Top House Republicans knew for months about e-mail traffic between Representative Mark Foley and a former teenage page, but kept the matter secret and allowed Mr. Foley to remain head of a Congressional caucus on children’s issues, Republican lawmakers said Saturday.
The exchanges began with what Republicans now describe as an ”œoverfriendly” e-mail message from Mr. Foley to the unidentified teenager.
Overfriendly? That’s like a cigar is to Lewinsky. Please. Bottom line however, this is a real cover-up now. Who knew what when are the operative questions.
somehow I assume that Finnish press won’t write a word about Foley.
– Happy fishing in ocean of noise!
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was notified early this year of inappropriate e-mails from former representative Mark Foley (R-Fla.) to a 16-year-old page, a top GOP House member said yesterday — contradicting the speaker’s assertions that he learned of concerns about Foley only last week.
Here.
“Round and round, round we go.” – Tupac
It would be ironic if he got punished by those same “children protection” laws he helped push forward.
And again based on a lay opinion, he would have been immunized from prosecution for that except he himself was behind the the Adam Walsh Child Safety and Protection Act of 2006 that raised the age to 18 for Internet-related offenses.
There’s one little detail that got very scant mention. If true, it could very easily induce stomach cramps in anyone who helped shield or conceal Foley’s activities and explain the pell-mell horrified rush in the GOP leadership.
I’ll just quote the Adam Walsh entry from Wiki.
The bill institutes a national database of convicted child molesters, increases penalties for sexual and violent offenses against children, and creates a RICO cause of action for child predators and those who conspire with them.
link (last sentence)
Now, in all fairness, I think the GOP’s leadership had merely political motives for concealing and sheltering a pedophile.
I reckon it’s unlikely they sheltered him because they were following the known MO of modern child predators – networking to assist each other to achieve positions in contact with children, and covering for each other. Personally, I think it’s unlikely that Foley is the tip of a GOP leadership child predator ring.
But unfortunately, as that’s part of the MO of modern pedophiles, one would be irresponsible not to at least investigate the possibility. And the RICO statute is a pretty serious tool.
Personally, I think the GOP should in fairness be given an opportunity in court to clear themselves of suspicion that top members of the GOP leadership sheltered him from exposure because they themselves are pedophiles.
They can do that most effectively, of course, by pleading their sheltering was only politically motivated.
was to protect themselves from scandal.
But someone else has a different speculation.
(October 01, 2006 — 07:44 AM EDT)
link
link
Then it seems to me that whomever did the blackmailing facilitated his actions. Once you are blackmailed what is the motive for you to stop doing the things you’re already being blackmailed for? You may as well get as much out of it as possible and have fun, it cannot get any worse. If you are not blackmailed you may worry that by repeating your illegal actions you may eventually get caught (so there is a motive for stopping them or seek help to help you stop them).
Here’s a great quote from the 2003 IRS Complaint Filed Against Majority Leader DeLay and his Charitable Foundation:
Link to Common Dreams article
link to dKos comment
So obliging, Tom is. I wonder who set the fox to guard the “Missing and Exploited Children” chicken coop?
it’s odd that every time the news channels talk about this they go on and on about what a great guy he was, his past, and his work, painting a rosey image of a child molestor.
If this had been some guy on dateline people would be trashing him left and right. Or better yet if it was john mark carr…….remember how they made him out to be sinister and evil just from his photos?
Not that foley killed anybody, but then again neither did carr.
Pages warned years ago, but maybe only REPUBLICAN pages. Leadership did nothing:
Several Democratic pages tell ABC News they received no such warnings about Foley.
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) — Former Rep. Mark Foley is in an alcoholism treatment center three days after resigning from Congress amid allegations that he sent inappropriate messages to teenage pages.
A letter containing the information was faxed by Foley to WPBF-TV in West Palm Beach, said David Roth, Foley’s attorney, on Monday.
