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Kirk Fordham, who spent years working for former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), says officials did not challenge Foley’s inappropriate contact with teenage male pages in part because they ‘were uncomfortable with the subject matter.’ (Photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
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January 1995: Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) becomes a member of the 104th Congress. Exhibits “a fairly common friendliness” to House members and staff.
1995 to 2000: House staffers see Foley as spending “too much time” with pages, and not maintaining “professional distance.” One staffer says Foley’s interaction with male pages gives her
a “creepy feeling.”
June 2000: Foley arrives at the page residence hall in a convertible during an end-of-semester party. Two or more pages get into the car before it drives away. The pages return shortly thereafter.
October 2001: In continuing communication with a former page sponsored by Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), Foley references “the size of his penis.” The former page notifies Kolbe. Foley later apologizes.
2001 to 2002: Foley continues to communicate with former pages. At one point, he uses frequent flier miles to fly a former page to Washington to visit him.
June 2002: Foley speaks at page graduation. During his speech, he references pages by their nicknames and notes an instance where he took a page in his BMW to dinner. Soon thereafter, Kirk Fordham, Foley’s chief of staff, contacts House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s chief of staff. Foley is more sternly cautioned about his conduct.
2002 to 2005: Reports of Foley’s improper behavior among pages subside.
July 2005: Foley contacts an outgoing page sponsored by Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.).
August 2005: In continuing communication with the former page, Foley refers to another man as “a nice guy” who is “in really great shape.” Foley asks the page to send him a photograph. The former page alerts a House staffer and forwards copies of those e-mails.
September 2005: The e-mails are forwarded to various recipients, including Democratic officials.
November 2005: Copies of the e-mails are sent to news media in Florida. Reporter inquiries trigger House officials to intervene. Rep. John Shimkus, the page board chair, directs Foley to stop contacting the former page and “to stay away from the page program in general.”
July 2006: Foley campaign receives word that his mid-term election opponent intends to use the e-mails.
Sept. 24, 2006: Human Rights Campaign staffer Lane Hudson posts Foley’s e-mails online. Hudson is later fired by HRC for violating its policies on computer usage.
Sept. 25, 2006: Foley and his staff discuss the e-mails. Foley is pressed to clarify whether there was “anything else out there,” but Foley says there is not.
Sept. 28, 2006: ABC News contacts Liz Nicholson, Foley’s chief of staff, about the e-mails. She describes the e-mails as part of an “ugly smear campaign.” ABC News posts a story about the e-mails, and includes a “tip line.” An unidentified former page contacts ABC News and says he can provide 36 pages of sexually explicit instant message conversations that Foley had with former pages.
Sept. 29, 2006: ABC News informs Foley’s staff it has obtained the explicit messages. Foley resigns from the House and promptly leaves Washington. ABC News posts excerpts from the explicit messages later that day.
October 2006: U.S. House officials begin investigating “improper conduct involving members and current or former House pages.”
November 2006: Florida Department of Law Enforcement opens a criminal investigation to explore whether Foley broke any laws regarding his contact with the former pages. The investigation is ongoing.
Dec. 8, 2006: U.S. House releases its report, which admonishes some officials for not doing more to protect pages but recommends no disciplinary action against anyone involved.
Source: U.S. House committee investigation. |
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HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: JOSHUA LYNSEN COMMENTS
 
Former Rep. Mark Foley’s status as a closeted gay man may have dissuaded aides and fellow members of Congress from confronting him over his inappropriate contact with teenage male pages, according to a House subcommittee report released last week.
The report suggests that those in the know feared an outing “could have adversely affected him both personally and politically.”
Foley’s former chief of staff Kirk Fordham, who is gay and figures prominently in the report, told the Blade in an interview this week that he agrees the inappropriate behavior was ignored for too long but that politics played “less of a role” than some critics believe.
“I don’t think there was a concerted effort to sweep this under the rug for political gain, because there was really no concerted effort to deal with this at all,” he said. “It was really a case of people neglecting the issue. Or I shouldn’t say neglecting, but ignoring it.”
Fordham said officials did not challenge Foley’s behavior partly because they “were uncomfortable with the subject matter.”
He also said it was unclear what steps needed to be taken, because nobody fully understood the seriousness or extent of Foley’s predilections until the day he resigned.
“The problem that I think occurred is that various people had pieces of information, but no one seemed to have collected all the various reports of, quote unquote, bad behavior,” Fordham said. “I think, in hindsight, a lot of people would take different steps knowing what everyone knows now.”
Fordham, who served on Foley’s staff until January 2004, said he knew only that the congressman was “too chummy, too friendly, too flirty” with pages.
Fordham said that neither he nor any of Foley’s colleagues knew the congressman was having sexually charged instant message conversations with pages until those messages were publicly revealed by ABC News.
“None of us knew the extent of the problem,” Fordham said. “So now we look back and it’s easy to suggest that people should have taken different steps.”
Fordham resigned as chief of staff for Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) after the scandal broke earlier this year and is currently looking for a new job.
Fordham said he still considers Foley a friend, but has not been in contact with him recently because of an ongoing criminal investigation into Foley’s activities.
When asked if he had any regrets about his handling of the e-mails, Fordham said, “I think perhaps I could have done better to counsel a friend on how to better deal with his being gay … At this point, I am hopeful that he is taking positive steps toward dealing with some of the issues that haunt him.”
After leaving Foley’s office, Fordham went to work for the Mel Martinez U.S. Senate campaign in Florida. Martinez won that race and was recently named by President Bush to head the Republican National Committee.
Martinez was criticized for running an anti-gay campaign. Fordham said Martinez knew he was gay but declined to discuss Martinez further.
The report lauds Forham’s efforts — and those of Jeff Trandahl, the gay former House clerk — to control the former congressman’s improper behavior toward pages.
Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, said the report, released Dec. 8 by the House ethics committee, repudiated the myth that a “velvet mafia” protected Foley.
“The gay staffers were the most aggressive in trying to bring his behavior to light,” Foreman said. “And they, in theory, would have the largest interest in not outing a member of Congress.”
According to the report, Fordham and Trandahl, who helped manage the page program, both confronted the Florida congressman about the flirtatious behavior he exhibited in person and via e-mail toward pages.
The report said Fordham and Trandahl were among the few who “took steps to bring their concerns about Rep. Foley’s conduct to the attention of others who they thought might be able to help” remedy the situation.
National Stonewall Democrats spokesperson John Marble praised the Republican staffers, whom he said demonstrated their ability to “be responsible and act in an ethical manner.”
But the report’s suggestion that Foley’s status as a closeted gay man dissuaded his colleagues from intervening has drawn criticism from gay rights activists.
Foreman and others said Foley’s closeted status ...
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