USA/FILE: Former Congressional page talks to FBI investigators as U.S. House Speaker says, if there was a cover-up, staff will be fired

A former U.S. Congressional page, Jordan Edmund, met with FBI investigators Tuesday (October 10) in Oklahoma City to answer questions about former Florida Congressman Mark Foley (Republican of Florida). Pages are secondary school students who spend a semester or an academic year working as interns in the U.S. House of Representatives. A congressional probe into Foley's unwanted advances on young male pages is also trying to determine if any other member of the U.S. House of Representatives demonstrated such behavior toward current or former teenage assistants. The 52-year-old Foley resigned his elected position as congressman September 29, shortly after sexually charged electronic communiqués - e-mail and instant messages - between Foley and pages leaked to the media. Another aspect of the investigation is about whether or not warnings about Foley's behaviour existed, and were acted upon by House leadership, well before before the scandal broke. Foley's former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, said he first alerted House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office about Foley's troublesome behaviour three years ago. Hastert's office denies it. On Tuesday, Hastert said that he just recently learned of Foley's behaviour, but would fire any staff who are found to have covered-up Foley's actions. "I look at this. I understood what my staff told me, and I think from that response they've handled it as well as they should. However, in 20-20 hindsight, probably could do everything a little bit better. But if there was a problem - if there was a coverup then we should find that out through the investigation process. They'll be under oath. Then, we'll find out. If they did cover something up then they should not continue to have their jobs. But I didn't think anybody, at any time, in my office did anything wrong. I found out about these revelations last Friday. That was the first information that I had about it," Hastert told reporters in Illinois, his home state. According to the U.S. Constitution, The Speaker of the House is second in line to the presidency, behind the vice-president, if a president has to be replaced. The White House is supporting Hastert to this point. While President Bush didn't comment on the issue on Tuesday, his spokesman Tony Snow only said, "The message is we're standing by the Speaker, and also being that I'm going to be telling people what the President's doing and why." The House Ethics committee investigating the cybersex scandal is asking House members to contact all young aides who worked for them to see if they had improper communication from the Florida lawmaker who resigned after sending inappropriate messages to underage boys, or from any other lawmaker. A letter indicating a wide-ranging investigation was signed by leaders of the ethics committee and distributed to House members' offices over the weekend. A copy of the letter was obtained by Reuters on Monday. An attorney for Foley has acknowledged that the former congressman is gay, but says Foley never had sexual contact with minors. Revelations of Foley's lurid Internet contacts with teenage boys have raised Democrats' hopes of winning control of the House and Senate from President George W. Bush's Republicans in the Nov. 7 elections. A Newsweek magazine poll found that 53 percent of those asked want Democrats to win control of Congress and 52 percent believe House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, covered up the Foley matter.

ITN Source | October 11, 2006

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