According to Wayne Madsen, as I heard on
Randi Rhodes today
(listen here) - these congressional GOP pages were preyed upon more eggregiously by more than Foley FOR YEARS.
As you may have already gathered, it was also covered up by more than the Foley 5...
Full Story from ONCE AGAIN (salt grains?) Madsen Report, and as reported afterwards today by ABC in an interview:
Jeb Bush didn't tell Georgie?
Informed sources in Tallahassee, Florida have told WMR that Governor Jeb Bush was fully aware of ex-Rep. Mark Foley's conduct with underage male pages but sat on the information to protect Foley and another top GOP Florida official, Attorney General Charlie Crist, who is currently running for governor to replace Bush. Today, Jeb Bush said he had not previously known about Foley's behavior with the pages before being informed by House Speaker Dennis Hastert in a letter dated October 1, 2006. Bush said he was "dismayed and shocked to learn about Congressman Foley's unacceptable behavior."
However, according to our Florida sources, the FBI and Justice Department informed the Florida Governor's office, Attorney General Crist, and the Florida AG's Child Protection Cybercrime Unit at least a year ago about Foley's predatory emails and instant messages. WMR was told that Crist's conflict-of-interest in the case stems from Crist's and Foley's involvement in sex parties, some of which took place during 2003 in trendy Coconut Grove, Florida.
Foley scandal reverberating in Florida gubernatorial race.
Informed Florida sources claim that up until now, Crist and Jeb Bush have been able to keep a lid on the once-divorced Crist's life style, touting his conservative Christian credentials, but that the Foley revelations will severely impact the Crist gubernatorial campaign. The links between Foley and Crist are certain to harm Crist with his conservative backers who admire Crist for his anti-gay rights stance. Floridians begin early voting on October 23.
DOJ, Ashcroft and Gonzalez and staffers oh my!
WMR has learned from informed sources in the Justice Department that the salacious e-mails from Rep. Mark Foley were leaked to ABC News by career Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents who are incensed that Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales covered up the House page scandal for political reasons. The back story of Pagegate is that there was a criminal conspiracy by the top political leadership of the Justice Department to cover up the predatory activities of Foley and other GOP members of Congress since at least 2003 and, likely, as early as 2001.
Other informed sources in the nation's capital report that Pagegate will soon implicate a number of GOP staffers in both the House and the Senate who intimidated and pressured male pages into inappropriate sexual relationships. One source confided that the staff members' contact with pages was "more egregious" than Foley's behavior.
GOP in crisis, meltdown mode
The Pagegate scandal also involves senior officials of the Republican National Committee, located near the House Office Buildings, according to our Capitol Hill sources.
The bottom line is that the GOP is facing its worst political scandal since Watergate and the White House, already under assault from the revelations in Bob Woodward's insider account of the Bush presidency and the Iraq war, has told GOP members of Congress that they are on their own as far as Pagegate damage control is concerned.
FBI admits to having Foley email correspondence from July here.
Kirk Fordham, Hastert's Chief of Staff foreced out - Stories conflict by ABC
People familiar with Fordham's side of the story, however, said Fordham was being used as a scapegoat by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.
They said Fordham had repeatedly warned Hastert's staff about Foley's "problem" with pages, but little was done.
The complaint about Foley was brought to the chairman of the page board, Congressman John Shimkus (R-IL), last spring, and he then consulted with the Clerk of the House of Representatives, Jeff Trandahl.
At Fordham's urging, according to the sources, the matter was not given to the full board, and instead Congressman Foley was privately approached and told to stop all contact with the page he had been e-mailing.
New Dana Rohrabacher(R) Aide
Prosecution Witness steps forward with minor assault allegations - warning, ewww!
Madsen - The payoffs in hundreds of thousands:
The Pagegate scandal surrounding ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) is growing in scope. According to congressional sources, Foley's predatory sexual advances on underage male pages was tolerated because Foley was a major campaign cash source for other Republican members. Although it has been reported that Foley gave National Republican Congressional Committee chair Tom Reynolds (R-NY) a $100,000 contribution, WMR has learned that Foley's contributions to Reynolds' committee totaled $330,000. Meanwhile, the conservative Washington Times, aware of the widening nature of the scandal, has called for House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign his leadership position.
WMR has also learned that Tom Reynolds, who is facing a serious challenge from Democrat Jack Davis, is now in serious political trouble in his northern New York district and looks likely to lose it in the November 7 election.
Confirmed by Media Matters with links to NY Times and others here:
More than Hastert in the leadership KNEW:
In August 2004, the GOP House leadership, which included Speaker Dennis Hastert, then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt, took no action against Republican Rep. Mark Foley of Florida for his repeated salacious contact by email with underage male teens even though a heterosexually-married Republican congressman resigned over trolling gay web sites for "younger men." In August 2004, one-term Republican Rep. Ed Schrock of Virginia resigned after it became public that he was surfing gay and dating web sites in search of younger men for sex. Schrock, a political ally of his Virginia Beach constituent TV evangelist Pat Robertson and a retired U.S. Navy Captain, resigned after he was outed by a Washington, DC web site.
However, rather than dealing with Foley's sexual habits on the Web, the GOP leadership sank deeper into cover-up mode, burying the Foley matter lest it shine a light on other GOP gay hypocrites in Congress whose anti-gay agenda would embarrass the party a few months before a critical presidential and congressional election year.
It is now being reported that the House Page Board chairman John Shimkus (R-IL) actually enabled Foley to meet an underage pages for dinner dates after the House GOP leadership were aware of Foley's inappropriate communications with the teens. In fact, according to ABC News, Foley told the 2001-02 page class about them bidding for dinner with Foley.
At this point - who, in the GOP, didn't know?
Update: ABC News Full Story
A former senior Republican official in Congress says Foley was one of a handful of members and staff whose behavior with pages was being closely watched.
But so far Foley is the only member whose overt sexual approaches have been documented.
And in WaPo
Full Story:
"Mark Foley knew that he could get away with this type of behavior with male pages because he was a congressman," Beck-Heyman said. "But many people on Capitol Hill, including many high-level Republican staffers and members, have known for over 11 years about what was going on and chose to do nothing."
St, Petersburg Times -
why we didn't report before:
The Times' government and politics editor filed a long-ish blog post Saturday explaining why we never wrote a story on Foley's milder emails to a page last year, even though we learned of them back then. Of course, it's easy to second-guess such judgments in hindsight, but if a similar flap earlier this year involving allegations against Charlie Crist proves anything, it's that we move carefully when it comes to explosive allegations which might be a disguised political attack, especially close to an election.
Crist and Foley in Florida
Foley/GOP Timeline from
Seattle Times
