FBI Examines Congressman’s E-Mails to Boys

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The New York Sun

WASHINGTON — The FBI is examining former Rep. Mark Foley’s e-mail exchanges with teenagers to determine if they violated federal law, an agency spokesman said yesterday. An FBI spokesman, Richard Kolko, said the FBI is “conducting an assessment to see if there’s been a violation of federal law.” He had no further comment.

The House speaker, Rep. Dennis Hastert, also requested yesterday that the Justice Department conduct an investigation into Mr. Foley’s electronic messages to teenage boys — a lurid scandal that has put House Republicans in political peril.”As Speaker of the House, I hereby request that the Department of Justice conduct an investigation of Mr. Foley’s conduct with current and former House pages to determine to what extent any of his actions violated federal law,” Mr. Hastert, a Republican of Illinois, wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

White House counselor Dan Bartlett called the allegations against Mr. Foley shocking. He said President Bush hadn’t learned of Mr. Foley’s inappropriate emails to a 16-year-old boy and instant messages to other boys before the news broke last week. Mr. Bartlett said House leaders were pursuing the matter aggressively enough that an independent outside investigation was not warranted. “There is going to be, I’m sure, a criminal investigation into the particulars of this case,” he said. “We need to make sure that the page system is one in which children come up here and can work and make sure that they are protected.”

Mr. Foley, a Republican of Florida, quit Congress on Friday after the disclosure of the e-mails he sent to a former congressional page and sexually suggestive instant messages that he sent to other highschool pages. The Democratic leader, Senator Reid of Nevada, called the Foley case “repugnant, but equally as bad is the possibility that Republican leaders in the House of Representatives knew there was a problem and ignored it to preserve a congressional seat this election year.”

Mr. Reid said the case should be handled outside Congress.

“Under laws that Congressman Foley helped write, soliciting sex from a minor online is a federal crime,” Mr. Reid said. “The alleged crimes here are far outside the scope of any congressional committee, and the attorney general should open a full-scale investigation immediately.”

The House speaker, Rep. Hastert, a Republican of Illinois, maintained at first that he had learned only last week about the e-mails. But the head of the House Republican election effort, Rep.Thomas Reynolds, said Saturday that he had told Mr. Hastert months ago about concerns that Mr. Foley sent inappropriate messages to a teenage boy. Mr. Reynolds, a Republican of New York, is under attack from Democrats who say he did too little to protect the boy. Mr. Hastert acknowledged over the weekend that his aides had referred the matter to the House clerk and to the congressman who was chairman of the board that oversees the page program. Mr. Hastert’s office said, however, it had not known the e-mails were anything more than “over-friendly.”

Majority Republicans engineered a House vote Friday that refers the Foley matter to the House ethics committee but lets that panel decide whether an investigation should be conducted. The House Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, pressed the committee yesterday to begin investigating and make a preliminary report within 10 days. She demanded to know who knew of the messages, whether Mr. Foley had other contacts with pages, and when the Republican leadership was notified of Mr. Foley’s conduct.

“Republican leaders have admitted to knowing about Mr. Foley’s outrageous behavior for six months to a year, and they chose to cover it up rather than to protect these children,” she wrote. Congressional pages, a staple of Washington politics since the 1820s, are high-school students who serve as temporary gofers in the House and Senate. The program nearly ended in the early 1980s due to alleged sexual misconduct and drug use. Republican leaders say it is their duty to ensure House pages’ safety, and they are now creating a toll-free hot line for pages and their families to call to confidentially report any incidents.They also will consider adopting rules on communications between lawmakers and pages. House Democrats said that wasn’t enough.

“This should be investigated objectively. I think the Democratic leadership should have been told 10 months ago,” a top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jane Harman of California, said.”I gather that basically nothing was done except that Foley was warned.”

Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, said it was outrageous that the House GOP leadership had not acted sooner. “It really makes me nervous that they might have tried to cover this up,”he said. Mr. Murtha said the House ethics committee should conclude its work on the Foley case before the November elections so that voters can “hold people accountable.” Doing so, he said, might help restore public confidence, since already “the reputation of Congress under the Republican leadership is lower than used car salesmen.”

Mr. Foley, who is 52 and single, was cochairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus. In a statement Friday, he said, “I am deeply sorry, and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent.”


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