“Painfully, the events that led to my resignation have crystallized recognition of my longstanding significant alcohol and emotional difficulties,” Foley wrote. “I strongly believe that I am an alcoholic and have accepted the need for immediate treatment for alcoholism and related behavioral problems.”
Foley said he deeply regrets and accepts “full responsibility for the harm that I have caused.”
He said in the letter that “with the loving support of my family and friends,” he made arrangements on Saturday to enter “a renowned in-patient facility to address my disease and related issues.”
Then he’ll run for President and “youthful indiscretions” will be re-spun by the machine as always having had a dual meaning.
(No, I’m not serious; he’s definitely gone to the place from which there’s no coming back.)
Socially quite acceptable, given that we have an alcoholic Prez. Nice job.
Snow on Foley Scandal: ‘Simply Naughty Emails’ »
This morning on CNN, Soledad O’Brien asked Tony Snow why “any communication between a 16-year-old and a congressman†didn’t “raise red flags — major, massive red flags†with Speaker Dennis Hastert and others who have known about the communications for months.
Snow responded, “I hate to tell you, but it’s not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill. And there have been other scandals, as you know, that have been more than simply naughty e-mails.â€
more
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/02/naughty-emails/
Snow on Foley Coverup: Even If Congressional Leaders Knew, White House Won’t Call For Resignations »
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/02/snow-on-foley/
Why is the WH getting involved in this?
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg
what does being a boozer have to do with being a pedo?
but will keep him incommunicado for at least 36 days.
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg
that they think it’s too risky to say nothing; they thought it wiser to attempt to use the “bully pulpit” as a fire extinguisher.
His tactic is to allude to past Dem sex scandals and play it as “Dems are worse”. Myself, I would have recommended tongs – I think it’s an incalculably huge mistake getting involved with this one. Something that has got little attention at all is that the person who leaked this story on dKos does not have the nick “CongressPage” or “CHPage” but “WHInternNow” – and specifically said this in their initial (September 5) post on dKos;
(emphasis mine, and note this is long before the story first broke – ES)
Me, I would be firewalling myself from that hard and fast in advance rather than acting in any way that would make me seem like an apologist for it. They’d better hope nothing turns up that happened right under their noses.
Now that all the kids have their sticks in their hands, it’s really a bad idea to remove the pinata.
but none of them are reacting rationally. Thats what happens ater 8 years of scripting.
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg
playing defense. They have Maginot Line mentalities; the only defense they do well is prepared defense. Give them no time to prepare a defense and they cut their own – and each others’ – throats.
pass the salt please
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg
Holding fire and looking disorganized and unthreatening right up ’til the last minute in order to avoid triggering the “ad hominem” machine. Let it run with no targets. Then hit with a flurry of blows in the last five weeks and throw them off their prepared script – which we all know would bode very poorly for the Dems.
Can you imagine Karl Rove’s rage right now? This Karl Rove?:
Ron Susskind, Esquire, January 2003.
Just in case anyone was feeling any compassion at all.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/10/emails_show_fol.html
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg
he could drink because he’s funky in these other ways.
Wear sunscreen
covered
the popcorn made me thirsty lol
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg
Hastert Holds Meeting On Foley Scandal, Democratic Member of Page Board Excluded
The House leadership continues to approach the Foley scandal as a sharply partisan issue. The Note reported this morning that Speaker Dennis Hastert held a meeting today “to review ways to protect pages†but did not include Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI), the Democratic member of the three-person House Page Board:
more
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/02/hastert-foley-meeting/
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg
Did they know since 2003? :-;
Nobody didn’t care before the elections. How much this will help democrats? Exactly one seat?
About this moralism. I find it very strange that somebody calls a 16 year old a child. If so, what the hell does he do in a working place? Call him a boy or a teenager, but a child is a (pre)teen without menstruation or semen and is not supposed to work but play. I think the obfuscation of childhood, teenage and adulthood is sick.
American politics is mostly about image.
– Happy fishing in ocean of noise!
“CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE” – US Politicians Pedophile Ring
A doc focussed on the decade old exploits (in more ways than one) of Lawrence King, once a shining light of the Republican party, and procurer (in more ways than one), of favors (in more ways than one) for various influential members of the gov – possibly including Bush Sr. himself. Many of the children offered up were from the Boys Town orphanage.”
“On Tuesday, May 3rd, 1994, this program was scheduled to air on the Discovery Channel. Influential Congressional leaders threatened the entire cable industry with drastic new regulations unless the show were canceled and all copies destroyed. Discovery Channel and Yorkshire TV (UK) were reimbursed by the US gov for their production costs.”
But the film is out on the net now. This one is missing lots of frames and seems to be a few generations removed from the original. Maybe an A roll or something. But there’s still enough v and a to shock, disgust, enrage, etc. More important are the unanswered questions that remain.
CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE
I have it booked in my calendar for November 8.
« previous | Talking Points Memo Home | next »
(October 02, 2006 — 12:44 PM EDT)
Here at TPM, as well as at TPMmuckraker and Election Central we’re going to be devoting a lot of resources over the coming days to covering the unfolding Foley scandal. But I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the larger political impact of this debacle. So I’d like to draw back for a moment to take stock of that question.
I think it’s a pretty safe assumption at this point that Democrat Tim Mahoney will win Mark Foley’s seat on November 7th. But I’d say that’ll be relatively far down the list of eventual consequences.
The simple fact is that Foley’s downfall has pretty nearly decapitated the leadership of the House GOP with just five weeks to go before election day. And that’s devastating.
What do I mean by decapitated? Let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that nothing else really comes out about how the House leadership handled this. No more shoes drop. Not a safe assumption from what seems to be in the reporting pipeline. But let’s assume it.
Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) is in a tight race for reelection and he’s chairman of the NRCC, the Republican House campaign committee. He’s in charge of the effort to keep the majority.
What’s the number one thing on his mind right now? I doubt it’s the NRCC or even his race for reelection. I think Reynolds is, to put it mildly, distracted right now.
How about Denny Hastert and John Boehner? I don’t see them going on shows or making any public appearances for a while. They’ll get asked awkward and possibly unanswerable questions about Foleygate. I’d say they’re out of commission for fundraisers too.
MORE
– Josh Marshall
VIA tpmmuckers
Release:
October 2, 2006
Contact:
Naomi Seligman Steiner – 202.408.5565 / press@citizensforethics.org
CREW URGES DOJ I.G. TO PROBE WHY FBI FAILED TO INVESTIGATE FOLEY EMAILS SENT BY CREW THIS SUMMER
Administration Officials Must Explain Lack of Action
Washington, DC – Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) wrote to the Department of Justice Inspector General’s office today to ask for an investigation into why the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) failed to begin investigating Rep. Mark Foley’s emails to a former House page as soon as the Bureau learned about the emails in July 2006.
On July 21, 2006 CREW received a set of emails, allegedly from Rep. Foley to a former House page, which it sent to the FBI later that day. The emails, posted at http://www.citizensforethics.org, asked the page, who had recently left the Hill, his age, how school was going and what he wanted for his birthday. Rep. Foley also requested the boy’s photograph.
“As a former prosecutor who handled sex crimes in the District of Columbia, the emails set off alarm bells. Grown men simply do not send emails requesting photographs to teenagers over whom they have had some degree of authority,†Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW wrote today.
It appears only now, at the instigation of the House of Representatives leadership’s request, that the FBI has begun a preliminary investigation into former Rep. Foley’s conduct. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales requesting an investigation into Rep. Foley’s actions as well as who knew about Rep. Foley’s conduct, when they knew it and why they did not forward that information to law enforcement authorities.
