The problem arises that while they certainly knew Foley sent e-mail which seemed to be leading toward inappropriate behavior, did they know enough to take certain and swift action? Hindsight is 20/20.
Could it be the case that someone just knew "Foley e-mailed some kid and asked for a picture". Do you force someone to resign over that? If you've seen no other behavior that seems inappropriate, would you make a big deal over it? Might you feel that probably something hinky is going on, but you really can't prove it, the parents aren't worried enough to be making a stink, so maybe you're just overreaacting because you know Foley's gay? Maybe you tell an authority higher than you and make it his problem to deal with, but he doesn't have anymore info than you have.
With just the e-mails, or knowing about a couple of lines in the e-mails, it is somewhat gray.
You find out from Alexander's office that the boy was upset about the emails, you ask the boy some questions and determine that he knew exactly what was going on with the request for photos, and then you put that together with the fact that Foley is gay and then you ask him to retire with dignity. That's it. The end.
It's not complicated.
BASH: Hi, Fredricka. Well, that is -- that certainly has been the big question as part of the fallout from what happened, the surprising stunning news of what happened with Congressman Foley.
We knew yesterday that Tom Reynolds, the chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, who is in charge of getting Republicans elected this fall, he knew about this matter 10 to 11 months ago. And we have a statement now from Congressman Reynolds where he gives more detail about what he knew and what.
What he says is that Congressman Rodney Alexander, the congressman who sponsored the page in question, the page who had e- mail exchanges with Congressman Foley, that Congressman Alexander brought to the attention of Reynolds the existence of e-mails between Foley and the former page. And according to Reynolds' statement that we just got in, Reynolds says that he knew about the e-mails, he had not seen -- seen the e-mails, but he did tell the speaker of the House that he had this conversation and that he knew about these e-mails. That is what is interesting and noteworthy about this particular piece, this particular development, which is that Tom Reynolds knew about this, but that he also informed the speaker.
This is something that we're certainly looking into because until now, the speaker of the House and his office had made very clear the speaker was surprised by this news when it all came out yesterday.
WHITFIELD: Right.
BASH: The other thing the statement says, Fredricka, I should mention is that when Congressman Reynolds was informed about this he also was informed that the matter was being taken up by the board, by the Page Board, and that the parents of this boy made clear, apparently, that they didn't want this matter further pursued. WHITFIELD: All right. Dana Bash, thank you so much. Very interesting. And we'll follow up on that, because we know that House Speaker Hastert has made it very clear within the past 24 hours that he has only as of recent learning about Mark Foley and these inappropriate e-mails taking place with teenage pages.
Dana Bash, thanks so much from Washington.