Explicit E-Mails, Foley Quits
Associated Press
Sep, 30, 2006

WASHINGTON -- In a scandal guaranteed to anger parents, a prominent House Republican has resigned after the revelation that he exchanged raunchy electronic messages with a teenage boy, a former congressional page.

Rep. Mark Foley, R-Florida, who is single, apologized Friday for letting down his family and constituents. Once his resignation letter was read to the House late Friday afternoon, Republicans spent the night trying to explain -- six weeks before congressional elections -- how this could have happened on their watch.

Near midnight, they engineered a vote to let the House ethics committee decide whether an investigation is needed.

Among the Republican explanations during the night:

The congressional sponsor of the page, Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-Louisiana, said he was asked by the youth's parents not to pursue the matter, so he dropped it. 
Alexander said that before deciding to end his involvement, he passed on what he knew to the chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-New York, Reynolds' spokesman, Carl Forti, said "We are not characterizing conversations that Congressman Reynolds may have had or may not have had with other members of Congress on that subject." 
Rep. John Shimkus, R-Illinois, chairman of the Page Board that oversees the congressional work-study program for high schoolers, said he did investigate but Foley falsely assured him he was only mentoring the boy. Pages are high school students who attend classes under congressional supervision and work as messengers. 
The spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert, Ron Bonjean, said the top House Republican had not known about the allegations. Shimkus said he learned about them in late 2005.
Just as Shimkus' explanation was released, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California proposed to the House that its ethics committee investigate and make a preliminary report in 10 days. She demanded to know who knew of the messages, whether Foley had other contacts with pages and when the Republican leadership was notified of Foley's conduct.

Instead, majority Republicans engineered a vote to allow the ethics panel to decide whether there should even be an investigation.

Foley's departure sent Republicans scrambling for a replacement candidate. Foley, 52, had been a shoo-in for a new term until the e-mail correspondence surfaced in recent days. The page was 16 at the time of the correspondence.

Foley's resignation further complicates the political landscape for Republicans, who are fighting to retain control of Congress. Democrats need to win a net of 15 Republican seats to regain the power they lost in 1994.

Florida Republicans planned to meet as soon as Monday to name a replacement in Foley's district, which President Bush won with 55 percent in 2004 and is now in play for November. Though Florida ballots have already been printed with Foley's name and cannot be changed, any votes for Foley will count toward the party's choice.

Hastert said Friday he had asked Shimkus to investigate the page system. "We want to make sure that all our pages are safe and the page system is safe," Hastert said.

ABC News reported Friday that Foley also engaged in a series of sexually explicit instant messages with current and former pages, all male. In one message, ABC said, Foley wrote to one page, "Do I make you a little horny?"

In another message, Foley wrote, "You in your boxers, too? ... Well, strip down and get relaxed."

Foley, as chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, had introduced legislation in July to protect children from exploitation by adults over the Internet. He also sponsored other legislation designed to protect minors from abuse and neglect.

"We track library books better than we do sexual predators," Foley has said.

Foley, who represented an area around Palm Beach County, e-mailed the page in August 2005. Foley asked him how he was doing after Hurricane Katrina and what he wanted for his birthday. The congressman also asked the boy to send a photo of himself, according to excerpts of the e-mails that were originally released by ABC News.

The e-mails were posted Friday on the website of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington after ABC News reported their existence.

Naomi Seligman, a spokeswoman for CREW, said the group also sent a letter to the FBI after it received the e-mails. CREW did not post their copies of the e-mail until ABC News reported them, instead waiting for the investigation.

"The House of Representatives has an obligation to protect the teenagers who come to Congress to learn about the legislative process," the group wrote.

According to the CREW posting, the boy e-mailed a colleague in Alexander's office about Foley's e-mails, saying, "This freaked me out." On the request for a photo, the boy repeated the word "sick" 13 times.

He said Foley asked for his e-mail when the boy gave him a thank-you card. The boy also said Foley wrote that he had e-mailed another page.

"He's such a nice guy," Foley wrote about the other boy, "acts much older than his age...and hes in really great shape...i am just finished riding my bike on a 25 mile journey now heading to the gym...whats school like for you this year?"

In other e-mails, Foley wrote: "I am back in Florida now...its nice here...been raining today...it sounds like you will have some fun over the next few weeks...how old are you now?" and "how are you weathering the hurricane...are you safe...send me an email pic of you as well."

***

Time ignores other scandal in Foley conflagration
MediaMatters.org
Saturday September 30, 2006

Summary: A Time article on the resignation of former Rep. Mark Foley reported Republican concerns about losing Foley's seat in the November elections, but the article failed to address the ethical questions that surround the House Republican leadership's handling of Foley's alleged actions.

A September 30 article by Time reporter Tim Padgett on the resignation of former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) left out key facts that give the scandal national relevance. Absent from Padgett's article is any mention of the disclosure, reported by The Washington Post and Roll Call, among other outlets, that the House Republican leadership has known for months about emails reportedly sent by Foley to a 16-year-old-male congressional page. 