Sloan stated today, “Since the FBI has known about Rep. Foley’s emails since July, the question arises: Did the administration help to cover up Rep. Foley’s conduct and leave a potential sexual predator on the loose? Was the administration more concerned with protecting a powerful ally in Congress than with protecting children?â€
Sloan continued, “The American public deserves to know not just how and why members of Congress failed to take action to protect the youngsters entrusted to the care of the House of Representatives, but also why the FBI — an agency charged with protecting the public — failed to safeguard other youngsters from a potential sexual predator.â€
CREW’s letters and Rep. Foley’s e-mails are available at http://www.citizensforethics.org.
***
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a non-profit legal watchdog group dedicated to holding public officials accountable for their actions.
For more information, please visit http://www.citizensforethics.org or contact Naomi Seligman Steiner at 202.408.5565/press@citizensforethics.org.
http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/newsrelease.php?view=163
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg
that the GOP shelters pederasts is getting out there.
Check this logo out: the “coming merger of NAMBLA and the GOP”.
link
Ouch. That’s gonna stick.
In hindsight I’m sure it’s obvious to many strategists that it was probably not such a farsighted tactic at all to call Dems “terrorist facilitators and sympathizers”, people like John Kerry “cowards” or people like Jack Murtha “traitors”. That tends to make your opponents take their gloves off too.
As vicious as politics can be – the thing about completely dispensing with even vestigial collegiality and playing pure political hardball is that you can never afford to let yourself become vulnerable afterwards. People who espouse “oderint dum metuant” are well advised to learn to sleep with one eye open. Naturally this observation expands to encompass foreign policy as well as domestic politics.
was extremely cleverly framed. He wanted to make this about criminalizing the enemies of the GOP that received yet withheld this information until election season – gambling that in their haste to make political hay they hadn’t submitted it to the authorities.
In short, gambling that in a best-case scenario their antagonists would have seen it in purely politically opportunistic terms and had thus left themselves open to criminal charges; the GOP leadership could claim that as they knew nothing about it it was actually the Dems who were guilty of criminal concealment.
Seems he not only lost the gamble but just inadvertently groin-kicked the FBI too – who, when asked, stated they had no ongoing investigation.
courtesy Crooks And Liars:
Go Cliff. So many Republican scandals, so little time to name them all.
link
Franklin newspaper articles
This was the biggest scandal in the history of the U.S.A history. The story received some newspaper coverage but there was a TV News Media blackout on the subject. For this reason, most Americans have never heard of it.
Former republican Senator John Decamp was involved in the production a documentary called “Conspiracy of Silence” it was to air May 3, 1994 on the Discovery Channel. This documentary exposed a network of religious leaders and Washington politicians who flew children to Washington D.C. for sex orgies. At the last minute before airing, unknown congressmen threatened the TV Cable industry with restrictive legislation if this documentary was aired.
Almost immediately, the rights to the documentary were purchased by unknown persons who had ordered all copies destroyed.
Boy prostitutes 15 years old (and younger) were taking midnight tours of the Whitehouse. There are 19 more Washington Times articles in full text about this case available here.
From Think Progress: ABC News: Pages ‘Sending All Sorts of Messages About Possible Other Members’
Tonight on ABC, investigative journalist Brian Ross suggested there may be other members of Congress who engaged in inappropriate behavior towards congressional pages:
October 02, 2006 12:14 PM – Brian Ross and Maddy Sauer Report:
In addition to explicit sexual language, former Congressman Mark Foley’s Internet messages also include repeated efforts to get the underage recipient to rendezvous with him at night.
“I would drive a few miles for a hot stud like you,” Foley said in one message obtained by ABC News.
Foley Saga No Shock to Some
The Florida Republican was known to have an interest in younger men, Capitol Hill workers say.
By Noam N. Levey, Maura Reynolds and Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writers
October 3, 2006
snip….
The advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said it sent the FBI the less explicit Foley e-mails in July. The group’s officials now have asked the Department of Justice to investigate why the bureau didn’t begin its investigation sooner.
FBI officials declined to comment on the complaint.
But a law enforcement official said investigators are trying to determine the scale and scope of potential crimes, and have been reviewing the messages that have become public.
