Nelson Sweeps Editorial Endorsements
By Larry Lipman | Sunday, October 29, 2006, 11:26 PM
There are 22 daily newspapers in Florida.
All 22 have endorsed Bill Nelson for re-election to the U.S. Senate.
The first was The Palm Beach Post, the latest two on Sunday were The Orlando Sentinel and the Jacksonville-based Florida Times-Union.
The only newspaper that has endorsed Republican candidate Harris is ironically named the Polk County Democrat, published four days a week in Harris’ girlhood hometown, Bartow.
Schmidt considers nuke waste
BY HOWARD WILKINSON | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER
This doesn't happen every day: An incumbent member of Congress, in the middle of a re-election battle, says that storing nuclear waste shipments from around the world in her district may be a good idea.
U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt does say that, and her support for studying the idea has become an issue in her re-election campaign, especially in rural Pike County, in the far eastern end of her sprawling Southern Ohio District, where the nuclear wastes would be stored.
"I'm not advocating for it one way or the other," Schmidt told The Enquirer. "I'm saying it is something we need to look at."
Schmidt said she sees potential to create "hundreds, maybe thousands of jobs" in an economically distressed part of the state, where double-digit unemployment rates are the norm.
Schmidt has signed on to an effort by the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative (SODI) and a Cleveland-based company called SONIC to seek a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant of up to $5 million for a study of whether the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion plant should be a site for temporary storage and recycling of spent nuclear fuel rods. The 3,400-acre site near Piketon produced highly enriched uranium through the Cold War years for military purposes and for civilian reactors until 2001, when that activity was consolidated at the similar Paducah plant.
A decision on the grant could come this week.
The idea of nuclear waste storage on a site that is still being cleaned up from its previous use has infuriated environmentalists and neighbors of the plant in Pike County and nearby Scioto County, prompting a communitywide petition drive and vows to fight the storage plan to the bitter end.
That and the fact that Schmidt's Democratic opponent, Victoria Wulsin of Indian Hill, has come out against the idea, mean that the issue could have an impact on Schmidt's re-election - meaning it could help determine who represents 650,000 constituents from Greater Cincinnati to Portsmouth.
"All I can tell you is that when it became known that she supports this, every Jean Schmidt yard sign in the county went down overnight," said Geoffrey Sea, a writer whose home abuts the Piketon plant.
Menendez added to corruption lawsuit
Friday, October 27, 2006
By OSHRAT CARMIEL
STAFF WRITER
Complete coverage: Election 2006
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez has been added as a defendant in an ongoing lawsuit being brought against Hudson County by a Union City psychiatrist.
The revised federal suit, filed Wednesday by psychiatrist Oscar Sandoval, says that Menendez, as a congressman in the late 1990s, spearheaded a coordinated campaign by Hudson County officials to squeeze political donations and favors from Sandoval, a county contractor.
Sandoval is a controversial figure who was ensnared in a Hudson County corruption investigation that led to the conviction of former County Executive Robert Janiszewski in 2003.
Political pressure
The suit accuses Menendez and his political allies of pressuring Sandoval to give political contributions as a condition of keeping his psychiatric services contracts with Hudson County -- and a condition of getting new ones. The pressure came after they learned that the psychiatrist was an FBI informant in the Janiszewski corruption probe, the suit says.
The lawsuit also hitches Bergen County to the tangled ordeal. It claims that Menendez was playing a behind-the-scenes role in 1999 in awarding a contract to provide psychiatric services to the Bergen County Jail. The psychiatrist who made the proposal, however, did not get a contract.
The legal accusations come in the final sprint of an acrimonious -- and close -- U.S. Senate race between Menendez and Republican Tom Kean Jr., who has made Menendez's ethics the central issue in his campaign.
Crist Denies Trysts
GOP frontrunner: I have never had sex with a man
By Bob Norman
A young rising star in the Republican Party has boasted to witnesses of his sexual relationship with Charlie Crist, the frontrunner in the Florida governor's race who has repeatedly denied that he is gay.
