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Posted on Sat, Sep. 30, 2006
Republican leaders distance themselves from Foley scandal
By Christi Parsons
Chicago Tribune
(MCT)

WASHINGTON - Republican leaders in Congress, including Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois, scrambled Saturday to distance themselves from a Florida congressman's sex scandal as they disavowed responsibility for investigating the matter when it came to light months ago.

Aides to the speaker say he was not aware until last week of inappropriate behavior by Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., who resigned on Friday after portions of racy e-mail exchanges between him and current and former underage congressional pages became public. But the aides conceded that they could not be conclusive on the timing.

In the chaotic hours after news of the scandal broke, GOP leaders offered confusing versions of events about how much they knew, and when. One top House Republican said he relayed to Hastert his sketchy understanding of the situation months ago, and another said he "cannot say with certainty" whether he passed along the information or not.

Meanwhile, an aide to Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. - chairman of the board that oversees the page program - said Shimkus confronted Foley last year after learning of one e-mail message he sent to a former page. Shimkus declined to investigate when Foley assured him there was nothing to it, the aide said, and Shimkus declined comment Saturday, relying instead on his spokesman.

While House Republicans attempted to avoid blame, Democrats raised questions about why there wasn't an official investigation after the first internal reports of impropriety.

"A 16-year-old kid was entrusted by his parents to the U.S. House of Representatives, and Congress has a responsibility," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "The most important questions are, `What did the Republican leadership know, when did they know it and, if they knew something, why didn't they do anything to protect the child?'"

Foley's resignation brings a new volatility to this fall's midterm campaigns, in which Republicans are trying to fight off a Democratic insurgency to reclaim the House majority after 12 years of GOP rule. Democrats need to pick up 15 seats to take control of the chamber, and Foley's heavily Republican district is now a surprise new opportunity for Democrats.

Party officials get to name a replacement candidate for Foley's seat, but the ballots have already been printed with his name on them, and any votes cast for Foley will go to his stand-in.

Sure to get high-volume coverage on cable television, the latest revelations could affect the party's appeal to its socially conservative base. Members of Congress left town last week with little to show on hot-button issues like immigration, and Congress' ratings as an institution have sunk to levels not seen since 1994 when the GOP swamped Democrats to take control of the House.

The Foley story began to unfold on Friday when ABC News reported that the congressman had exchanged explicit electronic messages with current and former male pages. Many of the messages were sexually suggestive, with Foley reportedly asking one former page what he was wearing and then urging him to take off his clothing.

But when the first reports of inappropriate electronic messages began to percolate in Republican leadership offices last year, they centered on a milder e-mail message to an underage former page from Louisiana, Republican congressional aides say. In an e-mail to the 16-year-old, Foley asked him how he was doing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and asked what he wanted for his birthday.

He also asked the boy to send a photo of himself, according to e-mail excerpts now widely available on the Internet. When Shimkus got news of that, he confronted Foley, according to Shimkus spokesman Steve Tomaszewski.

"Foley said he was trying to be a mentor," said Tomaszewski. "The congressman (Shimkus) said, `For everybody's well-being, you need to stop any contact with this former page.'"

Shimkus did not know about the more explicit messages and didn't take further action, Tomaszewski said.

"Obviously, there was more to this," he said. "Foley basically lied to him."

Hastert's office also declined requests for an interview with the speaker, but in a two-page narrative it offered an account of what happened. According to the narrative, a staff assistant in Hastert's office got a telephone call in the fall of 2005 from the chief of staff for Rep. Rodney Alexander, a Lousiana Republican, saying he had an e-mail exchange between Foley and a former House page that had aroused concern.

Hastert's deputy chief of staff, Mike Stokke, then called a meeting between Alexander's chief of staff and the Clerk of the House.

At that meeting, the clerk asked to see the text of the e-mail, but Alexander's office declined to release it, saying the family wanted to maintain privacy, according to the Hastert staff report.

When the clerk asked if the e-mail exchange was "of a sexual nature," the report goes on, he was assured it was not. Rather, Alexander's office characterized the e-mail exchange as "over-friendly."

Stokke and the other staff members did not discuss the matter with others in the speaker's office, the report says, because they believed they had reported the matter to the "proper authorities." They were also attempting to be mindful of the "parents' wishes to protect their child's privacy."

The Hastert report did not dispute a statement issued Saturday by Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., who said Alexander had also told him about e-mails between Foley and the page. Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said he then told the speaker of that conversation.

The report said the speaker "does not explicitly recall this conversation," but that "he has no reason to dispute Congressman Reynolds' recollection that he reported to him on the problem and its resolution."

Still, Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean said the speaker did not know about Foley's electronic mail messages until last week.

Also on Saturday, the office of House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Boehner isn't sure if he talked to anyone in the Republican leadership about his own brief conversation with Alexander. The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Boehner said he told the speaker, but a Boehner spokesman said later that was not correct.

Late in the day, Hastert and Boehner issued a joint statement, along with House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Ohio, condemning Foley's behavior and pledging to "create a safe environment" for House pages in the future. One step will be to set up a toll-free number for pages, family members and staff to report "incidents of concern."

Foley's behavior was "an obscene breach of trust," the statement said. "His immediate resignation must now be followed by the full weight of the criminal justice system."

Officially, the matter is now in the hands of a House ethics panel charged with deciding whether there should be an investigation. But the lurid details are already being heavily parsed on television and the Internet.

In one message reported by ABC, Foley reportedly inquired of one page, "Do I make you a little horny?" In another message, he asked a page if he were wearing boxers and then urged him to "strip down and get relaxed."

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/15649897.htm?template=contentModules/prints...