More Finger-Pointing

The curious case of Kirk Fordham helps explain why the GOP has got Foleygate problems that go well beyond Maf54.

I broke this angle on Monday, reporting that Fordham, Foley's former chief of staff, had tried to cut a deal with ABC's Brian Ross to suppress the seamier details of the scandal. If Ross would withhold the sexually graphic IMs from the Florida congressman, Fordham said, ABC could have the exclusive on Foley's resignation. Ross, not surprisingly, refused.

What I quickly learned was that Fordham had another job: chief of staff to Rep. Tom Reynolds, the New York Republican who happens to head the House GOP campaign committee.

So you had the top aide to the House's senior GOP campaign guy trying to keep the seedy details out of the media. No wonder some critics are charging cover-up. That's what's driving this whole thing, the sense that key Republicans were more concerned with the politics of the Foley mess than protecting the teenagers he was hitting up online.

Now Kirk Fordham has quit, and he isn't going quietly.

"A former Congressional aide said Wednesday that Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's office knew about reports of 'inappropriate behavior' by Representative Mark Foley far earlier than Mr. Hastert's office has acknowledged," says the New York Times .

"Mr. Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, denied the account of the former aide, Kirk Fordham, who said in an interview that he informed Mr. Palmer of the concerns about Mr. Foley before 2004. Mr. Hastert's office had previously said it first learned of concerns about Mr. Foley in the fall of 2005."

Before 2004 ! The plot is really thickening.

And here's a crucial point, in USA Today : "In an interview, Fordham said Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, told him that he had informed the speaker of their meeting." Palmer denies this -- in a statement -- yet another conflicting account of who was told what and when.

In a piece yesterday, before he resigned under fire. USAT said in confirming what I wrote:

"Foley's former chief of staff said that he asked ABC News to edit out of its reports Foley's most sexually explicit messages.

"Kirk Fordham told reporters he was trying to spare Foley's sister, Donna, and his ailing parents from the 'lurid' details. He called 'absurd' assertions that he was trying to cover up the incident.