President Bush on
Wednesday called ex-congressman Mark Foley's conduct
regarding House male pages ''disgusting'' and expressed
support for Speaker Dennis Hastert's efforts to
determine how officials handled the problem. Bush's
remarks at a White House news conference came as Peggy
Sampson, supervisor of the page program, was questioned
before the House Ethics Committee. The panel is
investigating not only Foley's inappropriate and
sometimes salacious electronic messages to former pages
but also whether House officials covered up Foley's come-ons.
Sampson would not comment to reporters after the
more than two-hour closed session. The unique page
program allows high schoolers, sponsored by their
congressmen, to attend classes in the congressional page
school and work for legislators as errand-runners.
The committee also questioned Wren Ivester, who
is in charge of pages sponsored by Democratic lawmakers.
Asked about the scandal, Bush said, ''This is
disgusting behavior when a member of Congress betrays
the trust of the Congress and the family that sent a
young page to serve.'' And he defended Hastert, who said he
first learned of Foley's behavior in late September.
''I think the speaker's strong statements have
made it clear to not only the party...but to the
country that he wants to find out the facts,'' Bush
said. ''Denny is very credible as far as I'm concerned. He's
done a fine job as speaker.''
Foley sent e-mails and instant messages, some of
them sexually explicit, to male pages after they left
the program. A four-member investigative panel of the
ethics committee, which is evenly divided along party
lines, is sorting out conflicting accounts, including
whether Hastert's office learned of the Florida
Republican's inappropriate conduct in 2002, 2003, or
2005. All those years were mentioned, depending on who
is telling the story.
Kirk Fordham, Foley's onetime chief of staff, is
scheduled for questioning Thursday before the
investigative panel. He said he notified Hastert chief
of staff Scott Palmer in 2002 or 2003 about Foley's
inappropriate conduct and that he subsequently learned that
Palmer met with Foley.
An internal review released by Hastert's office
on September 30 says the first notice to Hastert's
aides about Foley wasn't until the fall of 2005 and
that it didn't come from Fordham. Rather, the review said,
it came from the office of Republican
congressman Rodney Alexander of Louisiana, after
the lawmaker learned of an overly friendly but not
sexually explicit e-mail from Foley to a page from
Alexander's state.
Palmer has publicly disputed Fordham's account.
It was not clear when the ethics committee will
question him.
The contradiction between the staff aides is
almost outdone by conflicting statements by two
members of Hastert's leadership team: Majority Leader
John Boehner of Ohio and House Republican campaign
chairman Tom Reynolds of New York.
Longtime conservative leader Paul Weyrich said
Tuesday that Hastert had assured him that Boehner was
wrong when he said that he had told Hastert months ago
about the page problem with Foley. ''As to Congressman
Thomas M. Reynolds, the speaker said, 'If he had
mentioned this problem to me, I surely would have
taken notice,''' Weyrich said in an e-mailed account of
a phone conversation with Hastert.
Weyrich quoted Hastert as saying that Reynolds
often came to him with requests to help incumbents in
trouble. ''The speaker said he signs off on the
majority of requests and only listens with one ear because
the requests are repetitive,'' Weyrich said.
''Did Reynolds during such a session drop the
bombshell about Foley in the speaker's lap without the
speaker's comprehending what was being told to him?
'That is possible but unlikely,' the speaker said. In any
case, he has absolutely no recollection,'' Weyrich said.
Boehner's spokesman, Kevin Madden, said slightly
different accounts were not surprising because the
events took place four months ago. A spokesman for
Hastert had no comment. A Reynolds spokesman, L.D. Platt,
said Hastert had already said he didn't recall the conversation.
The FBI, trying to determine whether any crimes
were committed, on Tuesday questioned a former page in
Oklahoma City who received salacious messages from
Foley. Former page Jordan Edmund and his attorney, Stephen
Jones, met with agents for 2-1/2 hours.
Retiring congressman Jim Kolbe of Arizona, the
only openly gay Republican House member, pushed the
time line on Foley's e-mails back to possibly 2001,
the earliest year in the timetable. Recounting his actions,
Kolbe said a former page contacted his office to
report receiving e-mails from Foley that made him uncomfortable.
''I was not shown the content of the messages
and was not told they were sexually explicit. It was
my recommendation that this complaint be passed along
to Representative Foley's office and the clerk who
supervised the page program. This was done promptly,''
he said. (Larry Margasak, AP)
