CLAIM: FILTHY FOLEY ONLINE MESSAGES WERE PAGE PRANK GONE AWRY

Drudge Report ^ | 10/5/07 | Drudge

[kcvl]

>XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU OCT 5 2006 2:53:48 ET XXXXX

CLAIM: FILTHY FOLEY ONLINE MESSAGES WERE PAGE PRANK GONE AWRY
**World Exclusive**
**Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**

According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very well, Edmund, a conservative Republican, goaded an unwitting Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos. The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives favorable to Democrats.

The primary source, an ally of Edmund, adamantly proclaims that the former page is not a homosexual. The prank scenario was confirmed by a second associate of Edmund. Both are fearful that their political careers will be affected if they are publicly brought into the matter.

The prank scenario only applies to the Edmund IM sessions and does not necessarily apply to any other exchanges between the former congressman and others.

The news come on the heels that Edmund has hired former Timothy McVeigh attorney, Stephen Jones.

Developing...

[RatsDawg]

If AOL didn't come out till October 1997, thats only 3 months it was actually available in 1997. We should find out when this page left the Hill in 1997 and then count 2 months or so from then, and see if it fits the October 1997 timeline.

[PhiKapMom]

That guy is lying through his teeth. I love this site and the Internet!

[PhiKapMom]

It is a stench -- I refuse to believe this guy at all! Another set-up by the Dims and the MSM!

[RatsDawg]

Reminds me of when CBS brought out that old secretary who said she typed up the forged documents in the 1970s when that tech wasn't even available then.

[RatsDawg]

and it just happends to be CBS news who drags this Vivyan guy out...ha.

[Miss Marple]

PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE. You can't assign committee assignments based on your suspicions. Rumor isn't PROOF.

What are you going to do, make every member submit to a questionnaire about sexual preferences? Lie detectors? Home inspections to see if they have too any CD's of show tunes?

You cannot deny a teacher a position beased on "suspicions." How are you going to deny a committee seat to a duly elected member of Congress?

[Mjaye]

No one is saying Foley is off the hook. The issue is how the emails and IMs got from the interns to Mike Rogers, stopsexualpredators, CREW and ABC.<<<<<<<

Agreed, but folks were asking if he could "unresign". The dirty tricks portion of this mess are a separate issue, but he still shouldn't hold office, IMO. Otherwise, we're no better than "them".

[Wild Irish Rogue]

'" My concern is that the democrats keep saying "children" and these kids are not children. It confuses the issue for people who haven't kept up, and it is inherently dishonest."

Dishonest doesn't begin to describe the coverage.
The media ,the Democrats and yes, even the stupid Republicans have given the false impression that the situation is comparable to Neverland or Jon Benet Ramsey.
A more truthful discussion would have been about the age of consent in DC and most states and the homosexual lifestyle.
Any suggestions about raising the age of consent in DC would have been met with screams from the Democrats.
A dispassionate and honest discussion about the patterns of homosexuality would have been met with cries of McCarthyism from the same crowd.
Hastert has not helped the situation with his constant public appearances talking about " the children."
The young men is question are old enough to vote and serve in Iraq ,not 6 year olds being tucked into bed with Bubbles the chimp and cocoa.

[TexKat]

AOL IM made its debut in May of 1997. See post #2,895.

[Anita1]

"Now to find out who are the Democrats who passed this stuff around."


Read this article: Was Mark Foley Set Up By Gay-Hating Democrats?

"CREW’s Executive Director, Melanie Sloan, has also worked for such illustrious, and ultra-partisan Democrats as John Conyers (between 1995 and 1998 she served as his Minority Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee) and Charles Schumer (in 1994, she served as Counsel for the Crime Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, led by him). She has also worked for Joe Biden, and also represented Joe Wilson. It is also true that Ms. Sloan guest blogs over at Al Franken’s site and has appeared on Keith Olbermann’s show, where she represented Mr. Wilson and Ms. Plame."

"And now it has come to light that the first set of emails disclosed by ABC News may have been altered and Foley may have had a relationship with one of the pages involved in the Instant Message exchange. ABC News has released new transcripts of an IM chat between Foley and someone they identify as a “teen.”


More at(midway down the page): http://gaypatriot.net/category/gay-america

[TexKat]

and it just happends to be CBS news who drags this Vivyan guy out...ha.

