Apr 06, 2007  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

also played a prominent role as a witness in the House investigation into Foley’s actions toward pages. Fordham, who is gay, told investigators that he informed Scott Palmer, chief of staff for then House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), about Foley’s inappropriate behavior toward pages in 2003, more than two years before Hastert claimed to have had any knowledge about Foley’s actions. Fordham said Palmer met with Foley to address the situation, but Hastert and other House GOP leaders did little to curtail Foley’s actions.

Palmer has disputed Fordham’s version on the timing of his meeting with Foley, and others have pointed to Fordham’s own attempt to persuade ABC News to withhold publishing Foley’s sexually explicit instant messages to pages at the time the Foley scandal was about to break.

The official report by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct nevertheless praises both Fordham and Trandahl for their roles in attempting to stop Foley from continuing to make inappropriate advances toward pages.

Fordham did not return a call by press time this week. He told the Blade in December that he was looking for a job in politics. Two people who know him, who have asked not to be identified, said Fordham recently started his own consulting and lobbying business in Washington.

Some gay activists have said the most unrecognized figure in the Foley affair has been gay blogger Lane Hudson, who is credited with posting the first set of e-mails between Foley and a former page that set in motion a chain of events that led to Foley’s downfall.

A former Capitol Hill staffer, Hudson said he set up an anonymous blog called StopSexPredators.com in July 2006 after learning from his own Hill sources about Foley’s actions toward pages. It was through Hudson’s postings on his site of Foley’s e-mail exchange with a former page from Louisiana, that at least one other blogger and later ABC News were able to uncover Foley’s sexually explicit instant messages with former pages.

Another blogger “outed” Hudson as the person behind the Stop Sex Predators blog, a development that got Hudson fired from his job at HRC. HRC said it discovered Hudson had been operating his blog from HRC’s computers, a practice that violated its work policies.

Hudson denies he operated his site from any of HRC’s facilities, saying he merely checked his personal e-mail from his work computer, something he says HRC’s policy permits. HRC official David Smith has said HRC took action against Hudson after it learned that his office computer had linked to Hudson’s sex predators blog.

“It’s interesting that I’m the only person to get fired over this,” Hudson said, in discussing the aftermath of the Foley scandal. “I’m s