The scandal goes well beyond Foley

September 30, 2006

By the time the political world had learned of former Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-Fla.) resignation, there was reason to believe the central point of the scandal was already over. We’d learn more details about Foley’s messages, and there’s a likely criminal investigation on the way (Foley personally sponsored legislation making it a felony to solicit sex online from a minor), but he had resigned in disgrace.

As it turns out, the scandal may be significantly broader than just Foley. The next question is who knew about Foley’s problem, when did they know it, and what did they do about it. The fallout could be far-reaching — and seriously damaging for the House Republican leadership.

About 10 or 11 months ago, the page, whose emails were first reported by ABC News on Thursday, alerted Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) to the creepy emails he had received from Foley. Alexander contacted the page’s parents — and then told the House GOP leadership about the problem.

At this point, several key House Republicans are struggling to explain when they were notified of the problem and what, if anything, they did about it.

* Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Page Board, discussed the situation with Foley last year, but did not notify Democrats on the Board. Foley said he’d behave and Shimkus apparently let the matter drop.

* House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), whom Alexander reportedly spoke to directly about this, told the Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of some “contact” between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and that Hastert assured him “we’re taking care of it.”

* After Hastert denied having any knowledge of the problem, Boehner backtracked and said he hadn’t told Hastert.

* Apparently worried about the implications, Boehner spoke to the WaPo again and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert.

* Roll Call noted that Hastert’s office was told, but not the Speaker himself.

* When Alexander was getting the word out that Foley may have a problem, he also reportedly told the National Republican Campaign Committee. It’s not clear if Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.), the NRCC chairman, did anything in response.

There are more than a few unanswered questions, but it appears, based on what we know so far, that the several top House Republicans knew for many months that one its caucus members at pursued a teenaged boy. It does not appear that they did much of anything about it.

There’s one other point that warrants attention — there’s more than one teenaged boy involved here. The 16-year-old in Louisiana rebuffed Foley. What ultimately brought Foley down were the sexually-explicit IM messages the congressman sent to a different teenaged page in 2003.

In other words, circumstances suggest that Foley was something of a sexual predator, targeting teenaged boys. Some GOP leaders in Congress knew something about this. Did they keep it quiet to protect their majority? Did they assume they could get away with it, just as long as the pages stayed quiet?

Josh Marshall said last night, “I think this story is about to get a lot bigger.” I think he’s probably right.

Let’s see… Lewinski was the only story for a year. How many weeks do you think an institutional looking the other way over child sexual abuse is worth? A month?

Oh, wait. What party did you say would be harmed by this? Nevermind…

“Should the Press leak damaging information during wartime?”

  • The GOP leadership sure reminds me of a certain group of Catholic bishops who raised looking-the-other-way to a high art.

  • What was the old saying that the only thing that could harm a politician was being found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy?

    I think there’s about to be a corollary: about a congressman in bed with a live boy.

    I think this story shows pretty clearly what life in the closet, in denial deep enough to allow one to join the Republican Party and listen to all the fundamentalist bigotry – to espouse it oneself – can do to a person in terms of self-loathing. It’s like Ernst Roehm and all the homosexual members of the Sturmabteilung, who thought they were the real Nazi revolutionaries till the Night of the Long Knives when Hitler had them all murdered, having gotten into power on their shoulders and no longer being in need of their services.

    I’ve yet to meet any Republican, gay or straight, who doesn’t have some pretty severe sexual dysfunctions, once you know them well enough to hear what they say and connect that to their actions. The rest of their dysfunctions all stem from that.

  • What’s most interesting isn’t what any of them are saying at a given moment, it’s how often they’ve changed their stories. What this tells me is that many people knew something about it, but it broke so fast that they didn’t have time to coordinate the excuses.

    Alexander claims to have done the right thing and notified National Republican Campaign Committee?!?!?! Confronted with this, he modifies it to House Leadership
    Boehner tells the WaPo he notified Hastert, then realizes how far he hit it into the weeds and calls the WaPo back to claim a mulligan.

    These guys are so terrified of their own complicity that they don’t know which way to run.

