Elisabeth Bumiller in today’s NYT:

Gay rights leaders pointed soon afterward to comments Mr. McCain
made in 2006 on “Hardball” on MSNBC about his willingness to change the
policy if Pentagon leaders called for repeal. “The day that the
leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to
change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously
changing it,’ ” he said then.

To explain the apparent
discrepancy, Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said that
the senator thought Admiral Mullen was speaking personally, not on
behalf of the Joint Chiefs, and that once a Pentagon review was
complete, Mr. McCain would listen to military leaders as a whole.

Yep, the chairman of Joint Chiefs comes up to Capitol Hill to share his personal feelings.