Padgett reported that Foley quit the day after ABC News broke the news that Foley allegedly sent the page emails that were, in Time's words at the top of the article, "possibly inappropriate." ABC News reported after its initial story on September 28 that there were emails and instant messages, some of which it posted on its weblog several hours before Padgett's article went up. Padgett suggested that the reason Foley resigned so quickly might not have been because "there might be similar e-mail or instant messages lying in the hard drives of other teens in the capital," but because the communications expose Foley as gay, rumors of which he had "frequently worked to squelch." But the content of the emails and instant messages itself suggests yet a third possible reason for Foley's resignation, which Padgett apparently dismisses as insufficient -- their content indicates that a member of Congress in his early 50s was reportedly engaging in sexually explicit communications with one or more underage charges of the House of Representatives. Foley reportedly sent sexually explicit communications to one or more minors, but Padgett is apparently taking the position that the reason Foley resigned is "just as likely" to be that he has been exposed as gay.

While Padgett reported Republican concerns about losing Foley's seat in what was considered a safe Republican district, he completely ignored reports that the House Republican leadership apparently engaged in a months-long cover-up of Foley's alleged actions. According to Roll Call: 

At least four Republican House Members, one senior GOP aide and a former top officer of the House were aware of the allegations about Foley that prompted the initial reporting regarding his e-mail contacts with a 16-year-old House page. They include: Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) and Reps. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.), as well as a senior aide to Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and former Clerk of the House Jeff Trandahl.

Boehner strongly denied media reports late Friday night that he had informed Hastert of the allegations, saying "That is not true."

Reynolds refused to comment.

Shimkus, who chairs the page board, and Trandahl, who administered the program, met with Foley in 2005 after learning of Foley's e-mail exchange with the former page by Alexander. Shimkus released a detailed statement Friday night.

House sources said that Foley denied any improper sexual activity when confronted by Shimkus and Trandahl. Their information only included some August 2005 e-mails that contained no references to sex or other improper behavior, and not the other messages that have been reported by ABC News.

According to a senior House GOP leadership aide, Hastert's office was informed of the interview shortly after it occurred, but Hastert himself was not told. 

While Roll Call has Boehner flatly denying that he had informed Hastert of the matter, according to the Post, Boehner has given conflicting statements about whether he talked with Hastert, as Joshua Micah Marshall of the blog Talking Points Memo noted. The Post reported that Boehner initially said that he informed Hastert of the matter when he learned of it in the spring, but then Boehner "later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert." So Roll Call and the Post have reported Boehner apparently saying three different things: he talked to Hastert, he can't remember whether he talked to Hastert, and he did not talk to Hastert. Time makes no mention of the issue of whether the speaker of the House was informed of Foley's alleged conduct.

Yes, the potential loss of Foley's seat to a Democrat could bear on whether the GOP loses its majority in the House in November. But beyond the scandal's implications for Foley's seat is the significance of the action or inaction of the current House leadership. Padgett's article simply ignored this issue.

— M.K.

***

Rep.: Hastert told of Foley months ago
By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer
9-30-6

Rep. Thomas Reynolds, head of the House Republican election effort, said he told Speaker Dennis Hastert after learning a fellow GOP lawmaker sent inappropriate messages to a teenage boy.

Reynolds, R-N.Y., was told months ago about e-mails sent by Rep. Mark Foley and is now defending himself from Democratic accusations that he did too little. Foley, R-Fla., resigned Friday after ABC News questioned him about the e-mails to a former congressional page and about sexually suggestive instant messages to other pages.

The boy who received the e-mails was 16 in summer 2005 when he worked in Congress as a page. After the boy returned to his Louisiana home, the congressman e-mailed him, and the teenager thought the messages were inappropriate, particularly one in which Foley asked the teen to send a picture of himself.

The teen's family contacted their congressman, Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who then discussed it with Reynolds sometime this spring.

"Rodney Alexander brought to my attention the existence of e-mails between Mark Foley and a former page of Mr. Alexander's," Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a written statement Saturday.

"Despite the fact that I had not seen the e-mails in question, and Mr. Alexander told me that the parents didn't want the matter pursued, I told the speaker of the conversation Mr. Alexander had with me," Reynolds said.

Reynolds added that Alexander also discussed it with the clerk of the House, and the congressman who oversees the page program, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill.

Shimkus has said he learned about the e-mail exchange in late 2005 and took immediate action to investigate.

Shimkus said Foley told him it was an innocent exchange. Shimkus said he warned Foley not to have any more contact with the teenager and to respect other pages.

Democrats charged Reynolds did far too little and said more digging should be done.

"Congressman Reynolds' inaction in the face of such a serious situation is very troubling, and raises important questions about whether there was an attempt to cover up criminal activity involving a minor to keep it from coming to light before election day," said Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Karen Finney.

