ASHINGTON - Republican John McCain said yesterday that he hopes the release of medical records that pronounced him in ''good physical and mental health'' will allay concerns about his fitness for the presidency.
The Arizona senator said he had planned to release his health history long before questions were raised about whether he had the appropriate temperament for the White House.
''It may have the effect of allaying any concerns that people might have,'' he said on NBC's ''Meet the Press.''
Hundreds of pages of McCain's medical records were made available Saturday in part to counter what aides call a ''whisper campaign'' engineered by Republican rivals challenging his mental fitness.
Asked what the ''whisper campaign'' was, McCain said: ''I don't know, and I hope it goes away. ... I think the thing is that we need to move forward, and I hope that this will at least have that beneficial effect.''
Current and contemporaneous notes by medical personnel conclude that 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam left McCain with no psychological wounds.
As for releasing the material, McCain said, ''I thought it was just something that presidential candidates do.''
One GOP rival, publisher Steve Forbes, said on ABC's ''This Week'' that he will release his medical records next month.
McCain's campaign planned to release more than 1,000 pages of medical history today. He described the material as ''an orthopedic surgeon's nightmare or dream, depending on how you view it.''
Small sections of McCain's psychological reports will be withheld from the public because they were deemed personal and irrelevant to McCain's physical or mental health.
The redacted material, made available to the Associated Press, summarizes McCain's concerns about his family, as well as a worry that imprisonment cost him 5 1/2 years of his life and his need to catch up. None of the material raises questions about his physical or mental fitness.