CBS is a little late on this one. This vivyan guy has and is making the news talk show rounds.

MSNBC

Former page shares his Foley instant messages

Oct. 4: MSNBC's Rita Cosby talks to Tyson Vivyan, a congressional page in 1996 and 1997, who claims that Rep. Mark Foley contacted him via instant messenger and that -- almost immediately -- the conversation turned sexual. MSNBC

____________________________________________________

FOX NEWS

______________________________________________________

CNN

THE SITUATION ROOM Breaking News in Mark Foley Scandal - CNN Transcript

[Lurking Libertarian]

To clarify.....the idiot is Foley, not you, Lurking Libertarian.

I understood, but thanks for the clarification anyway.

[valkyrieanne]

Thanks for posting the Vivyan transcript.

Some interesting things:

Neither Abrons nor Vivyan could provide copies of their alleged communications with Foley from that time.
So we are to take their word for it. Especially when Vivyan admitted to keeping up the relationship for years, including keeping "correspondence he said he had with Foley when Vivyan was in his mid 20's." I hardly think a grown man so outraged would keep correspondence from someone who had traumatized him so severely. Right.

Tyson Vivyan tells us he is a liberal Democrat.
Enough said right there.

[TexKat]

Happy 10th Birthday to the AIM Buddy List Posted by Jeff Hester on 05-16-2006, 02:16 PM

AOL is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the AIM buddy list, touting it as "the original social network." To commemorate the event, they've produced a slick Flash timeline that illustrates the evolution of AIM from 1989 to today.

Here's the Evolution of AIM (according to AOL): 1989 - The Advent of Consumer Instant Messaging AOL introduces consumer instant messaging (IM), pioneering a trend that would change the face of online communications. In addition to email, consumers can now send and receive real time text communications, previously available only on private networks.

1996 - The Buddy List Feature is Born The Buddy List feature launches on the AOL 3.0 service. This AOL innovation revolutionized IM by letting AOL members organize their "buddies" and see who was online and able to receive messages, jump-starting America's most powerful online community. While aspects of the feature have been copied by others, AOL's Buddy List network supports the nation's largest IM community.

1997 - The AIM® Service Launches The free and public AIM® service launches, bringing the benefits of IM and the Buddy List feature to a Web-wide audience.

1998 - AOL’s Buddy List® Feature Joins Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian recognizes AOL’s Buddy List network as a remarkable social achievement. AOL’s Buddy List network enters the Smithsonian Institution’s permanent research collection on Information Technology Innovation at the National Museum of American History.

1998 - AOL Acquires ICQ AOL purchases the pioneering ICQ® service, the first free IM service on the Web, which debuted in November 1996.

1999 - Enter Buddy Icons By this time, AIM had already spawned its own language and emoticons. The launch of Buddy icons marks the first generation of self-expression features for personalizing IMs. The first Buddy icons are cartoon characters, symbols, drawings and graphical images.

1999 - AIM® Directory Launches Bringing in the second wave of IM-based social networking features (after the Buddy List feature), the AIM® Community Directory makes it possible for users to create a personal profile and search by topic to find other people with common interests.

2000 - AIM® Service Talks it Up The AIM service debuts a host of new features, including “AIM®Talk,” the first means of voice communications between AIM users (PC-to-PC), and “Instant Images,” the first easy way for users to exchange photos and images via IM.

2000 - AIM® Service Goes Mobile AOL launches the mobile AIM service on the Sprint cellular network and introduces the AOL® Mobile Communicator, a wireless handheld device that enables on-the-go access to the AIM and AOL® Mail services. It is instantly embraced by the deaf and hard of hearing community.

2001 - Mobile AIM® Goes Mainstream The mobile AIM service becomes a “killer app” on T-Mobile’s popular new Sidekick® phone. It also rolls out across major wireless networks nationwide and is embedded on popular new phones.

2002 - AIM® expands to AMBER Alerts Through a joint effort with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and law enforcement agencies, AOL expands AMBER Alerts to AIM users to help in rescuing abducted children.

2003 - SuperBuddy™ Icons Debut Animated 3-D SuperBuddy™ icons launch for AOL members.

