Longtime Republican was source of e-mails
Milhouse VanHouten
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http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/100506/news2.html
Longtime Republican was source of e-mails
By Alexander Bolton
The source who in July gave news media Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-Fla.) suspect e-mails to a former House page says the documents came to him from a House GOP aide.
That aide has been a registered Republican since becoming eligible to vote, said the source, who showed The Hill public records supporting his claim.
The same source, who acted as an intermediary between the aide-turned-whistleblower and several news outlets, says the person who shared the documents is no longer employed in the House.
But the whistleblower was a paid GOP staffer when the documents were first given to the media.
The source bolstered the claim by sharing un-redacted e-mails in which the former page first alerted his congressional sponsor’s office of Foley’s attentions. The copies of these e-mails, now available to the public, have the names of senders and recipients blotted out.
These revelations mean that Republicans who are calling for probes to discover what Democratic leaders and staff knew about Foley’s improper exchanges with under-age pages will likely be unable to show that the opposition party orchestrated the scandal now roiling the GOP just a month away from the midterm elections.
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) yesterday called for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) to testify about what and when they knew of Foley’s contact with former pages (see related story).
House GOP leadership aides have said they would like to see investigations of Foley examine how the story became public. ABC News’s website first reported the e-mails just as Congress was about to recess for the election.
The explosive disclosures about Foley’s communications with teenage pages have overshadowed Republican legislative accomplishments during their final week in town. They have become the preoccupation of a capital press corps that has little else to write about now that Congress is in recess and Election Day is still a month away.
Republicans say the timing of the scandal is evidence of a political dirty trick orchestrated by Democrats. They have drawn comparisons to negative reports about President Bush that surfaced before the 2000 and 2004 campaigns.
Shortly before the 2000 election, it was reported that Bush had been arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, and before Election Day 2004, forged documents surfaced calling into question Bush’s National Guard service.
That Foley’s scandalous communications came to public light during Congress’s final week in Washington was largely determined by the media outlets which obtained the suspicious e-mails in the middle of the summer, said the person who provided them to reporters several months ago.
In an August 2005 e-mail exchange between Foley and a former page, given to reporters this summer, Foley asks the teenager his age, asks him to send a picture of himself, and describes his own work-out activities, including a 25-mile bike ride. The e-mails given to reporters included one sent by the page to a House staffer in which the page described Foley’s e-mail as “sick” and said it “freaked me out.” The page also informs the staffer that Foley asked what the teen wanted for his birthday.
The e-mails were alarming enough to prompt the page’s parents in the fall of 2005 to ask their son’s congressional sponsor, Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), to take steps to stop Foley’s correspondence.
Alexander’s chief of staff then told aides in Speaker Dennis Hastert’s (R-Ill.) office about the communication and showed the e-mails to Jeff Trandahl, clerk of the House. That fall, Trandahl and Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Page Board, met Foley and told him to stop contacting the former page.
But while the e-mails were concerning enough to prompt this action, editors and reporters at various publications did not consider them remarkable enough to write about.
The person who provided the e-mails to several D.C.-based news outlets in July claimed to have no knowledge of who gave them to two Florida papers last year.
D.C.-based media organizations declined to report on the e-mails. But one, ABC News, reported on the e-mails last week after a Weblog, stopsexpredators.blogspot.com, published a few of the exchanges between Foley and the former page. But those blog-reported e-mails did not include correspondence between the page and a House aide in which the teen expressed anxiety about Foley’s intentions.
After ABC News disclosed the e-mails exchanged last year between Foley and a former page, it reported about much more sexually explicit communications between Foley and a different former page over an “instant messaging” (IM) software program in 2003.
The first Web report of the relatively tame e-mails appears to have prompted someone to share the explicit IM messages. After ABC News obtained those messages, in which Foley discussed sexual acts with the second former page, a scandal mushroomed on Capitol Hill, and Foley resigned.
The source who provided the e-mails that ABC News first reported on its blog, denied sharing the more explicit IMs.
So while the primary source of the e-mails which kicked off the scandal was a House GOP aide, the trigger of the news coverage was the weblog.
The creator of stopsexpreditors.blogspot.com is unknown. An interview request e-mailed to the site was not returned.
