Meet Melanie Sloan, the Executive Director of CREW.
Today, CREW held a tele-news conference to discuss the most recent events in the Foley scandal. Given the rapidly changing events, including Speaker Hastert's statement this afternoon, we wanted to share with everyone the full text of Melanie Sloan's statement. It provides important background and asks some key questions:
Earlier today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to Glenn Fine, the Inspector General at the Department of Justice, asking for an investigation into why the FBI has failed to look into the inappropriate emails sent by Rep. Mark Foley to a former House page before now.
On July 21, 2006, CREW received the emails. As a former prosecutor, a review of the emails sent off alarm bells for me. The fact that Rep. Foley had used a private email account and had asked the teenager what he wanted for his birthday and how school was and had asked for a photograph caused me great concern. These are strategies that pedophiles often use to draw in their victims.
As a result, after reviewing the emails, I called a special agent in the Washington Field Office of the FBI. I explained what I had received and said that I wanted to pass them along. By email, I then sent copies of the emails to the agent. By telephone, the agent confirmed that she had received them and understood them to be email exchanges between Mark Foley and a young man.
I never heard back from the FBI, but I did not expect to. The FBI cannot share the fruits of its investigation with someone who is not in law enforcement. Nonetheless, I was surprised to learn this morning that the FBI was just beginning an investigation today – meaning that they had not begun an investigation when I sent them the emails back in July.
I also noted that Speaker Hastert sent AG Alberto Gonzales a letter requesting an investigation not only into Rep. Foley’s conduct, but also into who knew what about it and why they failed to report it. As a result, it seems important that an investigation should also encompass the FBI’s failure to act.
The fact is everyone involved in this matter has dropped the ball. Although the chronology keeps changing, we’ve now heard that pages were warned at least 5 years ago to be careful to Rep. Foley. When Rep. Alexander learned of the inappropriate emails in late 2005, he didn’t call law enforcement, he went to Speaker Hastert’s office. Alexander also told the clerk of the House, who told John Shimkus, the head of the page board. Then Shimkus went to Foley who explained that he was “mentoring” the boy. Shimkus told Foley to cease all further contact with the page, which suggests that Shimkus hardly thought the emails were completely innocent – otherwise why tell Foley to stop contacting the boy?
Then in February or March of this year, Alexander went to NRCC chairman Reynolds about the emails. Reynolds didn’t call law enforcement either. Instead, he went directly to the Speaker, who did nothing.
In the Spring of 2006, Majority Leader Boehner learned about the email, but he also failed to call law enforcement.
Clearly, the House leadership didn’t take a single step to protect the pages or any other young men from Rep. Foley’s sexual advances. And as we’ve seen from the much more sexually explicit instant messages, Foley certainly didn’t change his behavior an iota. If anything, he may have been emboldened by his leadership’s implicit acceptance of his behavior. They caught him once and didn’t do anything so why stop?
As outrageous as the inaction by the House is, the inaction by the FBI is equally egregious. After all, the FBI is supposed to be above political considerations and AG Alberto Gonzales has made the prosecution of those who pray on children a Justice Department priority.
So why, given that the FBI knew about the emails in July did they merely sit on them? Did someone make a political decision not to investigate a sitting powerful member of Congress? Was the investigation quashed by a political appointee?
Was protecting an ally of the President more important than protecting children from a sexual predator?
The American public deserves the full truth on this and that’s why we sent the letter to IG Fine asking for an investigation into the FBI’s inaction.
http://blog.citizensforethics.org/node/101
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