  • I am not about to defend the Catholic Church, indeed I fully intend any comparison between pedophile priests and Foley a nice way of insulting them both. But given how much coverage the priest scandal has received, and how a big part of that was Bishops knowingly protecting predators by quitly moving them from one position to another without telling anyone about the risks, the church would be right – should this story have a short a shelf life as I suspect it might – to ask why they got it worse from the press than Foley (and yes, I understand the scale and scope of the priest scandal was of an entirely different magnitude. the leadership of the country, however, should also be a bigger deal than the mid-level leadership of a single religious denomination. particularly in an election season.)

  • When you consider how DeLay, Hastert, and Boehner have run the Republican-controlled House–that is, with an iron fist (one example: using the House rules committee to railroad legislation without the opportunity for amendments)–this scandal is just another piece of evidence of how corrupt the House Republican leadership has been–and will be, if left in power.

  • Zeitgeist,

    Like Watergate, the coverup is more revealing of the misuse of power than “the crime” itself.

  • This doesn’t need to last 6 months or a year. If it can go on for the next month, it’ll work fine as a midterm election issue, nicely nationalizing the election and driving down the enthusiasm of rightwing religious homophobes.

  • “…the church would be right – should this story have a short a shelf life as I suspect it might – to ask why they got it worse from the press than Foley…”

    Zeitgeist, I must disagree. The thing about the RC Pervertgate that made me particularly disgusted was the amount of power these creeps did have over the children they abused. These guys supposedly speak directly to and for God. (I know a lot of Rethugs claim the same thing but anyway…) Think about it. Some bastard who has taken your confession and knows all the naughty things you’ve done and interceeded with God on your behalf says: Now come here and reach under my cassock. And we are not talking about a short period of a few years. We’re talking decades of shuffling these guys around so they could continue to prey on a fresh flock. Also, I haven’t ready anything to suggest Foley did more than make a few dirty comments. With the RC we’re talking rape, repeated rape over a period of time all by men who are supposedly married to God, condoned and assisted by their superiors. And then when it was caught out the RC threw Thou shalt not lie out the window and continued to dodge and cover for these guys until people started to sue. So you bet it got a lot of coverage and no, the Church has no right to complain.

  • There won’t be enough detail to keep it in the news cycles until November. They will create a committee, and sweep it under the rug.
    Foley, after all, has resigned. Bad man out.

  • I’m curious how Sean Hannity will explain this one away.

    Politically, I doubt anyone will care about the cover-up. Too complicated to follow. Sex will stick in people’s minds, although they may not remember whether the “intern” is male or female. Bottom line, no one will care beyond next week. The important thing is that Democrats hate America.

  • Who are the only people left supporting the Republican Party? True believing cultists. There is nothing that can eat into that 35% any more than we already have — except, maybe protecting a habitual child molester. I mean this isn’t torture or habeus — their fucking little boys now. That’s something these people actually care about.

    It is not the dismantling of the Constitution, a housing bubble or botched war, but Congressional pages who will save the Republic.

    (Come to think of it, the only oversight in government that appears to be doing their jobs are prosecutors. Who would have thought?)

  • Alibubba,

    After being beat down over last the six years by the thugs of the Republican party and the obsequious MSM, I understand your lack of faith in your fellow Americans. But–please–spare me your pessimism and your cynicism. I need a glimmer of hope to keep going.

  • “…true believing cultists. There is nothing that can eat into that 35% any more than we already have — except, maybe protecting a habitual child molester.”

    I wish, but the thing about true believers is they truly believe whatever they do is OK with God. Sending naughty messages to a couple of teenagers ain’t nothing compared to what some of these freaks get up to between church services.

    They may be willing to repudiate Foley because he voted no on the gay marriage amendment, but we’re talking about people who think God approves of torture. There’s no act they’re unwilling to overlook (forgive) so long as the person doing it “talks the talk, walks the walk.” Why do you think they still go on about Clinton but are strangely silent on Gingrich dumping his wife while she was sick?

  • Repubs want the congressional races to be local, but Foley Gate makes it national. The Republican lack of oversight screams out as the tale unravels. Are these the people you trust to keep us safe, if they refuse to protect children in their care? If the Dems can’t make hay on this, they don’t deserve power.