Longtime Republican was source of e-mails
By Alexander Bolton
The source who in July gave news media Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-Fla.) suspect e-mails to a former House page says the documents came to him from a House GOP aide.
That aide has been a registered Republican since becoming eligible to vote, said the source, who showed The Hill public records supporting his claim.
The same source, who acted as an intermediary between the aide-turned-whistleblower and several news outlets, says the person who shared the documents is no longer employed in the House.
But the whistleblower was a paid GOP staffer when the documents were first given to the media.
The source bolstered the claim by sharing un-redacted e-mails in which the former page first alerted his congressional sponsor’s office of Foley’s attentions. The copies of these e-mails, now available to the public, have the names of senders and recipients blotted out.
These revelations mean that Republicans who are calling for probes to discover what Democratic leaders and staff knew about Foley’s improper exchanges with under-age pages will likely be unable to show that the opposition party orchestrated the scandal now roiling the GOP just a month away from the midterm elections.
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) yesterday called for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) to testify about what and when they knew of Foley’s contact with former pages (see related story).
House GOP leadership aides have said they would like to see investigations of Foley examine how the story became public. ABC News’s website first reported the e-mails just as Congress was about to recess for the election.
The explosive disclosures about Foley’s communications with teenage pages have overshadowed Republican legislative accomplishments during their final week in town. They have become the preoccupation of a capital press corps that has little else to write about now that Congress is in recess and Election Day is still a month away.
Republicans say the timing of the scandal is evidence of a political dirty trick orchestrated by Democrats. They have drawn comparisons to negative reports about President Bush that surfaced before the 2000 and 2004 campaigns.
Shortly before the 2000 election, it was reported that Bush had been arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, and before Election Day 2004, forged documents surfaced calling into question Bush’s National Guard service.
That Foley’s scandalous communications came to public light during Congress’s final week in Washington was largely determined by the media outlets which obtained the suspicious e-mails in the middle of the summer, said the person who provided them to reporters several months ago.
In an August 2005 e-mail exchange between Foley and a former page, given to reporters this summer, Foley asks the teenager his age, asks him to send a picture of himself, and describes his own work-out activities, including a 25-mile bike ride. The e-mails given to reporters included one sent by the page to a House staffer in which the page described Foley’s e-mail as “sick” and said it “freaked me out.” The page also informs the staffer that Foley asked what the teen wanted for his birthday.
The e-mails were alarming enough to prompt the page’s parents in the fall of 2005 to ask their son’s congressional sponsor, Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), to take steps to stop Foley’s correspondence.
Alexander’s chief of staff then told aides in Speaker Dennis Hastert’s (R-Ill.) office about the communication and showed the e-mails to Jeff Trandahl, clerk of the House. That fall, Trandahl and Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Page Board, met Foley and told him to stop contacting the former page.
But while the e-mails were concerning enough to prompt this action, editors and reporters at various publications did not consider them remarkable enough to write about.
The person who provided the e-mails to several D.C.-based news outlets in July claimed to have no knowledge of who gave them to two Florida papers last year.
D.C.-based media organizations declined to report on the e-mails. But one, ABC News, reported on the e-mails last week after a Weblog, stopsexpredators.blogspot.com, published a few of the exchanges between Foley and the former page. But those blog-reported e-mails did not include correspondence between the page and a House aide in which the teen expressed anxiety about Foley’s intentions.
After ABC News disclosed the e-mails exchanged last year between Foley and a former page, it reported about much more sexually explicit communications between Foley and a different former page over an “instant messaging” (IM) software program in 2003.
The first Web report of the relatively tame e-mails appears to have prompted someone to share the explicit IM messages. After ABC News obtained those messages, in which Foley discussed sexual acts with the second former page, a scandal mushroomed on Capitol Hill, and Foley resigned.
The source who provided the e-mails that ABC News first reported on its blog, denied sharing the more explicit IMs.
So while the primary source of the e-mails which kicked off the scandal was a House GOP aide, the trigger of the news coverage was the weblog.
The creator of stopsexpreditors.blogspot.com is unknown. An interview request e-mailed to the site was not returned.
"Of course it hurts. You're getting fucked by an elephant."
