PLEASE ADD THE DISTRICT NUMBER
There is a a major story in this AM's LATimes. Buried at the end is the tidbit that Kirk Fordham, the chief of staff who has switched from Foley to Reynolds and back (at least informally), was not only dispatched to do damage control - - cover-up -- with Ross at ABC, but he also, reputedly, was Foley's bimboy monitor when the two went out together. So Fordham has been tidying up Foley's follies for awhile. As a result, now he is sinking Reynolds into the Lackawanna canal. The story as a whole is worth reading since it confirms that Foley's reputation was known.
A point that has been missed in some of the coverage - - this included - - is that Foley in most cases was probably clever enough to calibrate his moves to match his reading of his intended target. A page who spurned him immediately was probably dropped and might have been too clueless and naive to understand what was up. I suspect that those pages being paraded on TV and elsewhere proclaiming that nothing was amiss were in that first category. Those who seemed open would probably get follow-up attention. And ofr that reason would want to preserve their anonymity. Foley was out recruiting for the long-run. He probably delayed his more explicit contacts until the mark was old enough to be legal. Hence the questions about age and the gathering of e-addresses from departing pages so that he could pursue them at a later stage. We may very well discover that the most explicit exchanges took place with ex-pages over 18 that would not subject Foley to the law he helped write.
http://www.latimes.com/...
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
.......
Beck-Heyman, the former page, said several other male pages in his class also had been approached by Foley. "Mark Foley knew he could get away with this type of behavior with male pages because he was a congressman," he said.
Another former staffer said it was an oft-repeated story around Capitol Hill that Foley's former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, would sometimes accompany the congressman to keep him out of trouble.
Fordham represents a link between Foley and House GOP leaders. Shortly after leaving Foley's office last year, he became chief of staff to Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Reynolds has said he was told this spring about the e-mails that sparked the initial complaint about Foley.
Fordham has not responded to repeated requests for comment from The Times.