The GOP staffer, 21-year-old Jason Wetherington, told friends at separate social functions in August that he had sex with Crist, according to two credible and independent sources who heard Wetherington make the claim first-hand.
Wetherington, who recently worked as a field director for U.S. Senate candidate Katherine Harris and currently works for state representative Ellyn Bodganoff's reelection campaign, also named a man whom he said is Crist's long-term partner, a convicted thief named Bruce Carlton Jordan who also recently worked for Harris in her long-shot Senate bid.
Jordan made headlines recently when the Miami Herald learned that the felon was working as Harris's travel aide. The newspaper noted that Jordan, 42, was reported to be close friends with Charlie Crist, whom he convinced to attend an annual Florida Funeral Directors Association meeting in 2003.
Jordan was charged in 2003 with stealing thousands of dollars from two organizations for whom he worked, including the Tallahassee-based Florida Funeral Directors Association, where he served as executive director. He completed a 60-day jail sentence in February and will be on probation until the year 2011, according to state records.
When the Herald questioned Crist about Jordan this past August, the frontrunner in the governor's race told the newspaper that he doesn't remember the man. "I don't know who Bruce Jordan is," he said at the time. "It doesn't mean I haven't met him. I don't know who you are speaking about."
I asked Crist during a phone interview on Monday morning if he had ever had sex with Jordan.
"No," he said. "I don't recall the name."
A federal judge sentenced a former Bush administration official to 18 months in prison in the Jack Abramoff lobbying case Friday — after delivering a 30-minute eulogy for good government in Washington.
"There was a time when people came to Washington because they thought government could be helpful to people," said U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman. "People came to Washington asking not what government could do for them and their friends but what they could do for the public."
David Safavian, the former chief of staff for the General Services Administration, was sentenced on obstruction and concealment charges for lying to investigators about his relationship with Abramoff.
Safavian wept in court as he asked for leniency, but Friedman said the ex-bureaucrat had become part of Washington's culture of corruption, where congressmen listen to campaign donors and lobbyists while farming out to staff members the job of writing laws.
Abramoff, the once-powerful lobbyist, shook Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House when he pleaded guilty to corruption in January and began cooperating with an FBI investigation.
Washington D.C., October 26, 2006 - A CIA panel of experts concluded in 1997 that North Korea was likely to collapse within five years, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive. This "Endgame" exercise of former U.S. policymakers, intelligence officers and outsider experts warned that the North Korean regime could not remain "viable for the long term," with the majority doubting the "current, deteriorating status could persist beyond five years." Citing the "steady, seemingly irreversible economic degradation in the North," the panel concluded that "the current situation in North Korea appears beyond corrective actions that do not fundamentally threaten the regime's viability."
WASHINGTON - A land deal involving Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., is being scrutinized by the U.S. attorney's office in Arizona, a law enforcement official in Washington said Tuesday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity while the inquiry is ongoing, said the investigation has been under way for a few months and is still in its very early stages.
The official did not specify what land deal was under investigation.
A spokesman for the Arizona U.S. attorney, Paul Charlton, said he could not confirm or deny an investigation was under way.
Renzi also declined to comment, referring questions to his lawyer, former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods. The lawyer late Tuesday said Renzi was not aware of any investigation and had not been contacted by the U.S. attorney's office.
At least one transaction involving Renzi has raised questions in Arizona recently.
Records and officials involved in the October 2005 deal say Renzi helped promote the sale of land that netted a former business partner $4.5 million.
Jack Abramoff, the lobbying scandal figure, has become such a chatty rat that probe insiders say he's been given a desk to work at in the FBI. We're told he spends up to four hours a day detailing his shady business to agents eager to nail more congressmen in the scandal. And when cooperative witnesses spend that much time inside, they get a desk. As a result of his help in the ever expanding investigation, we hear that the Feds hope to keep him in a nearby prison after he's sentenced on his conspiracy admission.
