Republicans Want to Turn Over a New Page

The Foley scandal is no “October Surprise”

Posted on Tuesday, October 10, 2006. By Ken Silverstein.

Sources

Leading Republicans, with the support of conservative media outlets, are charging that the Mark Foley scandal was a plot orchestrated by Democrats to damage the G.O.P.'s electoral prospects this November. According to the Washington Post, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert appeared on Rush Limbaugh's radio show and “agreed when the host said the Foley story was driven by Democrats ‘in some sort of cooperation with some in the media’ to suppress turnout of conservative voters” before the midterm elections.

Conservative talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt has said that Hastert had become the “target right now of the left-wing media machine,” and House Majority Leader John Boehner has charged that the release of the Foley documents so close to the elections “is concerning, at a minimum.” Meanwhile, accounts I've heard about the FBI's initial inquiries suggest the bureau is as interested in uncovering how the story came to public attention as it is in investigating Foley's actions.

The Republican leadership is lying when they claim that Democrats have engineered an “October Surprise”; there was never a plan undermine the G.O.P. or to destroy Hastert personally, as the speaker has vaingloriously suggested. I know this with absolute certainty because Harper’s was offered the story almost five months ago and decided, after much debate, not to run it here on Washington Babylon.

In May, a source put me in touch with a Democratic operative who provided me with the now-infamous emails that Foley had sent in 2004 to a sixteen-year-old page. He also provided several emails that the page sent to the office of Congressman Rodney Alexander, a Louisiana Republican who had sponsored him when he worked on Capitol Hill. “Maybe it is just me being paranoid, but seriously, This freaked me out,” the page wrote in one email. In the fall of 2005, my source had provided the same material to the St. Petersburg Times—and I presume to The Miami Herald—both which decided against publishing stories.

It was a Democrat who brought me the emails, but comments he made and common sense strongly suggest they were originally leaked by a Republican office. And while it's entirely possible that Democratic officials became aware of the accusations against Foley, the source was not working in concert with the national Democratic Party. This person was genuinely disgusted by Foley's behavior, amazed that other publications had declined to publish stories about the emails, and concerned that Foley might still be seeking contact with pages.

Though the emails were not explicitly sexual, I felt strongly that Foley's behavior was inappropriate and that his intentions were clear. Why would a middle-aged man ask a teenager he barely knew for his photograph, or what he wanted for his birthday? I contacted Foley and he strongly denied any ill intent. He told me there was “nothing suggestive or inappropriate” about his emails to the page, adding that if the page “was intimidated, that's regrettable.”

My theory about the emails was that Foley was throwing out bait to see if the teen would bite.(Clearly, I agree) I spoke to a Foley staffer who violently rejected that interpretation of the emails and who blamed the whole problem on the page, saying it was all a misunderstanding due to the young boy's overactive imagination. The staffer also said that Foley's motive in asking the page for a picture was entirely innocent: he merely wanted an image of the boy so he could remember him more clearly in the event that he wanted a job recommendation down the road. Needless to say, none of this sounded even remotely convincing.

I tried to contact the page who received Foley's emails and the boy’s parents, but got no reply to my inquiries. However, I did speak with another former page who'd had an unsettling encounter with Foley. “He was a lot more friendly than you'd expect a congressman to be,” this page told me. “He acted like he was a kid himself.” The former page said that on one occasion when he was still working on the Hill, Foley asked him and another page if he could accompany them to the gym, an invitation they declined because it made them uncomfortable. When the page mentioned the incident to a congressional intern who worked with the page program, he was told that Foley had a history of being too friendly with the pages, and it was suggested that it would be better to avoid Foley in the future.

Congressman Alexander's office declined to comment on the matter, apart from issuing a brief statement emailed to me on May 31 by press secretary Adam Terry: “When these emails were brought to our attention last year our office reviewed them and decided that it would be best to contact the individual's parents. This decision, on behalf of our office, was based on the sensitivity of the issue. Our office did, in fact, contact the parents, and we feel that they (the juvenile's parents) should decide the best course of action to take concerning the dialogue outlined in the emails.” I had a number of other questions I wanted to ask—for example, although the ex-page's parents were understandably concerned about their son's name coming out in the press, didn't Alexander's office have an obligation to make sure that Foley was not hitting on other kids?—but Terry did not reply to further requests for comment.

The final draft of my story—which did not name the ex-page who received Foley's emails—was set to run on June 2. “Foley's private life should, under most circumstances, be his own business, but in this case there is a clear question about his behavior with a minor and a congressional employee,” went the story’s conclusion. “The possibility that he might have used his personal power or political position in inappropriate ways, as the emails suggest, should be brought to public attention.”

