When I first read about the Foley scandal, he’d just resigned. That evening, on the news, Bryan Ross seemed as surprised as the rest of us. He’d reported the Emails Foley had sent a former Page in Louisiana asking personal questions, his age, and requesting a picture, including the boy’s comments, "sick, sick, sick…" After the emails were published, Ross received copies of explicitly sexual Instant Message transcripts from other former Pages. When confronted with these, Foley promptly resigned.
My first reading was just those early emails, which looked pretty bad to me, but then I already knew Foley had resigned when I read them. I wish I had seen them before knowing he’d resigned or hearing about the much more incriminating Instant Messages. I’d like to know what my reaction would have been, without knowing where this story was going. Why? Because, as things are turning out, this story was overlooked by a whole lot of people until the floodgates were finally opened. I think they would have set off my radar, but I can’t be sure.
It appears that the St. Petersburg Times, The Miami Herald, and Harpers had all seen the emails. Talkingpointsmemo, Americablog, The New Republic, The Hill, Roll Call, and Time magazine all knew of the story, though may have not seen the actual emails. All passed on the story. Even Bryan Ross of ABC put it on the back burner for a while. Once he published it, it broke like a twig in a matter of hours. How do we know about all of this? From Ken Silverstein of Harpers who details his magazine’s deliberations about the Foley story in Republicans Want to Turn Over a New Page.
Who called who?
I had assumed the original Emails had been reported to Rodney Alexander [R-Louisiana] by the ex-Page and his parents who received them. Apparently not:
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.
From this, I wondered who contacted Alexander, the Page himself? or a friend [the emails had the Page’s comments – "sick, sick, sick …"]? At some point, Alexander mentioned a reporter. And I, too, wonder why it stopped there.
Why was this story not published?
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.)
This is a big problem. It’s like the Priests, or sexual harassment in the workplace, or child abuse. People are afraid to report such things, afraid of being wrong. Everyone wants to pass the information along to someone else to report it. It’s like the cry, "Somebody needs to do something!" is really "Somebody else needs to do something." It wasn’t even a whole day, once this story became public, that it was confirmed from every direction and Foley was in his BMW headed home for sanctuary.
Who is to blame [after Foley]?
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.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. Certainly everyone who didn’t act on this information it to blame [which is a lot of people]. Silverstein and Harpers get a few points for publishing this article, though their motive is suspect [challenging the theory that this came from the Democratic National Committee]. But at least they wrote this article. I’m surprised we haven’t heard from Josh Marshall at TalkingPointMemo or John Aravosis at the AMERICAblog.
And then there’s the Washington Post story, History of Foley Messages’ Release Clarified by Players, venerating the Pages who came forward. It has a pretty big piece of information in it too.
Two of the news media’s sources of Mark Foley’s sexually explicit instant messages to former House pages said this week that they came forward to expose the Florida congressman’s actions, not to help the Democrats in the midterm elections.
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.
I presume that this story relates to the Harpers story, but it’s not at all clear. Where is the truth, unfettered by some twist to fit someone’s wish to apply their own meaning to that truth?
On the other hand, this Page who spoke to the Washington Post does sound like someone who is just telling the truth.
"I decided that it was in the best interests of kids in general, pages and my friends specifically that Foley be dealt with quickly and swiftly so that he couldn’t hurt anyone else," the Republican student wrote in his e-mail. "We’ve seen how long the Justice department and every other government bureaucracy can take to deal with criminal issues and abuse. I knew the media would be the fastest way to get Foley the justice he deserved."
As for The Post’s source, Foley’s initial response to the disclosure of the e-mails finally persuaded him to share his information, he said.
"When the first e-mails came out, Foley’s campaign came out saying it was all a well-timed Democratic smear. Those rumors were unfounded, and I knew that to be untrue," the Democratic former page said. Before the ABC News report, "we were reluctant to take on Congress as young politicos ourselves, but when first blows were made, there was no harm in coming forward," he added.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.