publican on the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee for a set-aside to help restore a 200-year-old Catholic mission near Tucson, Ariz. "I would like to ask your help in the vital effort to restore San Xavier del Bac, by earmarking $500,000 for that purpose in the FY 1990 appropriations bill," McCain wrote in the signed letter, which is in McClure's archived papers at the University of Idaho.

Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said that the mission is a National Historic Landmark and that Congress authorizes preservation funds for landmarks. McCain opposes unauthorized appropriations earmarks, Rogers said. "It does not meet the definition of an earmark," he added. As for the language of the letter, Rogers said it was written by staffers back in 1989. "The verbiage is not something that Senator McCain would have chosen," he said.