Also see below:     
Hastert Top Aide Testifies About Foley    [

    Turmoil in Hastert's Office as Key Staff Testifies
    By Rhonda Schwartz
    ABC News

    Monday 23 October 2006

    Top aides to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) are expected to testify this week in the House Ethics Committee investigation of the Foley page scandal.

    Hastert may also appear, according to Chicago Sun-Times political reporter Lynn Sweet. Today Chief of Staff Scott Palmer entered the room to testify before the committee around 2p.m.

    The investigation of how the Republican leadership handled the issue has provoked turmoil and finger-pointing in Hastert's office, congressional sources say.

    Some of Hastert's principal aides have hired criminal defense lawyers to represent them during the investigation. Ted Van Der Meid, Hastert's chief in-house counsel, has retained Washington, D.C.-based attorney Lee Blalack, who also represents convicted former Congressman Duke Cunningham.

    A key focus of the congressional investigation is the timing of when Hastert and his top staff first learned of Foley's problem behavior toward congressional pages.

    The results of an internal review conducted by the speaker's office, released on Sept. 30, said Hastert's staff only learned of complaints about Foley in the fall of 2005 after a congressional page complained about inappropriate e-mails.

    But former House Clerk Jeff Trandahl as well as Kirk Fordham, Foley's former chief of staff, have both told associates, and are believed to have testified before the House Ethics Committee, that top staff in Speaker Hastert's office were informed several years ago about Foley's inappropriate behavior toward congressional pages.

    Go to Original

    Hastert Top Aide Testifies About Foley
    The Associated Press

    Monday 23 October 2006

    Washington - The House ethics committee questioned Speaker Dennis Hastert's top aide for more than six hours Monday, as investigators tried to determine whether Hastert's office knew at least three years ago of Rep. Mark Foley's come-ons to male pages.

    The closed-door testimony by Hastert chief of staff Scott Palmer could help determine who is telling the truth about when the speaker's office first learned of Foley's conduct. Hastert has said it was in the fall of 2005.

    Campaigning for a Republican candidate in Tennessee, Hastert said he plans to testify before the committee this week.

    "What Mark Foley did was wrong. It was ethically wrong. It's a shame. It's actually disgusting," Hastert told reporters after a campaign rally.

    In Washington, Palmer's lawyer, Scott Fredericksen, said his client hasn't changed his version of events. The Hastert aide has disputed one account that he personally was notified about Foley in 2002 or 2003.

    Fredericksen said the testimony was "consistent with the position he's taken all along."

    Palmer spent the longest time in the committee offices than any other witness, entering at 1:57 p.m. and leaving at 8:18 p.m. This is the third week of testimony, as the committee tries to learn how the Republican leadership handled Foley's inappropriate conduct.

    The speaker has a lot riding on the outcome. He has fended off calls for his resignation with statements that his staff acted properly after the 2005 notification, and quickly had a lawmaker and the House chief clerk confront the Florida Republican.

    Hastert said he didn't learn about Foley until late September, when the scandal became public and Foley resigned.

    The speaker's timeline could be shattered if the committee believes former Foley chief of staff Kirk Fordham, who already has testified before the ethics panel. Fordham has said publicly that he told Palmer about Foley in 2002 or 2003, and subsequently learned that Palmer spoke with Foley on the subject.

    "What Kirk Fordham said did not happen," Palmer said weeks ago in his lone public statement on the matter.

    Hastert's version, issued as an internal report, said his staff learned in the fall of 2005 that Foley had sent overly friendly e-mails to a former Louisiana page. The report said the staff did not see the texts of the e-mails, which asked about the 16-year-old's birthday and requested a picture.

    The report said the speaker's office contacted then-chief clerk Jeff Trandahl, who went to confront Foley with Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. and chairman of the board that oversees the page program. They ordered Foley to immediately stop communicating with the youngster.

    The report added that nobody in Hastert's office knew, until the messages became public, that Foley also had sent sexually explicit instant messages to other former pages.

    Ironically, the internal report did not mention any role played by Palmer, despite his status as Hastert's top assistant.

    The speaker has left himself one major escape route, publicly pledging to fire any of his staff members who were found to have covered up knowledge of Foley's conduct.

    Hastert also has said he doesn't recall discussing Foley's conduct with Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., the House Republican campaign chairman; or Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, both of whom said they told Hastert about Foley earlier this year.

    Boehner testified before the committee last week and Reynolds was expected to be questioned Tuesday.

    Before Palmer testified, Reynolds' top political aide, Sally Vastola, appeared before the committee as it began a third week of closed-door testimony. Vastola is executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee and a longtime top aide to Reynolds.

    Vastola's testimony could touch on how Reynolds reacted when learning of problems with Foley's behavior toward pages and with whom Reynolds may have shared the information.

    Testimony from Hastert's aides would go a long way toward wrapping up the interviews required for the panel to make its findings, though it's unclear whether the panel will have enough time to issue a report before Election Day.

    The committee, evenly divided between the parties, could issue an interim report by Election Day.