Did a Democratic member of Congress improperly enlist the support of a major pro-Israel lobbying group to try to win a top committee assignment? That's the question at the heart of an ongoing investigation by the FBI and Justice Department prosecutors, who are examining whether Rep. Jane Harman of California and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) may have violated the law in a scheme to get Harman reappointed as the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, according to knowledgeable sources in and out of the U.S. government.
The sources tell TIME that the investigation by Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has simmered out of sight since about the middle of last year, is examining whether Harman and AIPAC arranged for wealthy supporters to lobby House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Harman's behalf.
It's not that Lamont has overperformed, or that Joe has melted down, it's that Connecticut Election 2006 has gone off the deep end. It's not your normal white picket fence suburban election, with attack ad facing attack ad. No, this is more like a white picket fence election that suddenly gets bored with life and decides to live in the forest, take a bunch of LSD, trout-fish naked, and taunt a bear cub before ending its life suddenly and with total and inexplicable resolution on November 7.
Bush Accepts Iraq-Vietnam Comparison
George Stephanopoulos Interviews President Bush on Iraq, the Midterms and His Legacy
By ED O'KEEFE
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18, 2006 — - President Bush said in a one-on-one interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that a newspaper column comparing the current fighting in Iraq to the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, which was widely seen as the turning point in that war, might be accurate.
Stephanopoulos asked whether the president agreed with the opinion of columnist Tom Friedman, who wrote in The New York Times today that the situation in Iraq may be equivalent to the Tet offensive in Vietnam almost 40 years ago.
"He could be right," the president said, before adding, "There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election."
"George, my gut tells me that they have all along been trying to inflict enough damage that we'd leave," Bush said. "And the leaders of al Qaeda have made that very clear. Look, here's how I view it. First of all, al Qaeda is still very active in Iraq. They are dangerous. They are lethal. They are trying to not only kill American troops, but they're trying to foment sectarian violence. They believe that if they can create enough chaos, the American people will grow sick and tired of the Iraqi effort and will cause government to withdraw."
Bush said he could not imagine any circumstances under which all U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Iraq before the end of his presidency.
"You mean every single troop out? No," he told Stephanopoulos.
Burns, however, said the U.S. does need to change its military tactics there. “If we don’t change, we’ll pay a heavy price, but we cannot afford to lose it,” he said.
Tester said that Burns has finally admitted that his “stay the course” position in Iraq is wrong and welcomed the senator to his own side.
For nearly a year, Tester has called on Bush to develop a plan to remove U.S. troops from Iraq. Burns has criticized Tester’s position as “cut and run.”
“We’re in a quagmire over there,” Tester said.
Burns told Tester firmly not to put him in the Democrat’s camp on the issue.
“I said we’ve got to win,” Burns said. “He wants us to pull out. He wants everyone to know our plan. That’s not smart.
“He says our president don’t have a plan. I think he’s got one. He’s not going to tell everyone in the world.”
Many in the crowd, which was dominated by Tester supporters, openly laughed at Burns’ claim that Bush has a plan.
Tester said Bush’s only plan is staying the course in Iraq at considerable sacrifices to U.S. troops and the federal treasury.
“We went in under false pretenses,” Tester said. “We pulled the troops from Afghanistan and put them in Iraq. Osama bin Laden is still running free.”
The war is costing the U.S. billions of dollars a year that could be better spent on helping middle-class families and small businesses, the challenger said.
Tester said he is not for “telling our opponents what we’re going to do. The fact is, we don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Replied Burns: “We’re not going to tell you what our plan is, Jon, because you’re just going to go out and blow it.”
Immediately following the debate, Tester campaign spokesman Matt McKenna likened Burns’ claim of a Bush plan to President Nixon’s secret plan in 1972 to end the war in Vietnam.
The Burns campaign spokesman Jason Klindt, however, said there is no secret plan. President Bush has said from the start that he wants to empower Iraqis to govern their own country.
Federal agents raided the homes of Rep. Curt Weldon's daughter and one of his closest political supporters yesterday as part of an investigation into whether the veteran Republican congressman used his influence to benefit himself and his daughter's lobbying firm, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
The investigation focuses on actions the Pennsylvania congressman took that may have aided clients of the business created by his daughter, Karen Weldon, and longtime Pennsylvania political ally Charles Sexton, according to three of the sources.
A grand jury, impaneled in Washington in May, has obtained evidence gathered over at least four months through wiretaps of Washington area cellphone numbers and has scrutinized whether Weldon received anything of value, according to the sources. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.
The investigation focuses on Weldon's support of the Russian-managed Itera International Energy Corp., one of the world's largest oil and gas firms, while that company paid fees to Solutions North America, the company that Karen Weldon and Sexton operate.
KOOKY KOREAN TO LOSE BOOZE
U.S.: CUT OFF KIM'S HOOCH
October 10, 2006 -- The United States moved quickly yesterday to seek tough U.N. sanctions against North Korea - including an export ban that would cut off alcohol-guzzling Kim Jong Il's flow of his beloved top-shelf booze.
The U.S. plan for hard-hitting sanctions against the rogue communist nation came as world leaders joined the international outcry against Kim's underground test Sunday night of a nuclear weapon.
The Bush administration urged the United Nations to take urgent steps, including:
* Banning sales of military hardware to North Korea,
* Inspecting all cargo entering or leaving the country, and
* Freezing assets connected with its weapons programs.
But it was a ban on countries exporting "luxury" items to North Korea that would hit Kim the hardest - right in his prodigious liquor cabinet, stocked with the world's best libations.
The often-drunk Pyongyang dictator is known for his huge consumption of pricey French wines, Johnnie Walker scotch and the finest cognac.
He is said to spend an astounding $650,000 a year just for Hennessy cognac, and the basement of his official residence is a wine cellar with nearly 10,000 bottles of one of France's most famous exports. And those foreigners who have spent time with Kim say his thirst is never sated. Reaction to Kim's boast of a successful nuclear test was swift at the U.N. Security Council.
George W. pulled Bandar aside.
"Bandar, I guess you're the best asshole who knows about the world. Explain to me one thing."
"Governor, what is it?"
"Why should I care about North Korea?"
Bandar said he didn't really know. It was one of the few countries that he did not work on for King Fahd.
"I get these briefings on all parts of the world," Bush said, "and everybody is talking to me about North Korea."
"I'll tell you what, Governor," Bandar said. "One reason should make you care about North Korea."
"All right, smart aleck," Bush said, "tell me."
"The 38,000 American troops right on the border." Most of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division was deployed there, along with thousands of other Army, Navy and Air Force personnel. "If nothing else counts, this counts. One shot across the border and you lose half these people immediately. You lose 15,000 Americans in a chemical or biological or even regular attack. The United State of America is at war instantly."
"Hmmm," Bush said. "I wish those assholes would put things just point-blank to me. I get half a book telling me about the history of North Korea."
"Now I tell you another answer to that. You don't want to care about North Korea anymore?" Bandar asked. The Saudis wanted America to focus on the Middle East and not get drawn into a conflict in East Asia.
"I didn't say that," Bush replied.
"But if you don't, you withdrawl those troops back. Then it becomes a local conflict. Then you have the whole time to decide, 'Should I get involved? Not involved?' Etc."
At that moment, Colin Powell approached.
"Colin," Bush said, "come here. Bandar and I were shooting the bull, just two fighter pilots shooting the bull." He didn't mention the topic.
"Mr. Governor," Bandar said, "General Powell is almost a fighter pilot. He can shoot the bull almost as good as us."
Disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley had two excellent job offers in the private sector this year when Rep. Tom Reynolds, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, talked him into seeking a seventh term.
