Former page: We knew about Foley 'for years'

Former page: We knew about Foley 'for years' By M.E. SPRENGELMEYER AND AMIE PARNES Scripps Howard News Service October 1, 2006 WASHINGTON — Sexually explicit messages from former Rep. Mark Foley to one former congressional page might be just the tip of the iceberg, the leader of an alumni association for former congressional pages told Scripps Howard News Service on Saturday.

While Foley resigned this week after published reports of "friendly" e-mails to one 16-year-old male page and the pending broadcast of more sexually explicit instant messages, similar graphic messages from him were received by at least three other teenage boys who once worked in the page program, said Matthew Loraditch, a Maryland college senior who runs the U.S. House Page Alumni Association's Internet message board.

Advertisement "I've known about them (messages) for several years now," he said Saturday.

"It was more like, 'Hey, look at this,' " said Loraditch, 21, who served in the page program in the 2001-02 session. "I don't think the people in question felt that uncomfortable. It was more, 'Ooh, look at that creepy guy.'

"It was definitely crossing-the-line stuff. The instant message stuff, and stuff I've seen and heard about, definitely couldn't be misconstrued" as merely "friendly" or innocent, Loraditch said.

Loraditch said during his time on Capitol Hill, Foley was one of the members of Congress who expressed what appeared to be a sincere interest in the young pages, often visiting the areas where they congregate in the corner of the House of Representatives chamber to chat or offer stories and advice.

Loraditch said he and other pages viewed Foley as gregarious and "flaky" at the time, and that he offered several of them, not including Loraditch, his personal e-mail when they were graduating from the program and saying goodbyes.

After Loraditch returned to Maryland and began attending college at Towson University, several male former pages told him they had received Internet messages that were similar to the graphic messages first reported by ABC News last week.

"At the age we were when those things happened, 16 or 17, when you see that kind of stuff, most people our ages know what's going on and know what's happening," Loraditch said. "You're not like a little kid who can be roped into that."

Loraditch said his friends all thought the messages were disturbing, but they did not report them, either because they did not think the messages posed a serious threat or because they might have worried about career consequences.

He added all his friends received the questionable messages only after they had graduated and left the program, when, theoretically, that would not raise the same in-house sexual harassment issues as if they had been sent when the former pages still worked for Congress.

"This all happened after we were outside the protective umbrella of all our supervisors, not when we were there," Loraditch said. "To me, that indicates some sort of thought process going on in Foley's mind."

The case has prompted many congressional leaders to talk about stepped-up vigilance to protect the young men and women who serve as congressional pages, who get an up-close look at Congress while doing messenger-like duties for lawmakers.

Loraditch is a big backer of the program for its one-of-a-kind educational benefits, and he believes none of the supervisors who run the program were aware of any inappropriate messages at the time.

"The supervisors I worked with, if any of them had been told, it would have been dealt with at the time promptly," he said. "All of our supervisors were great people. They love pages. Half of them were former pages, and they've got kids of their own. If they had known about it, it would have been dealt with."

In the wake of the Foley scandal, many pages worry the program could be altered drastically or eliminated in an overreaction intended to protect teenagers.

"The page program is a good program. I firmly believe that the program could not have done anything more to protect the pages," Loraditch said. "It all happened after we left and had done our service."

So what? Your linking him to the Church is incorrect.

What, you just went off on a far out limb claiming he was a Scientologist in post 157, just because he accepted a book.

But you can't take in the truth that he was known full out and out as a practicing Roman Catholic?

Heck, check his profile out at Wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Foley

Do a google search...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Roman+Catholic+%22Mark+Foley%22&btnG=Google+Search

He at least pretended to be Roman Catholic... deal with it. Just as I am not proud of some Southern Baptist doing junk like this, you take your lumps and face the fire that sin affects people. Foley was guilty of sins of the flesh and he pretended to be an outstanding member of Catholic church.

Goose Gander...

You really need to GOOGLE Steve Gobie, prostitute, to understand the entire story about Barney Frank.

******

A Montgomery school administrator since 1978 and former president of the county's association of elementary principals, Massaro relinquished his $67,975-a-year job less than a week after school officials finished investigating allegations that he had let prostitute Stephen L. Gobie into the school.

Gobie, who also has had a relationship with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), told the Washington Times last month that, for two months during the fall of 1987, he had used a telephone in a Chevy Chase guidance counselor's office at night to make appointments with prostitution clients. Gobie also said he and Massaro had a four-year relationship.

Massaro, who has been suspended with pay since Aug. 25, has been unavailable for comment.

School officials have refused publicly to divulge the findings from their investigation, conducted by the school system's personnel director. Pitt said yesterday only that the probe did not yield evidence of any criminal behavior by Massaro or any "improper conduct involving children or other staff members."

One knowledgeable source said, "What they found was {Gobie} used the building . . . . It must have been a relatively convincing case of it."

The OLD MEDIA (ABC NEWS) helped change the subject for Tim Mahoney...

9/20/06

"Rep. Mark Foley, challenger Tim Mahoney in legal battle"

http://tinyurl.com/l6tj4

******

ABC 'NEWS' to the rescue...

The Louisiana boy’s emails broke into the open last weekend, when a blogger got copies and posted them online. Later that week, on Thursday, a news blog at the website of ABC News followed suit, with the addition of one new fact: Foley’s Democratic opponent, Tim Mahoney, was on the record about the Louisiana boy’s emails and was calling for an investigation. That’s when we wrote our first story,for Friday’s papers.

