The Post story has a few notable things. Yes, Fordham was upset by yesterday’s story:
Fordham grew incensed when leadership aides intimated that he had prevailed upon House leaders in 2005 to withhold the Foley matter from the board overseeing the page program and instead refer it only to the Page Board’s chairman, Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.). Fordham said of the allegations: “This is categorically false.”
People besides Alexander may have seen the initial e-mails:
House members agree that the two officials chosen to confront Foley in the fall of 2005 about the e-mails to the Louisiana youth were Shimkus and Jeff Trandahl, then clerk of the House and a member of the Page Board. But accounts differ on whether Alexander’s staff showed the two men the contents of the e-mails.
A chronology issued Saturday by Hastert’s office stated that Trandahl “asked to see the text of the e-mail.” It continued: “Congressman Alexander’s office declined, citing the fact that the family wished to maintain as much privacy as possible and simply wanted the contact to stop.” The chronology says that Trandahl then “immediately” summoned Shimkus and that the two men sat down with Foley, who convinced them that his exchanges with the Louisiana boy were innocent. The account strongly implies that neither Shimkus nor Trandahl knew the exact language in the e-mails when the two men met with Foley.
But Shimkus has said that he and Trandahl were provided the text of the e-mails. Shimkus spokesman Steve Tomaszewski said in an interview yesterday that Trandahl provided the congressman with the language of the e-mails — including Foley’s request for the boy’s photo — on a standard-size sheet of paper.
Foley may have been warned before:
Fordham says his warnings to Hastert’s office dealt with a different matter: reports of Foley’s troubling interest in male pages working in the Capitol Hill complex. He says he implored the highest ranks of the GOP leadership to intervene to thwart behavior that he had been unable to stop after multiple confrontations with his boss. Sources close to the matter say a meeting took place between a senior Hastert aide and Foley before Fordham’s January 2004 departure, probably in 2003, in a small conference room on the third floor of the Capitol.
But the matter appears to have been dropped.