US ethics committee ready to investigate email scandal

The leader of the US House of Representatives’ job is on the line as members of the House ethics committee decide how to launch a credible investigation of former Congressman Mark Foley’s salacious computer messages to teenage pages.

An extraordinary political spectacle surrounded the committee’s first scheduled meeting in Washington today.

Republicans publicly blamed Speaker Dennis Hastert for failing to take action after he was warned about the messages, and a former Foley aide said he told party leaders about the Florida Republican’s conduct years earlier than they have acknowledged.

With Republicans concerned about maintaining their congressional majority in November elections, political support for Hastert was ebbing. Republican officials said at least a few disgruntled members of the party’s rank and file had discussed whether to call on the speaker to step aside.

Hastert told the Chicago Tribune last night that he has no thoughts of resigning. He blamed ABC News, which broke the Foley email story, and Democratic operatives for the mushrooming scandal.

The Justice Department, meanwhile, ordered House officials to preserve all records related to Foley’s electronic correspondence with teenagers. The request for record preservation is often followed by search warrants and subpoenas, and signal that investigators are moving closer to a criminal investigation.

Kirk Fordham, the former Foley aide, told The Associated Press that more than three years ago he had “more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene.” He declined to identify them, but officials said Scott Palmer, Hastert’s chief of staff, was one of them.

Palmer said through a spokesman: “What Kirk Fordham said did not happen.”

Fordham resigned yesterday as chief of staff to Congressman Thomas Reynolds, the House Republican campaign chief who says he alerted Hastert to concerns about Foley last spring.

Fordham disputed allegations that he covered up any misdeeds by Foley. “At no point ever did I ask anyone to block any inquiries,” said Fordham, who was Foley’s long-time chief of staff until leaving in January 2004.

Congressman Roy Blunt, third-ranking Republican leader, pointedly told reporters he would have handled the Foley matter differently than Hastert, had he known of it.

“I think I could have given some good advice here, which is, you have to be curious, you have to ask all the questions you can think of,” Blunt said. “You absolutely can’t decide not to look into activities because one individual’s parents don’t want you to.”

Ron Bonjean, Hastert’s spokesman, said the issue now rests with the ethics committee.

“We fully expect that the bipartisan panel will do what it needs to do to investigate this matter and protect the integrity of the House,” Bonjean said.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said the committee needed to question Hastert and the rest of the Republican leadership under oath.

“The children, their parents, the public, and our colleagues deserve answers and those who covered up Mark Foley’s behaviour must be held accountable,” Pelosi said.

Foley, 52, resigned last Friday after he was confronted with sexually explicit electronic messages he had sent teenage male pages, who work as messengers in Congress. He has since entered an alcohol rehabilitation facility at an undisclosed location. Through his lawyer, he has said he is gay, but denied any sexual contact with minors.

His abrupt departure and the ensuing sex scandal has shaken Republican confidence – and poll numbers – and plunged Hastert and others into an intensive effort to grapple with conflicting claims about what senior politicians knew, when they learned it and what they did about it.

In the November 7 elections, all 435 House seats and 33 of the 100 in the Senate are up for grabs, as well as 36 state governors.

Largely because of the Iraq war, probable voters are indicating to pollsters that President George Bush’s Republicans are likely to lose seats. Democrats could take control of the chamber by picking up 15 seats.