2003 - A Truly Global Community AOL brings the AIM and ICQ services together, forming one of the largest online communities in the world and transferring two billion IMs every day. The ICQ service appears in CNET’s Hall of Fame as one of the most popular, high quality, and time tested Internet applications in history.

2004 - Reaching Out to the Hearing Disabled The AIM® Relay Service launches, enabling AIM users who are deaf, hard of hearing and speech disabled to access live relay operators directly from the buddy List feature. The 3GSM Association names the new service the “Best Use of Mobile for Special Needs & Accessibility.”

2004 - You Gotta See it to Believe it The AIM service delivers live video IM, enabling AIM users to engage in live streaming audio and video conversations with other AIM users, as well as Apple iChat AV users on Macintosh computers.

2004 - That’s Entertainment AOL® Radio and AIM® Games debut on the Buddy List feature, bringing content and a new level of interactivity to IM.

2005 - Free AIM® Mail The free AIM® Mail service launches, giving AIM users the ability to use their AIM® Screen Name as their email address. Leveraging one of the most popular brands on the Web, AIM Mail offers AOL’s industry-leading spam and virus protection as well as 2 GB storage.

2005 - AIM® Fight! AIM® Fight launches at www.aimfight.com to let users compare the reach of their primary social network, the AIM Buddy List feature.

2005 - AIM® Triton Arrives The new AIM® Triton service launches as a complete communications suite, with IM, email and SMS as well as voice and video chat services. An industry first, it features a Plaxo-enabled AIM® Address Book and offers one-click access to the AOL® Mail, AIM Mail and AOL Radio services, making the AIM service the new ‘front door’ to digital communications.

2006 - AIM® Platform Opens Up AOL launches the Open AIM® initiative, enabling developers, online communities and sites and services of every kind to build new plug-ins and custom communications clients on the popular AIM platform.

2006 - Real Time Video on Demand In another industry first, AOL tests a version of the AIM Triton service that features an AOL® Video module at the base of the Buddy List feature. The nodule offers video on demand categories like Weird & Wacky and What’s Hot on TV. 2006 - AIM® Pages Takes Off

AOL begins to roll-out its new AIM® Pages community by inviting users to build personal Web pages that display their favorite music, videos, blogs, photos and more. Users can integrate Buddy List features and “subscribe” to others with shared interests.

2006 - AIM® Phoneline Rings AOL launches AIM® Phoneline to give AIM users a free local phone number, unlimited inbound calling and an “always on” answering service. AOL also offers Unlimited AIM Phoneline, giving AIM users access to an inbound and outbound calling service that is e911 compliant and offers advanced call management.

http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/aim-news/35522-happy-10th-birthday-aim-buddy-list.html

[PhiKapMom]

Thanks for that info. No way would Foley have been using it back then -- bet he didn't even use a computer.

[east1234]

Guessing he hooked up with Foley, just looking for money/fame today.

[top 2 toe red]

Same here, PKM...in fact, I know that I did not have IM until sometime in 2000 or 2001 and I had an AOL account continuously starting in 1997.

[samantha]

Joe Negron had a good appearance in The inland area of the 16th CD of Florida. He is a great candidate and is well spoken,warm,very conservative,and is going to make a great Congressman. He looks like he could be a cousin of Congressman Lincoln Diaz Balart,but is taller,thinner, and Younger. The far western area of the 16th CD is Charlotte County which is pretty close to Balart's district. Charlotte County is where Hurricane Charley came in 2 years ago and caused lots of damage. He will be there tomorrow, he is in the Space Coast area later today around Ft Pierce and Port St Lucie. His Website is Joenegron.com He knows all about freerepublic and is excited that Freepers are interested in his fight for the Congressional Seat. He has a huge task,but is up to it.

[PhiKapMom]

Exactly! There is no way Foley would have IM'd anyone back then.

[Enchante]

More suspicious info - the fake blog "StopSexPredators" has been found to have no purpose whatsoever except to "launder" this scandal (removing fingerprints) into the MSM at the beginning. It had no traffic, virtually no posts, and was created under exceedingly mysterious circumstances..... AND (see bottom of Ace of Spades post below) may turn out to have some connection to some associated with the John Conyers staff.... and CREW leader Melanie worked previously for Conyers.......

http://ace.mu.nu/

October 05, 2006
On That Fake Blog


For those of you who haven't followed the links before, you may wonder how StopSexPredators fits into all of this. A good review, from a liberal, is here; he too comes to the conclusion the blog is "fake" and basically deceptive.