After ABC News broke the story on its website, someone contacted ABC and provided a detailed email exchange between Foley and at least one other page that was far different from what we had seen before. This was overtly sexual, not something Foley could dismiss as misinterpreted friendliness. That’s what drove Foley to resign on Friday.

Foley’s Democratic opponent, Tim Mahoney, was on the record about the Louisiana boy’s emails and was calling for an investigation.

Who is C.R.E.W.?

One target of Republican criticism is Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the group that last year assisted former Rep. Chris Bell (D-Texas) in drafting an ethics complaint against DeLay, which resulted in an admonishment of DeLay from the ethics committee. At last week’s press conference, Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, said that DeLay should step down as majority leader.

From 1995 to 1998, CREW’s Sloan served as minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee under Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). Before that, Sloan served as the nominations counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.).

According to GOP research, Mark Penn, who had been a pollster for President Clinton, and Daniel Berger, a major Democratic donor, are on CREW’s board. Spokeswoman Naomi Seligman declined several requests to reveal the membership of CREW’s board, although she confirmed that Penn and Berger are members. Last year, Berger made a $100,000 contribution to America Coming Together (ACT), a 527 group that was dedicated to defeating Bush in the presidential election, according to politicalmoneyline.com, a website that tracks fundraising.

C.R.E.W. is one of four “public interest” organizations which the RNC has long identifed as major donors of George Soros richly-funded Open Society Institute. It is backing the risible Wilson/Plame civil suit against Cheney and others.

Sloan, 39, is executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a 3-year-old watchdog outfit that Republican congressional flacks commonly describe as a “Democratic front group.”

CREW, an unabashedly liberal organization

CREW had released an 89-page report profiling the 13 most ethically challenged House members beyond Tom DeLay. On Monday afternoon, Sloan wrote and filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics against Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, calling on the panel to investigate the insider-trading allegations that had emerged as a major story that weekend. Then, on Wednesday, the big one hit: DeLay was indicted.

“It’s like the perfect storm,” Sloan marvels. “There’s so much coming together at once it’s almost hard to believe it’s happening … . I think the confluence of all these stories really might change the political dynamics here.

In the past year, CREW shopped around to various members complaints against Congressmen Bob Ney of Ohio and Duke Cunningham of California;

“From the beginning, we wanted to be more aggressive than other good-government groups were,” explains Sloan. “I have a lot of respect for Public Citizen and Democracy 21 and Common Cause, but they don’t do what we do.” CREW aims for attention-grabbing rhetoric, and is usually the first outfit to draft ethics complaints, issue Freedom of Information Act requests, pursue lawsuits, or call for investigations when a scandal breaks. “People in Washington always worry about their words, in part because they’re always worrying in the back of their mind about their next job,” Sloan explains. “I don’t do that. I’m known, in fact, for having a bit of a big mouth.”

Sloan worked as a Democratic Hill aide in the 1990s.

Last year Sloan hired a deputy director, Naomi Seligman, from Media Matters for America; this year she hired a counsel and two more staffers. The board of directors consists of Louis Mayberg, president of a mutual-fund firm, Donna Edwards of the Arca Foundation, Philadelphia-based attorney and Democratic fund-raiser Dan Berger, and pollster Mark Penn.

From 1995 to 1998, CREW’s Sloan served as minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee under Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). Before that, Sloan served as the nominations counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.).

"For the longest time, we got no money from George Soros," says Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "We now get money from The Open Society Institute, and it is probably thanks to Bob Ney."

"We don't get money from Mr. Soros directly. We get it from the Open Society Institute," Sloan says.

Sloan wouldn't disclose exactly how much her group gets from Soros' Open Society Institute,

couldn't imagine a better way for Sloan's group "to further destroy any remaining credibility it has than by finally admitting it's funded by a convicted money launderer and proponent of drug legalization in George Soros.

George Soros," Soros spokesman Michael Vachon said of Ney. "Republicans have turned George into one of their bogeymen. They use him to raise money and scare people."

Vachon said Soros' foundation gives away $400 million each year to worthy causes

Billionaire George Soros has been working behind the scenes with liberal anti-Bush groups dominated by longtime Democrat activists.

Republican researchers have connected Soros, members of pressure groups posing as "government watchdog groups" and loaded with Democrat activists, and top Hill Democrats in the attacks on DeLay and the House Ethics Committee.

GOP research efforts are part of a Republican attempt to put a damper on what the paper described as "a media feeding frenzy" surrounding DeLay and allegations of his alleged improper conduct.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a group that last year assisted former Rep. Chris Bell, D-Texas, in drafting an ethics complaint against DeLay that resulted in a mild slap on the wrist for the GOP leader. At last week’s press conference, Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, said that DeLay should step down as majority leader.

Not surprisingly, from 1995 to 1998 Sloan served as Democrat minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee under Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. Before that, Sloan served as the nominations counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee under Delaware Democrat Sen. Joe Biden.

According to The Hill, GOP research also revealed that Mark Penn, a formed pollster for President Clinton, and Daniel Berger, a major Democratic donor, serve on CREW’s board. Spokeswoman Naomi Seligman refused to reveal the membership of CREW’s board, although she admitted that Penn and Berger are members.

Last year, Berger made a $100,000 contribution to America Coming Together (ACT), a 527 group that was dedicated to defeating George W.Bush in the presidential election, according to politicalmoneyline.com, a Web site that tracks fund-raising. According to records released by the Internal Revenue Service on Monday, March 21, 2005, and obtained by NewsMax.com, Soros Fund Management/George Soros gave the group a whopping $7.5 million in the 2004 election cycle.

http://tinyurl.com/me82y

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