Ethics Panel Interviews House Speaker’s Top Aide

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The New York Sun

WASHINGTON — The House ethics committee yesterday questioned the top aide to the House speaker, Rep. Dennis Hastert, in an appearance that could clarify whether early warnings about Rep. Mark Foley were ignored.

Mr. Hastert’s chief of staff, Scott Palmer, has disputed statements that he was told by Mr. Foley’s top aide in 2002 or 2003 about the Florida Republican’s inappropriate computer-message come-ons to male pages.

Mr. Hastert, a Republican of Illinois, has released an internal report that said his aides first learned about Mr. Foley’s inappropriate conduct in the fall of 2005. But that report did not mention any role that Mr. Palmer played at the time.

Mr. Palmer has not spoken publicly, except to say that the story of the 2002–2003 notification to him by ex-Foley chief of staff Kirk Fordham did not happen.

Before Mr. Palmer testified, the top political aide to Rep. Tom Reynolds, a Republican of New York, appeared before the committee as it began a third week of closed-door testimony.

Sally Vastola is executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee and a longtime top aide to Mr. Reynolds. The lawmaker, who is the House GOP’s campaign chairman, is expected to testify today.

Mr. Reynolds learned of Mr. Foley’s inappropriate e-mails to a Louisiana teenager last spring from the boy’s congressional sponsor, and Mr. Reynolds says that he told Mr. Hastert about it at the time.

Ms. Vastola’s testimony seemed sure to touch on how Mr. Reynolds reacted when learning of problems with Mr. Foley’s behavior toward pages and what other individuals Mr. Reynolds may have shared the information with.

Mr. Reynolds is slated to appear today before the panel, which is looking into whether lawmakers and staff aides should have done more to prevent Mr. Foley from having inappropriate interactions with pages. The known problems date back as far as 2001 or 2002, when Mr. Foley sent inappropriate e-mails to a page sponsored by Rep. Jim Kolbe, a Republican of Arizona.

Neither that incident nor the 2005 e-mails to the Louisiana boy were forwarded to the ethics committee or the full membership of the bipartisan page board.

Mr. Reynolds learned of the Foley matter last spring from Rep. Rodney Alexander, a Republican of Louisiana, in the wake of press inquiries. Mr. Reynolds also discussed it with Majority Leader John Boehner, a Republican of Ohio. Mr. Boehner told a Cincinnati talk show that he discussed the problem with Mr. Hastert and had been assured that it “had been taken care of.”


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