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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
 
continued...
shouldn’t have deterred his colleagues from acting.
“His sexual orientation, or anyone’s sexual orientation, has nothing whatsoever to do with allegations of both abuse of power and potentially sexually exploitive behavior,” Foreman said. “It shouldn’t matter if the person is gay, straight, Republican, Democrat, male or female.”
Patrick Sammon, executive vice president of the Log Cabin Republicans, agreed. He said those who knew about Foley’s behavior should have done more to stop it.
“It’s wrong to use his sexual orientation as an excuse,” he said. “There’s no GLBT organization that would have defended Foley if there had been questions asked about what was clearly inappropriate behavior.”
Foreman said it’s more likely that Foley’s behavior went widely unchallenged by Republicans because politicians feared a scandal could harm the party.
“It was a reluctance to expose a member of the majority,” he said. “Not expose, but potentially harm a member of the House majority.”
Although it lauds Fordham and Trandahl, the ethics report chides some key figures for not doing more.
It says Ted Van Der Meid, House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s counsel and liaison to Trandahl, “showed an inexplicable lack of interest” after being told of Foley’s behavior.
The report also says retiring Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), who is gay, could and should have done more after a former page reportedly forwarded him Foley’s message. Kolbe could not be reached by press time.
But while the report admonishes many of Foley’s colleagues for a “disconcerted unwillingness to take responsibility,” it did not issue any formal reprimands. It also gave little advice how officials should reform the page program to protect participants.
The lack of reprimands surprised Foreman, who said the omission was inexplicable.
“If in any non-profit or for-profit corporation these kinds of complaints were made, and management failed to address them, heads would roll,” he said. “I mean, that’s just the way it is.”
Marble lambasted the committee’s decision to not issue formal reprimands. He said it demonstrated a “cowardice and incompetence.”
Sammon declined to speculate on why the bipartisan committee stopped short of reprimanding Foley’s colleagues.
“The bottom line is there’s plenty of blame to go around for everyone,” he said. “But ultimately, it’s Foley who shoul
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