We decided against publishing the story because we didn't have absolute proof that Foley was, as one editor put it, “anything but creepy.” At the time I was disappointed that the story was killed—but I must confess that I was also a bit relieved because there had been the possibility, however unlikely, that I would wrongly accuse Foley of improper conduct.

While Harper’s decided not to publish the story, we weren't entirely comfortable with the decision. A few weeks later I passed along the emails and related materials to several people who were in a position to share them with other media outlets. I subsequently learned that other people had the same information and were also contacting reporters. (By this point, my original source apparently had given up on getting the media to cover the story.)

Among those who received information about the story but declined to pursue it were liberal outlets such as Talkingpointsmemo.com, Americablog.com, and The New Republic (The Hill, Roll Call, and Time magazine also had the Foley story, though I'm not certain when it came to their attention.) [Update, October 10, 2006 2:00PM: Talking Points Memo did not have access to the emails—and it's possible that other publications named here did not either—but all, at minimum, were aware of the salient facts of the case.] Ironically, it was ABC—which just weeks ago was being defended by Republicans and attacked by Democrats for airing The Path to 9/11—that finally ran the story. The network obtained the emails from a person who is scrupulously non-partisan.

That was my experience of the Foley affair.

If this was all a plot to hurt the G.O.P.’s chances in the midterm elections, why did the original source for the story begin approaching media outlets a full year ago? If either of the Florida papers had gone to press with the story last year, or if Harper's had published this spring, as the source hoped, the Foley scandal would have died down long ago. A stronger case could be made that the media, including Harper’s, dropped the ball and inadvertently protected Foley and covered up evidence of the congressman’s misconduct.

The source who brought me the story didn't see it as a grand piece of electioneering. He viewed it as a story about one individual, Mark Foley, and his inappropriate and disturbing behavior with teenagers. The G.O.P. and its friends in the media are trying to concoct a conspiracy in order to divert attention from the failure of Republican officials to deal properly with Foley.

It is now absolutely clear that Foley was indeed a menace to kids working on Capitol Hill. In seeking to malign the parties who sought to expose his conduct, top Republicans reveal that they are far more outraged by the possibility that the scandal might harm their party’s prospects in November than they are by Foley's behavior.

 

Priest: I massaged young Foley naked

published Thursday, October 19, 2006

An elderly priest acknowledged Thursday that he was naked in saunas with Mark Foley decades ago when the former congressman was a boy in Florida, but denied that the two had sex.

The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, 72, speaking by telephone from his home on the Maltese island of Gozo, said a report in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune about their encounters was "exaggerated."

"We were friends and trusted each other as brothers and loved each other as brothers," Mercieca said. Asked if their relationship was sexual in nature, the priest replied: "It wasn't."

His comments came after the Florida newspaper published a story Thursday that quoted him as saying in an interview that he had an inappropriate two-year relationship with Foley in the 1960s that included massaging the boy in the nude, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth and being nude in the same room on overnight trips.

Mike Connelly, executive editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, said Thursday that the story is accurate, including the reference to a night in which Mercieca said he was in a drug-induced stupor due to a nervous breakdown and couldn't clearly remember what happened.

"The reporter talked to the priest four times yesterday and carefully reviewed his account, especially of the one night," Connelly said. "The story accurately reports what the priest said."

The 52-year-old Florida Republican resigned from Congress last month after his sexually explicit electronic messages to young male pages surfaced.

His lawyer said shortly after his resignation that Foley was an alcoholic, gay and had been molested as a boy by a "clergyman." Foley's civil lawyer, Gerald Richman, said the alleged abuser was a Catholic priest whose name he shared with state prosecutors Wednesday.

Richman did not return phone messaged left Thursday by the Associated Press. Foley's criminal defense lawyer, David Roth, declined to comment.

Earlier this month, Roth said: "Mark does not blame the trauma he sustained as a young adolescent for his totally inappropriate" e-mails and instant messages. "He continues to offer no excuse whatsoever for his conduct." (Why bring it up then?  Was it to say the molestation made him an alcoholic which then made him keen on teenage boys?)

Mercieca had worked at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lake Worth in 1967, according to church records. Foley would have been 13 at the time.

Mercieca told the AP in Rome that he and Foley would go into saunas naked when he was a priest in Florida and Foley was a parishioner, but he said "everybody does that." The priest also said he didn't think it was unusual to go on overnight trips with a young boy.

The newspaper reporter 'wrote many things that I didn't say,' Mercieca told the AP, his voice trembling and sounding feeble at times. 'He quotes me as saying I had one night stands with him. That's not true.'

Richard Sipe, a former priest who studies sexuality and the priesthood and has counseled abusive clergy and victims, said abusive priests typically deny that their activities were sexual, because they often convince themselves that only intercourse violates their vow of celibacy.

"It's a lack of development," said Sipe, who has testified on the subject before grand juries and at civil trials against dioceses. "This is not what an adult reasons about sex."

