The Foley Dorm Incident

Loading

A new article yesterday on the Foley incident suggests either that the incident in which Foley supposedly was drunk and trying to get into the Pages dormitory was made up or covered up:

U.S. Capitol Police said yesterday that they have no record of an alleged incident in which then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) supposedly tried to enter a Capitol Hill dormitory for teenage pages.

The purported nighttime incident has been cited by lawmakers and a key witness in the scandal that involves Foley’s interactions with congressional pages and the House’s handling of the matter. Unlike sexually graphic electronic messages that Foley sent to teenage boys, evidence of the alleged dorm incident has proved elusive.

Yesterday, acting Capitol Police Chief Christopher M. McGaffin said his staff conducted electronic and hand searches of files covering several years but found no record of the alleged incident in which a drunken Foley supposedly was detained outside the pages’ dorm in 2003 or earlier.

“I can’t find anything that was written, in the way of a report, that would establish that that did occur,” McGaffin said in a telephone interview. “Having said that, I don’t know, maybe it occurred and there wasn’t a report generated.”

McGaffin said the search was complicated by the fact that he has received no details on when the alleged incident occurred and exactly what happened. “If, obviously, a crime was committed, a report would have been generated,” he said.

In a separate interview this week, Terrance W. Gainer — who was Capitol Police chief from June 2002 to April of this year — said he recalled no mention of such an incident during his tenure.

His former chief of staff believed the incident took place tho:

Sources familiar with the investigation say that former Foley chief of staff Kirk Fordham, who met with the House ethics panel Thursday, told members that he believes the alleged page dormitory incident took place, and that it was a sign that Foley was showing unseemly interest in teenage pages. Fordham has said he asked Hastert’s chief of staff, Scott Palmer, to intervene with Foley, and that Palmer reported he did so. Palmer has denied Fordham’s account.

In an Oct. 3 letter to House Clerk Karen L. Haas, Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) said a fellow GOP lawmaker had cited “rumors that there was an incident within the last several years when then-Congressman Foley in an intoxicated state was stopped by the Capitol Police from entering the Page Residence Hall.”

Well, if the incident did happen then I guess these two men, meaning Fordham and the head of the Page program Trandahl, did a good job of covering the thing up when they shouldn’t have.

But it certainly is possible this is a concocted event since we have no record by the police nor has anyone at the Dorm come forward to say they had witnessed this event. This could easily be another hit-piece.

As this article has cited, the Democrats had been shopping the emails around for sometime:

But there are indications that Democrats spent months circulating five less insidious Foley e-mails to news organizations before they were finally published by ABC News late last month, which prompted the leaking of the more salacious instant messages. Harper’s Magazine said yesterday that it obtained the five e-mails from a Democratic Party operative, albeit in May, long before the election season.

[…]”Are we saying that a 15-year-old child would’ve sat on e-mails that were XXX-rated for three years and suddenly spring them out right on the eve of an election? That’s just a little bit too suspicious, even for Washington, D.C.,” Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) said on “Fox News Sunday” last weekend. On the same day, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said he “never saw” the e-mails. “What you guys want to do is take your dirty laundry and throw it over the fence and try to blame other people,” he said.

Kinda funny coming from Emanuel, since he is one of the biggest Democratic “pit-bulls” out there. I find it hard to believe that a guy described as:

Banter with a U.S. President is nothing new to Emanuel; he was at Bill Clinton’s side as a political advisor inside the White House for six years and still talks strategy with him at least once a month. Now chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee-the operations center for House candidates (Washington nickname: “D-Triple C”)-Emanuel is applying rugged business discipline to the Democratic Party’s historic effort to wrest control of the U.S. House from the Republicans. Last year he recruited dozens of candidates to challenge GOP incumbents. This year he is holding feet to the fire to raise record amounts for the Democrats’ effort.

[…]Former President Clinton told FORTUNE he considers Emanuel “one of the top political minds in Washington,” a strategist who “favors the counterattack over the attack.” Clinton adds: “His politics are rooted in new ideas and old-fashioned values.” Former Bush economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who, as Congressional Budget Office director, worked with Emanuel, calls him the “real deal.” (Like Rostenkowski, Emanuel has a seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.)

[…]Conservative Republican Tom Cole, a U.S. Representative from Oklahoma, cited Emanuel’s ferocity in a recent letter to colleagues asking for their support in his own campaign to run the counterpart House GOP operation next term. “He’s dangerous,” says Cole, who calls Emanuel a friend. “He has a closing intensity. When he’s got a political kill in sight, he’s absolutely relentless.”

Knew nothing about this “scandal” when several Democrats were shopping this story around for months. If anything, he is probably pissed the thing was leaked too soon.

Then we have the recent internet investigation which uncovered the fact that two militant gay men were on a mission to destroy Foley, and at the sametime had connections to the software that runs the HillZoo.com site which is for Congressional Staffers, and the Congressional Club website for Congressional spouses.

Did these IM’s and emails come from there?

Either way you look at this thing, if they had planned on this being a October Surprise, they screwed the pooch badly.

Other’s Blogging:

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments