I'm Bothered

I'm bothered by the whole "Open Secret" concept. In summary, the idea is that everybody knew about Mark Foley's predatory habits and his homosexuality, but nobody ever said anything about it:

The current and former congressional staffers interviewed by The Times, who are from both parties, said it was well known within the Capitol's gay community that Foley was interested in young men.

"Among the gay political community, there was a pretty wide understanding that he had an eye for the interns and the younger staff," said one former congressional staffer.

The staffers said Foley — who was elected to the House in 1994 and is not openly gay — would seek out the young men in bars, restaurants and even around the Capitol.

It was widely known, yet never reported. Yesterday we had three additional pages stepping forward to refute the idea that the IM's that surfaced last week were essentially a prank:

The page told ABC News he was interviewed this week by FBI agents who had a six-page list of questions about Foley and the exchanges.

The second page who talked with ABC News, a graduate of the 2000 page class, says Foley actually visited the old page dorm and offered rides to events in his BMW.

"His e-mails developed into sexually explicit conversations, and he asked me for photographs of my erect penis," the former page said.

The page said Foley maintained e-mail contact with him even after he started college and arranged a sexual liaison after the page had turned 18.

The third page interviewed by ABC News, a graduate of the 1998 page class, said Foley's instant messages began while he was a senior in high school.

"Foley would say he was sitting in his boxers and ask what I was wearing," the page said.
"It became more weird, and I stopped responding," the page said.

All three pages described similar instant message and e-mail patterns, with remarkably similar escalations of provocative questions.

"He didn't want to talk about politics," the page said. "He wanted to talk about sex or my penis," the page said.

The three new verbal accounts are in addition to two sets of sexually explicit instant messages provided to ABC News by former pages.

And yet in all this, no one thought it necessary to report it? Yes, we know that emails were brought to the attention of House leadership (the generic "leadership") and they discussed it with Foley and were assured the behavior would stop. But ponder the timeline.

Some of these incidents go back years, some months. Either way it's an extended period of time and something that is identifiable as a pattern. In all that time why did no one take this to the House Ethics Committee? Why did they not go to the DC police? Why not the FBI? Oh wait...they did. And the FBI didn't see it worthy of investigation:

An FBI official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said the field office concluded that the e-mails "did not rise to the level of criminal activity."

So now with a month to go before November 7th, it's an issue of life-and-death? No, more like political expediency. And it makes me sick.

So back to my original statement; I'm bothered by the convenient notion that Foley's secret was well known but not enough so to merit any real action at any point in the last 12-years--until now. Critics have daily pointed to the importance of the allegations, the unseemly and destructive nature of this behavior and I'm left wondering why that's only true now as opposed to any time in the last several years where we--allegedly--have electronic proof of Foley's behavior.

This whole thing reeks of political skullduggery.