A study of five decades of clergy sex abuse claims, conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice for the U.S. bishops, found that most victims have been adolescent boys and that about 44 percent of the accused clergymen had more than one victim.

Matthew Doig, an investigative reporter with Sarasota Herald-Tribune who talked to Mercieca on Wednesday, said he did not record their phone conversations but he was "100 percent confident" his story was right.

According to Doig, Mercieca said he had been following the Foley story on CNN and then said, "Now it's his word against mine."

Doig asked him to explain. Mercieca told him details in Thursday's story.

In the newspaper article, Mercieca described several encounters that he said Foley might perceive as sexually inappropriate.

He was not quoted in the story as saying they had any "one night stands." However, the newspaper reported that he said there was one night when he was in a drug-induced stupor as he was suffering from a nervous breakdown and "there was an incident he says he can't clearly remember that might have gone too far."

Doig said Mercieca had called back three times after the initial conversation and had confirmed that paragraph but would not directly describe the behavior on that night, claiming it was obscured by many years and his use of tranquilizers and alcohol at the time.

Mercieca told the AP that at the time he knew the young Foley "I had a nervous breakdown and was taking some pills and alcohol and maybe I did something that he didn't like."

The priest said he based that statement on what he had seen on TV news accounts about the Foley case. Pressed for details about what Foley might not have liked, Mercieca said he couldn't remember because "it was a long time ago."

Foley "seems to have interpreted certain things as inappropriate. . . . I don't know what I did to him," the priest said. "I wonder why 40 years later he brought this up?"

He said the two became friends when he was assigned to Foley's parish, and he even had Christmas dinner at Foley's childhood home, with the boy's parents, one year.

Mercieca described Foley as "a very happy person and he knew how to do things."

"He was allegro," Mercieca said, switching from English to use a word in Italian that means "cheerful" or "merry."

"We would go to the movies," Mercieca said, adding another boy would sometimes come, although he couldn't remember the other boy's name.

Referring to the page e-mail scandal, the priest said: "I don't think there was a connection with our friendship and this thing now."

Mercieca brushed off other questions, saying he didn't remember much.

He said the last time he saw Foley was about 18 years ago when the two had dinner in a restaurant in Lake Worth, Fla.

Mike Edmondson, a spokesman for the state attorney's office in West Palm Beach, said an e-mail from Foley's attorney was received late Wednesday identifying the alleged abuser. He said the e-mail was being forwarded to the Archdiocese of Miami.

Mary Ross Agosta, an archdiocesan spokeswoman, declined to comment Thursday about Mercieca "until we receive the name ourselves." Agosta said she was frustrated with the way Foley's attorneys had handled the matter.

Edmondson said prosecutors would not be revealing the name, adding that law enforcement involvement at this point has ended.

"You've got to have a victim who wants to prosecute and Foley's attorneys have already said he doesn't want to prosecute, so that's sort of the end of it as far as law enforcement is concerned," unless other alleged victims come forward, Edmondson said Thursday.

Richman previously said the statute of limitations had expired for criminal charges. However, Edmondson said it is premature to say the statute of limitations has expired because the alleged abuser may have committed more recent crimes on other victims. (Frances D'Emilio with Phil Davis, AP)

 

NYTimes

October 26, 2006

Rights Group Fires Publisher of Foley E-Mail

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 — A liberal gay rights group said Wednesday that one of its employees, acting anonymously, had created the Web site that first published copies of unusually solicitous e-mail messages to teenagers from former Representative Mark Foley, which led to his resignation.

A spokesman for the group, the Human Rights Campaign, said it first learned of its employee’s role this week and immediately fired him for misusing the group’s resources. The scandal surrounding Mr. Foley, a Florida Republican, has been a burdensome distraction for members of his party in the month before the midterm elections, and some Republicans have speculated that the e-mail messages were planted by a Democrat.

The rights campaign’s spokesman, David Smith, said the employee, whose name he declined to disclose, was a junior staff member hired last month to help mobilize the organization’s members in Michigan. “The minute we learned about it we took decisive action,” Mr. Smith said.

The Miami Herald and other news organizations have acknowledged obtaining copies of the same e-mail messages months ago but declining to publish them because of their potentially ambiguous contents.

After the messages appeared on the Web, at stopsexpredators.blogspot.com, the Web site of ABC News followed with its own independent report. The ABC News report resulted in the disclosure of more sexually explicit electronic messages that Mr. Foley sent to other former Congressional pages.

In the aftermath of the scandal, the creator of the sex predators Web site declined requests sent by e-mail to identify himself. Instead, he posted a message urging the news media to ask questions about “when the Republican leadership knew about it, what they did, how they were connected, what favors took place, etc.”

The posting continued: “The true hero here is the page who reported the e-mails in the first place.”

 And...