  • Anyone should buy two copies of this book— let someone
    else have one, and keep the other and read it. From the author’s introduction
    to the White Rose:

    “I have changed my mind about the so-called youthful ‘idealism’ of the White Rose, and I would like to explain to the North American reader why it is that now in 1983, forty years after those events, I think differently. When I read their material again, I was surprised to find a clear political analysis in the writings of the White Rose. Their leaflets repeatedly underscored the issue which was to be decisive in delaying the downfall of Hitler’s Reich- Nazi anti-communism. Along with anti-semitism, to which it was linked in many ways, anti-Communism was the most virulent force in Nazi ideology. Millions of ‘good’ Germans did not like the Nazis, yet thought that they were the lesser evil compared with the communists. These good middle-class Germans, persuaded, by 1933, of the threat of Communism, voted for Hitler, thereby bringing him to power via legal and democratic channels. The conservatove Christian parties smoothed Hitler’s path to power. Ten years later Germany was a hotbed of robbbers and rapists who waged war against all of Europe, while specifically targeting Eastern Europe for their more gruesome atrocities.”

  • Tom Cleaver (#3). I’ve yet to meet any Republican, gay or straight, who doesn’t have some pretty severe sexual dysfunctions

    You nailed it, Tom. Along with the Roman Catholic Church (at least many of its priests), Republicans seem to know only one kind of sin, sex. Seeing it as sinful makes them try to repress it, with all the abnormalities that follow from that. Maybe if they started to focus on some real sins — greed, relievable poverty, rape of the environment, denial of medical treatment, cruelty to children and animals, gender or ethnic discrimination — they’d lighten up on sex and get more out of life themselves. On the other hand, maybe they’re too old or too far gone.

  • I want someone to ask the obvious question of the Republican leadership:

    “Do you believe that pedophile preditors such as Rep. Foley should be snatched off of the street, rendered to secret CIA prisons outside of U.S jurisdiction, tortured, and held indefinitely without the right of habeas corpus?”

    And if they say no it seems obvious that they are against us and with the pedophile preditors.

  • Joe W: These guys are so terrified of their own complicity that they don’t know which way to run.

    so we’ll watch them become more vicious while they get their talking points together whle in the background someone technologically competent re-programmes all the Diebold machines.

  • What do the Republican members of Congress “have” on their leadership to keep them quiet, to keep them from enforcing moral and ethical principles and standards of behavior? The entire body has become one big mutual protection league of ethical and moral midgets.

  • …can’t protect one 16 year old kid from a predator. Oh wait, this 16 year old kid isn’t well connected, doesn’t vote, has no 527, luxury stuite at the ball park, or bag full of unmarked bills…no wonder he couldn’t get anyone’s attention.

    Criminal neglect, and dereliction of duty. Yeah, I feel much safer with the care of the nation in the hands of these people.

  • There is no way this is limited to offensive e-mails. A few weeks can be spent just digging into all the vassilation of the leadership, and how culpable they were. It kind of mirrored 9/11 — lots of warnings signs, concerned people trying to get the message up the chain, and being ignored. As a result, how many young pages have been abused?

    You don’t IM kids, asking if you make them honry and can I have a picture? unless you’re trying to get somewhere. Wherever that is – be it pornography, webcam or actual physical molestation – is another story. And whatever he, and others, have done to the victims to get them to be silent is the next.

    It does require the Democratic party and groups to not just sit back and wait for the MSM to do their jobs. We have to push, because believe me, right now, the GOP is doing everything within their power to push back.

    This came out on Friday. Most people won’t learn about this until Monday.

  • Rep. Alexander claims to have notified the appropriate people, Boehner and the NRCC.

    He left out the most important people to notify…the police.

  • Questions need to be asked of the Republican leadership. For instance, I rather like the following:
    “Speaker Hastert, what is your party doing to protect our children from Republican pedophiles?”
    — or —
    “Representative Boehner, how long have you known that Mr Foley was buggering house pages?”

  • Slip Kid:

    Sorry. I will spare you my pessimism and cynicism. I, too, need a glimmer of hope. It’s just that again and again we all comment on the Republican screw-up du jour (Abramoff, Katrina, Plame, etc., etc. etc.) expecting some outrage, some notice — and it hasn’t happened in six years. It’s not like I WANT to be cynical. Still, I’ll try –hard — to look on the bright side.

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