Although Reynolds says Foley was merely deciding whether to run again, the talk in Republican circles on Capitol Hill was that he was ready to leave Congress. His inappropriate e-mails to a former page were known to the Republican leadership late last year. The 16th Congressional District was considered so safely Republican that any GOP candidate could carry it but now likely will be lost with Foley still on the ballot.
SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- North Korea on Monday claimed it has performed a successful nuclear test, according to that country's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
South Korean government officials also said North Korea performed its first nuclear test, the South's Yonhap news agency reported.
The apparent nuclear test was conducted at 10:36 a.m. (0136 GMT) in Hwaderi near Kilju city, Yonhap reported, citing defense officials.
"The field of scientific research in the DPRK (North Korea's official name) successfully conducted an underground nuclear test under secure conditions on October 9 ... at a stirring time when all the people of the country are making a great leap forward in the building of a great prosperous powerful socialist nation," KCNA reported.
Late Sunday in Washington, a U.S. military official told CNN that "something clearly has happened," but the Pentagon was working to fully confirm the report.
Senior U.S. officials said they also believed the test took place, citing seismic data that appeared to show one.
South Korean intelligence officials said a seismic wave of magnitude-3.58 had been detected in North Hamkyung province, according to Yonhap.
A Republican congressman knew of disgraced former representative Mark Foley's inappropriate Internet exchanges as far back as 2000 and personally confronted Foley about his communications.
A spokeswoman for Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) confirmed yesterday that a former page showed the congressman Internet messages that had made the youth feel uncomfortable with the direction Foley (R-Fla.) was taking their e-mail relationship. Last week, when the Foley matter erupted, a Kolbe staff member suggested to the former page that he take the matter to the clerk of the House, Karen Haas, said Kolbe's press secretary, Korenna Cline.
The revelation pushes back by at least five years the date when a member of Congress has acknowledged learning of Foley's behavior with former pages. A timeline issued by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) suggested that the first lawmakers to know, Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.), the chairman of the House Page Board, and Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), became aware of "over-friendly" e-mails only last fall. It also expands the universe of players in the drama beyond members, either in leadership or on the page board.
A source with direct knowledge of Kolbe's involvement said the messages shared with Kolbe were sexually explicit, and he read the contents to The Washington Post under the condition that they not be reprinted. But Cline denied the source's characterization, saying only that the messages had made the former page feel uncomfortable. Nevertheless, she said, "corrective action" was taken. Cline said she has not yet determined whether that action went beyond Kolbe's confrontation with Foley.
Despite claims by senior congressional aide Kirk Fordham that he notified House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office more than two years ago about possible inappropriate contact between former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., and underage congressional pages, the Speaker's office insists it did nothing wrong in the way it handled the investigation.
"That never happened," Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean told ABC News.
But Fordham, who resigned as Foley's chief of staff to work for another member of the GOP leadership, Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., said that as far back as 2003, Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, had been told that Foley was too friendly with pages. According to Fordham, Palmer spoke to Foley about the matter.
Neither Foley nor Palmer could be reached for comment, yet Hastert's office disputes the account.
"What Kirk Fordham said did not happen."
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's chief of staff confronted then-Rep. Mark Foley about his inappropriate social contact with male pages well before the speaker said aides in his office took any action, a current congressional staff member with personal knowledge of Foley and his behavior with pages said yesterday.
The staff member said Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, met with the Florida Republican at the Capitol to discuss complaints about Foley's behavior toward pages. The alleged meeting occurred long before Hastert says aides in his office dispatched Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.) and the clerk of the House in November 2005 to confront Foley about troubling e-mails he had sent to a Louisiana boy.
The staff member's account buttresses the position of Foley's onetime chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, who said earlier this week that he had appealed to Palmer in 2003 or earlier to intervene, after Fordham's own efforts to stop Foley's behavior had failed. Fordham said Foley and Palmer, one of the most powerful figures in the House of Representatives, met within days to discuss the allegations.