New York Democrats hoping to unseat Reynolds blasted the congressman, saying they call into question the Republican's values.

"Mr. Reynolds knew about these allegedly inappropriate emails from a fellow congressman to a minor for months and didn't lift a finger," said Blake Zeff, a spokesman for the state Democrats.
___
NRCC: http://www.nrcc.org/

***

GOP Leaders Knew of Foley E-Mail in '05
Oct 1, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) - GOP leaders admit their offices have known for months that a Florida Republican congressman was sending inappropriate e-mails to a boy who had worked as a page in the House of Representatives.

The office of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who earlier said he'd learned about the e-mails only last week, acknowledged that aides referred the matter to the authorities last fall. They said they were only told the messages were "over-friendly."

Rep. Thomas Reynolds, who heads the House Republican election effort, said Saturday he told Hastert months ago about concerns that a fellow Republican lawmaker, Rep. Mark Foley, had sent inappropriate messages to a teenage boy.

Reynolds, a Republican from New York, is defending himself from Democrats who say he did too little to protect the boy.

Foley quit Congress on Friday after ABC News questioned him about the e-mails to a former congressional page and about sexually suggestive instant messages to other pages.

"The improper communications between Congressman Mark Foley and former House Congressional pages is unacceptable and abhorrent. It is an obscene breach of trust," Hastert, R-Ill., Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said Saturday in a written statement.

The Republican leaders said it is their duty to ensure House pages are safe. They said they are creating a toll-free hot line for pages and their families to call to confidentially report any incidents, and will consider adopting new rules on communications between lawmakers and pages.

The boy who received the e-mails was 16 in the summer of 2005 when he worked in Congress as a page. After the boy returned to his Louisiana home, the congressman e-mailed him. The teenager thought the messages were inappropriate, particularly one in which Foley asked the teen to send a picture of himself. 

***

Independent Investigation Needed: Did Congressional Republicans Cover Up Page Abuse Scandal?
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Sat, 09/30/2006
by Brent Budowsky 

How can one explain that a senior Republican Congressman is only now forced to resign over a major scandal involving apparent sexual overtures to pages that were reported to Republican Congressional Leaders almost a year ago?

When a second Republican Congressman found out about these acts long ago, did he only report it to the Republican in charge of electing Republicans to Congress? He should have immediately gone right to the Speaker, but apparently he did not, it appears he wasmore interested in alerting the partisan Republican Campaign Committee?

Exactly who did he report this dangerous situation to?

There was significant provable documentation of the acts in question long ago, including e-mails and instant messaging. Could it be true that Congressional Republican leaders did not immediately seek them?

For Republican leaders so hell bent on eavesdropping and invasions of privacy, it would be derelict if they did not seek this provable evidence eleven months ago, and equally derelict if they sought it, had it, but did nothing for almost a year. Surely they dont believe that the legitimate seeking of emails and IM to protect young pages is less important than the eavesdropping they otherwise champion so aggressively?

Either they did nothing, in which case the safety and security of young Congressional pages was endangered by extreme neglect, or they did, in which case they covered up some very wrong and dangerous conduct.

These acts were committed, incredibly, by the Congressman in charge of the group with the responsiblity of protecting children against abuse. Why was he not removed, immediately, ten or eleven months ago, with a public acknowledgement of the acts and a public statement of commitment by the group he led to protect our children from abuse?

Were the emails and IM's immediately read, or not, eleven months ago?

Exactly which Republican leaders were aware of this and exactly what did they do eleven months ago, ten months ago, nine months ago?

Was there at least a serious investigation about whether any other pages were approached by Congressman Foley, eleven months ago?

Was there a serious investigation about whether new protections are needed for all pages, from potentially dangerous abuse, eleven months ago?

What is urgently needed is some form of investigation, special counsel, outside advisor or some appropriate way to investigate what actually happened, and immediately and without any delay report back to the public and the full Congress about measures that should have been taken, and will be taken now, to protect the pages.

We do not need another case where we find out long after the fact that our entire intelligence community believes the Iraq war creates more terrorists.

We do not need another case where a Senate Intelligence Committee report is covered up until after the election, about false statements made by high level officials, misleading the public and Congress about Iraq intelligence.

We do not need a sham investigation by a political committee in a one party Congress desperately trying to maintain control and therefore highly unlikely to seek and report the truth.

The safety and security of the Congressional pages is paramount to all other considerations.

The protection of the Congressional pages from abuse by Congressmen must be first, second, and third order of importance and the partisan and political convenience of politicians seeking to protect their power must not endanger even one of these good young men and women who serve as pages.

We must get the truth.

We must protect the pages.

We must enforce the law.

We must punish the wrongdoers.

We must have an independent investigation beyond partisan influence and we must have it now, immediately, until we are 100% certain that not one page is endangered by one Congressman.