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I vaguely remember the term from my Youth In Government club in highschool...too bad I only went to the first two meetings
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
A friend of mine was a Page for the Wisconsin State Senate--that's the only reason I know what it is. He was never propositioned.
Your Page, M’Lord
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: October 3, 2006
Suppose Nike’s founder, Phil Knight, asked taxpayers to subsidize a program for 16-year-olds to leave their homes to become “squires” running errands at Nike headquarters. Or suppose, before his death, Sam Walton had asked Congress to build a dormitory in Arkansas to house teenage “serfs” spending a semester away from their schools to work on a Wal-Mart loading dock.
These executives would become national jokes. They’d be denounced for trying to revive 19th-century child-labor practices and 12th-century feudalism. There would be no public money appropriated for Knight’s Squires or Sam’s Serfs.
Yet Congress sees nothing strange about dragging teenagers from their families and schools to become pages, one step below a squire in the feudal food chain. They’re not being forced to wear Prince Valiant haircuts, but they have to do scut work that’s probably even less useful than what they could learn at Nike or Wal-Mart.
Congressional pages spend much of their time hand-delivering documents, a job that’s done electronically in most 21st-century institutions. When educators talk about preparing youth for jobs in the Information Age, they’re not talking about training messengers.
The justification for the page program is that it gives teenagers an insider’s glimpse of how Congress works. But why disillusion them at such a tender age? If they stayed in school, they could maintain their innocence by reading the old step-by-step textbook version of how a bill becomes law. By going to Capitol Hill, they see how the process has changed:
1. A bill is introduced to build highways.
2. A congressman receives a donation from a constituent who wants to open a go-kart track.
3. The congressman persuades his committee chairman to slip in a $350 million “earmark” for an “alternative sustainable transportation research facility” in his district.
4. The chairman quietly adds similar earmarks for all members of the committee.
5. The bill is passed unanimously.
6. The president complains about the “wasteful spending” but signs it into law anyway.
7. The congressman attends a fund-raiser at the new go-kart track.
What lesson has the page learned? That Congress is the closest thing in modern America to a medieval court: an enclave governed by arcane ancient rules of seniority, a gathering of nobles who spend their days accepting praise and dispensing favors to supplicants.
They’re so secure in their jobs, and so used to being surrounded by groveling minions, that they assume the privileges of feudal lords when dealing with pages and other lieges. Which is why, on occasion, they try to exercise the droit du seigneur.
Unlike previous scandals, in which members were censured for having sex with pages, the current one so far doesn’t involve physical contact. But it features lewd messages from Representative Mark Foley to a teenager asking about his sex life and requesting a picture. When you are chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, as Foley was, this does not qualify as research for your job.
Even if you could somehow quell Congressional libidos, even if this scandal taught members of Congress not to hit on teenagers, the page program still wouldn’t be worth paying for. It should be eliminated, as Representative Ray LaHood has proposed, for the sake of both Congress and the pages. They need to be spared not just from lustful congressmen but from the chief lesson taught by the program: that success is all about making the right connections.
To get into the program, you (or your parents or their well-connected friends) have to find a member of Congress to sponsor you. Once in, the supreme goal is to ingratiate yourself with someone powerful enough to help you move up the Washington hierarchy. As Rachel Swarns reported in The Times, Foley was a favorite of the pages because he offered them the gift of access.
“If a congressman was talking to you, it was the best thing in the world,” said one former page, Patrick McDonald.
Spend enough time as a page, and you can easily believe it’s not what you know, it’s who you know — and whom you flatter. Granted, toadying can be a useful skill in most lines of work. But it’s not a lesson teenagers need to study for a whole semester, especially when it’s being taught in text messages from a lord on Capitol Hill.
Just a thought, but assuming most Senators and Congressmen are hetero, then wouldn't they have chosen to allow young girls to be pages if they were in it for the sex??
I get your point, and I am sure it is a great opportunity for Barney Frank to get his rocks off, but this is no different than other volunteer programs and opportunities for teens to experience the world at a young age that most don't get a chance to.
So, I guess we stop the foreign exchange programs, the peace corp, etc.
Yeah it sounds stupid, but then so are interns. Monica anyone?
all i know is im rethinking my presidential ambitions and toying with running for congress instead!