WASHINGTON — The House speaker, Rep. Dennis Hastert, said yesterday that no Republican leaders saw lurid Internet exchanges between former Rep. Mark Foley and underage high-school pages and that he would have demanded his ouster if he’d known about them.

“As a parent and speaker of the House, I am disgusted,” Mr. Hastert, a Republican of Illinois, told reporters after holding a meeting at the Capitol in the wake of the disclosure of the e-mails in 2003 to a page, which led to Mr. Foley’s resignation last Friday. The page’s home state was not immediately cited.

The speaker did not mention e-mail exchanges between Mr. Foley, a Florida Republican, and another page, from Louisiana, in 2005. Other House Republicans said they told Mr. Hastert about those exchanges months ago. Mr. Hastert has not disputed those accounts.

“Congressman Foley duped a lot of people,” Mr. Hastert said. “I’ve know him for all the years he has worked in this House, and he deceived me, too.”

Mr. Hastert described instant messages that Mr. Foley sent to a former page in 2003 as “vile and repulsive.”

Mr. Hastert and his leadership team have been working through the weekend to contain the fallout from the Foley case. He spoke to reporters yesterday after meeting with Rep. John Shimkus, also a Republican of Illinois, who chairs a panel of lawmakers that oversees the House page program.

Asked about the preliminary inquiry under way at the FBI into Mr. Foley’s actions, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told reporters yesterday afternoon, “We’re just beginning to look at it right now. I haven’t received a report.”

Officials were still trying to decide whether the Washington or Miami offices of the FBI would head the inquiry.

The congressional page program has traditionally been a starting point for young people interested in making a career of politics. The program currently has 72 House pages, 48 selected by Republicans and 24 by Democrats, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service. The Senate breakdown is 30 pages, 18 chosen by Republicans and 12 by Democrats.

Mr. Hastert, who did not take questions from reporters, called on any person who was aware of the 2003 instant messages to speak to law enforcement authorities. He said no Republican leader in Congress was aware of those exchanges until Friday, when ABC News reported that it had questioned Mr. Foley about them.

Leadership officials had been aware since last year of the 2005 e-mail exchange, which they described as “overly friendly” but did not include overtly sexual references. They said they did not follow up on them other than to instruct Mr. Foley to not communicate with the Louisiana page.

Mr. Hastert said the page program has inspired many generations of youths to go into public life and said their safety and protection has been a top priority.

“It is a trust, and as a parent and as the speaker of the House, I am disgusted that Congressman Foley broke that trust,” he said. Mr. Foley, 52, checked himself into an alcohol rehabilitation center over the weekend, his attorney said yesterday. In a statement, Mr. Foley said: “I strongly believe that I’m an alcoholic and have accepted the need for immediate treatment for alcoholism and other behavioral problems.”

Florida Republicans yesterday chose a member of the state legislature, Rep. Joe Negron of Stuart, to replace Mr. Foley as the party’s candidate for the state’s 16th congressional district, which covers an area north and west of Palm Beach.

In a letter sent Sunday, Mr. Hastert asked Mr. Gonzales to “conduct an investigation of Mr. Foley’s conduct with current and former House pages.”

A White House spokesman, Tony Snow, yesterday attempted to deflect the political repercussions of the Foley exchanges with pages, saying, “The House has to clean up the mess, to the extent there is a mess.”

“This does not affect every Republican in the United States of America, just as bad behavior on Democrats’ part is not a reflection on the entire party,” Mr. Snow added.

Mr. Shimkus, appearing with Mr. Hastert, said new measures would be implemented to keep pages safe and said they include a toll-free hotline for pages, former pages, and their families to confidentially report any incidents.

Mr. Shimkus called Mr. Foley’s behavior “deplorable.”

“The very thought of this behavior made me sick,” he said. “Mark Foley should be ashamed.”

Former Rep. Mark Foley, under FBI investigation for salacious e-mail exchanges with teenage congressional pages, has checked himself into rehabilitation facility for alcoholism treatment and accepts responsibility for his actions, his attorney said yesterday. The attorney, David Roth, would not identify the facility, but told the Associated Press in West Palm Beach, Fla., that Mr. Foley had checked in over the weekend.

Senator Allen and Rep. Heather Wilson, two Republicans in tight re-election contests, plan to donate to charities the contributions that they received from Mark Foley, the former congressman ensnared in an e-mail sex scandal.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which has received $550,000 from Foley since 1996, will keep its money, a committee spokesman, Carl Forti said.

“We will be using the money like every other contribution — to help elect Republicans across the country,” Mr. Forti said. Virginia’s Mr. Allen plans to give the $2,000 his campaign received from Mr. Foley last year. Ms. Wilson of New Mexico will donate $8,000 that she received between 1998 and 2002.

“We’re obviously, actively looking to give it to an appropriate charity or entity,” Mr. Allen’s campaign adviser, Dan Allen, said. Since he was elected in 1994, Mr. Foley has contributed $30,000 to congressional candidates. His contributions to the NRCC were his single largest political donations.

Returning money from scandal-plagued politicians has become common practice this election cycle amid a series of guilty pleas, investigations, and confessions of wrongdoing by lobbyists and members of Congress.

Among those whose contributions have found their way to charities are former House Republican leader Tom DeLay, disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, former Rep. Randy Cunningham, a Republican of California, and Rep. Bob Ney, a Republican of Ohio.