Palmer said this week that the meeting Fordham described "did not happen." Timothy J. Heaphy, Fordham's attorney, said yesterday that Fordham is prepared to testify under oath that he had arranged the meeting and that both Foley and Palmer told him the meeting had taken place. Fordham spent more than three hours with the FBI on Thursday, and Heaphy said that on Friday he contacted the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to offer his client's cooperation.
"We are not preparing to cooperate. We are affirmatively seeking to," Heaphy said.
Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean declined to directly comment on the second House staff member's assertion, saying that it is a matter for a House ethics committee investigation. "The Standards Committee has asked that no one discuss this matter because of its ongoing investigation," Bonjean said.
When asked about a groundswell of discontent among the GOP's conservative base over his handling of the issue, Hastert said in the phone interview: "I think the base has to realize after a while, who knew about it? Who knew what, when? When the base finds out who's feeding this monster, they're not going to be happy. The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by [liberal activist] George Soros."
He went on to suggest that operatives aligned with former President Bill Clinton knew about the allegations and were perhaps behind the disclosures in the closing weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections, but he offered no hard proof.
"All I know is what I hear and what I see," the speaker said. "I saw Bill Clinton's adviser, Richard Morris, was saying these guys knew about this all along. If somebody had this info, when they had it, we could have dealt with it then."
Comments that Hastert made in a Tribune interview suggesting the scandal had been orchestrated by ABC News, Democratic political operatives aligned with the Clinton White House and liberal activist George Soros were considered a serious misstep in national Republican circles, an official said. Senior Republican officials contacted Hastert's office before his news conference Thursday to urge that he not repeat the charges, and he backed away from them in his news conference.
"The Chicago Tribune interview last night--the George Soros defense--was viewed as incredibly inept," a national Republican official said. "It could have been written by [comedian] Jon Stewart."
"Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings" - Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II
ZAHN: So, Dana, let's talk about Speaker Hastert's allegation, that, in some way, Democratic operatives and ABC News are behind the dumping of the documents, even going so far to say that Bill Clinton had something to do with this. Is there any proof of that?
BASH: No, there isn't any proof of that.
And the -- the speaker's office is saying that they -- they haven't been able to back that up. He also went after George Soros as well. George Soros, in the last campaign, did a lot of funding for Democratic causes and campaigns.
Essentially, what he is trying to do, and what he did today, Paula, as you mentioned, is take it to a whole 'nother level, is throw red meat to the Republican base. He even said today, point blank, that, when the base finds out who's feeding this monster, they're not going to be happy.
So, he's trying to -- to -- to say: Look, don't be mad at me. You know, it -- it's not necessarily us. It's the -- the Democrats who are trying to raise this at this time, in order to -- to hurt us in the election.
Having said that, I talked to several Republicans today, who said that might be a good argument, but it shouldn't be coming from the speaker himself. That really is not necessarily going to play well, especially with some conservatives, who say: Look, the bottom line is, you didn't do enough to -- to protect young boys, essentially, on Capitol Hill.
ZAHN: Sure.
BASH: And that's what matters here.
If the wing nuts are right for a change and this really was a Democratic covert operation (it would be churlish to call it a dirty tricks operation, since it's all true) it's the best one I've ever seen. Which, knowing the Democrats, is a pretty good reason for believing it's NOT their doing.
THIS column is directed entirely to the sleazy, skuzzy, unprincipled and entirely Machiavellian Democratic political operative who helped design the careful plan resulting in the fingerprint-free leak of Mark Foley e-mails:
Bravo!
This whole Foley business is one of the most dazzling political plays in my or any other lifetime - like watching an unassisted triple play or a running back tossing a 90-yard touchdown pass on a double-reverse.
WASHINGTON — House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster, FOX News has learned.
"The data suggests Americans have bailed on the speaker," a Republican source briefed on the polling data told FOX News. "And the difference could be between a 20-seat loss and 50-seat loss."
Former Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) interrupted a vote on the floor of the House in 2003 to engage in Internet sex with a high school student who had served as a congressional page, according to new Internet instant messages provided to ABC News by former pages.
