Washington, Mar 3: A high-powered Washington lobbyist has denied having any affair with Senator John McCain, as was reported by The New York Times a year ago during the US presidential campaign.

McCain was the frontrunner in the Republican presidential contest when the NYT ran the story, CBS News reported.

In an exclusive interview on Monday, Vicki Iseman, asked point-blank by co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez if she’d had the affair, replied, “No, I did not.”

Later, she emphasized, “Any assertions that there was anything inappropriate, ethically or professionally or personally are just not true.”

The NYT story claimed that, back in 1999, while McCain was running for the presidency, some of his top advisers were “convinced that his relationship with Iseman had become romantic.”

If that were true it would have been a conflict of interest for McCain, then the chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, since Iseman’s clients often had business before the panel, the Times said.

The McCain campaign called the Times story a “hit-and-run smear campaign,” and took to the airwaves to slam their reporting.

“It was inappropriate and unprofessional behavior by the New York Times,” campaign CEO Rick Davis said in late February 2008.

Last December, Iseman filed 27 million dollars defamation lawsuit against the newspaper for suggesting she and McCain had been romantically involved.

Now, Iseman has dropped the lawsuit and settled with the Times. (ANI)