While the FBI is busy contacting former House pages to see if they got illicit e-mails from Congressman Mark Foley or anyone else, WHAS11 News has learned that a former page from Kentucky has said yes, Foley contacted him. According to Congressman Ron Lewis, the former page is now a soldier in Iraq. But five years ago, he was a teenage page in the U.S. House who was the subject of some kind of questionable contact from Congressman Mark Foley.
Lewis’s chief of staff got a satellite phone call from Iraq Tuesday afternoon from a man who wouldn't identify himself. But he did say he was a soldier from Kentucky’s Second Congressional District who wanted to give Lewis a heads up. Also Online View this story
“To let us know that he had been approached by Mark Foley in 2001 and that he is speaking to the proper authorities, to a JAG officer who will then pass that on to the FBI,” says Lewis.
Congressman Lewis’s office is the only local one we've found that's gotten a call from any of their former pages, alleging misconduct by Foley, a man Lewis describes this way: “He was a creepy guy.”
Louisville Congresswoman Anne Northup says if she'd gotten a complaint from one of her pages, the Foley case would have been handled differently.
“If anyone had ever told me there was a problem, I gotta tell you, I feel like my hair would have been on fire,” she says. “I would’ve gone to the leadership and wanted to know all the way through to the end what was going on.”
Both Northup and Lewis say they won't call for House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign because of the controversy, but they might in the future.
“There’s not one member of leadership that I wouldn’t be wanting to throw overboard if they had access to e-mails… Even if they had staff that didn’t bring that to their attention,” says Northup.
Congresswoman Northup says she's only sponsored a few teenage pages from Louisville since 1996 and that none have complained or contacted her office since the Foley scandal unfolded last week.
Both Northup and Ron Lewis are planning to send letters to former pages, telling them to call a tip line set up for pages to call with information about Foley.
Web story produced by Jay Ditzer.