Pretending to be a general site about child sex predators, this site, which no one -- no one -- ever heard of apparently, somehow, got discovered by a congressional page with access to the dirty emails and IP's, who then sent them on to SSP, giving SSP a "scoop."

As the liberal site cited above describes, it's a pretty transparent hoax. The site didn't post much, what little it did post was "uninteresting" and cribbed from Wikipedia entries, and didn't even provably exist for many days before it broke the Mark Foley story.

Furthermore, someone calling himself "WHIntern" on the Daily Kos wrote a single diary entry, spreading the word of what he had found on this site about Mark Foley. "WHIntern" claims that he discovered StopSexPredators by Googling. One problem-- this liberal blogger finds that Google hadn't even discovered SSP at this point.

So that's not true.

Further, when Google's millions of web-crawling bots can't find you, that means you don't, for any practical purposes, exist on the Internet.

So how did this Tipster all loaded up with these incriminating IM's "find" SSP?

Well, he didn't. More than likely, he writes SSP himself.

The liberal blogger shares the conclusion that this is a fake blog, created deceptively to suggest a "web presence" which would provide cover to the story about a "page discovering the site and sending in the emails and IM's." He disagrees with the "wingers'" theory, though, that this is a put-up job by the left.

He suggests instead -- not implausibly -- that this could just be a page who wanted vengeance against Foley, for, maybe, either hitting on him or on his friends. He doesn't suggest why all the deception was needed, but obvious answers occur to one (the page didn't want to be known as a tattletale, and harm his possible future career, or be the subject of a media frenzy, etc.)

Possible. I can't say that's unreasonable.

However, we do know, per Dick Morris, "a prominent member" of the Democratic leadership has known about these emails for months. We also know the person in question used the Daily Kos to get the word out. And, of course, one of the biggest pushers of the story is CREW, headed, coincedentally, by a former Conyers staffer, and SSP originates, also coincidentally, in or on the border of Conyers' district.

And-- isn't this a little sophisticated for a teenager with a grudge? Hardly dispositive, but the whole deal suggests to me someone pretty blog-savvy about how to push a story into the media without any fingerprints on it.

"A teenager with a grudge" could have gone straight to ABCNews, after all. They would have withheld his identity. (Well, they would have tried -- as we know, ABCNews was sloppy about hiding the identity of the 18-year-old "prankster.")

Or: Why not just go the more direct route of publishing these emails and IM's on the Daily Kos itself?

Why this level of subterfuge?

To me this suggests that the person behind SSP wanted to push other people's stories into the media, without their approval, and wanted to do without being called on "outing" teenaged victims of Foley. And to me, that suggests the Democratic Party, or lefty bloggers, who really want this story out there, but don't want it linked to them.

Still, the simpler explanation -- that this site was just created by, say, a former page (and a Democrat) who heard about Foley, got hold of the emails, and sought to out him without outing himself is not implausible.

Someone here knew about Foley's behavior with the pages, actually had possession of emails and IM's, and then later outed them. Somewhere at the beginning of this, I think, is a fellow page, one who served with one or more of the pages harrassed by Foley. He then took the emails and IM's to a Democratic operative or liberal blogger, and that latter person created the StopSexualPredators site.

For the ten thousandth time, of course, this doesn't mitigate what Foley did, or make him anything but a dirty old chickenhawk perv who trolls for cybersex with boys/young men, but it does suggest that, for all their posturting, prominent Democrats knew about this long before prominent Republicans did, and chose to do nothing--

-- until, of course, it was useful to do so politically. Mark Foley would be free to prey on young men for a year or more, perhaps, so long as it contributed to the greater moral good of a Democratic congressional victory.


Thanks for the tip to the Alabama Liberation Front.

Update: People with the same names as John Conyer's Detroit office staffers just happen to have addresses in neighboring upscale suburb Royal Oak, Michigan.

May mean something. May mean nothing.

I'd post the list, but I don't know, seems sort of an invasion of privacy given this is all just a hunch of a fishing expedition at this point.