The official, who requested anonymity because of the investigation’s sensitivity, said that the bureau hoped to speak with some pages and their families soon to determine whether they would be willing to cooperate with the investigation.
Federal law makes it a crime to use the Internet to solicit sex from anyone under 18 years of age. Offenders can be fined and imprisoned for up to 30 years with a minimum sentence of five years in prison.
As of late Monday, the FBI had not requested access to the computers in Foley’s former congressional office.
The office has continued to operate, handling constituent requests and other routine chores, but under the auspices of the clerk of the House.
LA Times
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg
Samantha Bee looks at what it takes to become a Congressional page. She suggests that pages should be muscular and attractive. Bee finds one page qualified, saying, “he exudes the musky aroma of forbidden youth and bacon.”
link
Today Helsingin Sanomat wrote 50 words about this.
The freedom of expression has been dimishing in Finland lately.
Usually the press doesn’t write about foreign officials who have some problems with the law. The public might get the idea that that kind of things could happen in Finland too.
– Happy fishing in ocean of noise!
Maybe applicable cases:
>ABC News now has obtained 52 separate instant message exchanges, which former pages say were sent by Foley, using the screen name Maf54, to two different boys under the age of 18.
From:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/10/new_foley_insta.html
Only the content of the messages to these two boys are relevant, if the internet law is applicable in this case. FBI seems to have thought that it is not applicable.
ABC has published some vivid material but if those messages have been sent to 18 year old or older, they are not legally relevant. Be careful in following what was sent to whom. ABC doesn’t tell the critical details and is interested only about selling advertisement time.
I won’t be surprised if the source of the information to ABC turns out to be a republican.
On the ABC site there is the vivid transcript of the messages to the nickname ‘Teen’ but what age is ‘Teen’?
What comes to the email sent to the 16 year old, it might not be applicable. Intranet and Foley was asking the age of the page.
Earlier similar sex scandals:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2509889
If this becomes a legal issue, I assume that the age limit for the pages will rise to 18 years.
(My opinion: Either Foley is a 100% liar or a politician.)
– Happy fishing in ocean of noise!
In addition to explicit sexual language, former Congressman Mark Foley’s Internet messages also include repeated efforts to get the underage recipient to rendezvous with him at night.
When they use word teenager, it means 13-19 years old (could mean nothing), but when ABC uses word underage, it is news.
– Happy fishing in ocean of noise!
The content of the published messages implies that neither party has given them voluntarily to ABC. So from where have they got them? Especially legally.
How did republicans (and democrats) know about the messages years earlier? Legally?
Washington starts to look more and more like a medieval royal court.
– Happy fishing in ocean of noise!
moved from newswire, submitted by techadvisor
New Foley Instant Messages; Had Internet Sex While Awaiting House Vote
Washington DC
ABC News – Former Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) interrupted a vote on the floor of the House in 2003 to engage in Internet sex with a high school student who had served as a congressional page, according to new Internet instant messages provided to ABC News by former pages.
ABC News now has obtained 52 separate instant message exchanges, which former pages say were sent by Foley, using the screen name Maf54, to two different boys under the age of 18.
//SNIP//
Read an exclusive excerpt of the actual instant message exchange. HERE
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg
comment by techadviosr attached to above article
Sick and Likely to Remain So
Foley is a really sick puppy. I don’t care what his lawyer says, Foley is a PEDOPHILE. He may also be an alcoholic but that is separate and distinct from his pedophilia. Alcoholics can climb back on the wagon. Pedophiles rarely even want to see the wagon, much less climb on and be cured. The recidivism rate for pedophiles is over 90%. And this guy was chairman of the committee that dealt with exploited children. Naturally, where better to find his prey…
David Bier
CADRE Intel Mgr
http://groups.google.com/group/publicintel
techadvisor October 3, 2006 – 4:47pm
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. ~ Carl Sandburg
BradBlog link
Faux News.
– 101 ways to avoid the subjunctive mood
broke.