Three more former congressional pages have come forward to reveal what they call "sexual approaches" over the Internet from former Congressman Mark Foley.
The pages served in the classes of 1998, 2000 and 2002. They independently approached ABC News after the Foley resignation through the Brian Ross & the Investigative Team's tip line on ABCNews.com. None wanted their names used because of the sensitive nature of the communications.
Hastert had hoped to announce the bipartisan appointment of former FBI director Louis J. Freeh to look into ways to improve the page program, in which teenagers live in a Capitol Hill dorm and attend a special school. But when he called Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) early in the afternoon, she declined to go along with the plan.
Pelosi saw the Freeh proposal as a ploy to burnish the GOP's image, aides said. She told the speaker that investigators should examine whether existing rules and procedures were followed before the House considers new rules, the aides said.
At a minimum, I expect that aide to be out of a job before Election Day, because he just brought the whiff of scandal onto his boss, who is in the middle of a tough re-election campaign which will now draw the attention of the national political press corps.
Like so many, I feel betrayed by Mark Foley's indefensible behavior. Again, I will not allow the Democrats to make me a political issue in my boss's race, and I will fully cooperate with the ongoing investigation."
Those sources said Fordham, a former chief of staff for Congressman Mark Foley, had urged Republican leaders last spring not to raise questionable Foley e-mails with the full Congressional Page Board, made up of two Republicans and a Democrat.
"He begged them not to tell the page board," said one of the Republican sources.
A senior congressional aide said Wednesday that he alerted House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office two years ago about worrisome conduct by former Rep. Mark Foley with teenage pages.
Kirk Fordham told The Associated Press that when he was told about Foley's inappropriate behavior toward pages, he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene."
The conversations took place long before the e-mail scandal broke, Fordham said, and at least a year earlier than members of the House GOP leadership have acknowledged.
A senior party aide said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who oversees the congressional intern program at the center of the scandal, could be forced out after the November 7 elections, instead of immediately, as has been urged by some critics. Hastert has said he intends to stay on the job.
"Looks like right now he will keep his job for a maximum of one and one-half months," said a top party aide, adding that in the meantime Hastert may fire some staffers. Other aides said it remained unclear how long he would stay.
WASHINGTON — Years before sexually explicit electronic messages sent by Rep. Mark Foley to teenage House pages became public last week, some on Capitol Hill say, the Florida Republican was known to have a special interest in younger men.
In interviews with the Los Angeles Times, several current and former congressional employees and others said they recalled Foley approaching young male pages, aides and interns at parties and other venues.
"Almost the first day I got there I was warned," said Mark Beck-Heyman, a San Diego native who served as a page in the House of Representatives in the summer of 1995. "It was no secret that Foley had a special interest in male pages," said Beck-Heyman, adding that Foley, who is now 52, on several occasions asked him out for ice cream.
Another former congressional staff member said he too had been the object of Foley's advances. "It was so well known around the House. Pages passed it along from class to class," said the former aide, adding that when he was 18 a few years ago and working as an intern, Foley approached him at a bar near the Capitol and asked for his e-mail address.
WASHINGTON TIMES ON TUESDAY WILL CALL FOR SPEAKER HASTERT'S RESIGNATION, NEWSROOM SOURCES TELL DRUDGE... DEVELOPING... Editorial titled: 'Resign, Mr. Speaker': 'House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once... Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance'... -- Washington Times, October 3, 2006...
The following is available in doc dump two, page 26:
From: Jack Abramoff
To: 'octagon1'
Monday, March 18, 2002 8:31 AM
Subject: RE: Sunday
I was sitting yesterday with Karl Rove, Bush's top advisor, at the NCAA basketball game, discussing Israel when this email came in. I showed it to him. It seems that the President was very sad to have to come out negatively regarding Israel, but that they needed to mollify the Arabs for the upcoming war on Iraq. That did not seem to work anyway. Bush seems to love Sharon and Israel, and thinks Arabfat [sic], is nothing but a liar. I thought I'd pass that on.
