Oct 08 2006
Fordham Story Makes No Sense – But We Have A Leak Window!
If we look at the timeline of events in Foleygate we see something very interesting. In August 30-31 the LA Page contacts Danielle Savoy working for the Page’s Representative, Rodney Alexander, because the Page is bothered with some emails from Rep Foley. If we look at Hastert’s review of events to date we see this progression of activities from the notification of Ms Savoy by the ‘former’ page:
In the fall of 2005 Tim Kennedy, a staff assistant in the Speaker’s Office, received a telephone call from Congressman Rodney Alexander’s Chief of Staff who indicated that he had an email exchange between Congressman Foley and a former House page. He did not reveal the specific text of the email but expressed that he and Congressman Alexander were concerned about it.
Tim Kennedy immediately discussed the matter with his supervisor, Mike Stokke, Speaker Hastert’s Deputy Chief of Staff. Stokke directed Kennedy to ask Ted Van Der Meid, the Speaker’s in house Counsel, who the proper person was for Congressman Alexander to report a problem related to a former page. Ted Van Der Meid told Kennedy it was the Clerk of the House who should be notified as the responsible House Officer for the page program. Later that day Stokke met with Congressman Alexander’s Chief of Staff. Once again the specific content of the email was not discussed. Stokke called the Clerk and asked him to come to the Speaker’s Office so that he could put him together with Congressman Alexander’s Chief of Staff. The Clerk and Congressman Alexander’s Chief of Staff then went to the Clerk’s Office to discuss the matter.
The Clerk asked to see the text of the email. Congressman Alexander’s office declined citing the fact that the family wished to maintain as much privacy as possible and simply wanted the contact to stop. The Clerk asked if the email exchange was of a sexual nature and was assured it was not. Congressman Alexander’s Chief of Staff characterized the email exchange as over-friendly.
Emphasis mine. Clearly, before the Speaker’s office could get engaged, Alexander’s office had been in contact with the parents and had directed the information be held back and their only wish was for Foley to stop contacting their son. But has I have highloghted, the other clear indication is the LA Page had already left the Page Program. This is consistent with Foley’s predatory MO of identifying candidates in the Page program and contacting them later. But what is really important here is this Page was out of DC and not coming back. There was nothing else Hastert or Congress could do except tell Foley to stop the communications. Any other action, in this case, would require law enforcement and it is well established that there was not enough evidence to go to that step.
Now, let’s just put ourselves in the shoes of these leaders and legal counsels and run this scenarion again, assuming Kirk Fordham and levied charges against Foley before hand – as he claimed. Does anyone think a legal counsel would just let Foley sit there on his second or third complaint and promise to behave? Hell no! If this had been the second or third referral Foley would have been out of there.
I am going to see if there is more detail on dates, etc. about when these meetings took place because we have the dates when the Foley emails were printed out. The Foley emails to the page were printed out on Sept 13th, 2005 – only two weeks after the Page contacted Ms Savoy. That means they were probably printed out in Alexander’s office since they were holding the actual emails back during much of the ‘investigation’. Given the fact the first set of emails show the same ‘print date’ in the footer as the email from the Page to Ms Savoy, but printed a month later on Oct 17th, then it is safe to assume this was also printed out in the office or Rep Alexander – for their files.
Again looking at the timeline we also know these files are leaked to the St Petersburg Times sometime prior to November 2005, when they admit getting the emails. So the act of transferring the files from the protection of Alexander’s staff to the man who was shopping them to the media (and yes we know it was a man and not Ms Savoy) happened between Oct 17, 2005 and the end of November. The leak occured between 10/17/05 and 11/30/05.
This established WHEN the emails were leaked – making it nearly a year for the emails to hit the press. Clearly a case of withholding the information is present. Someone had the emails by the end of last November and shopped them around – never once alerting authorities.
Addendum:: On another post, reader Neo had a good question:
The Hill indicates that the “source†they talked to had un-redacted e-mails, but I was lead to believe the the e-mails supplied by LA page had been redacted prior to appearing in DC. Is This correct ?
This a good question because some redactions are common across all versions (except those faked up ones on the StopSexPredators websit). As I responded to Neo’s question, it would make sense that those email that finally got limited distribution outside Alexander’s staff would have the LA Page details redacted, but Ms, Savoy’s details and Foley’s details not redacted. This tells me these emails were the one printed off in Alexander’s office and then shown, sometime in Oct or Nov, to House leaders. We know these emails were shown to Foley by Rep Shimkus and House Clerk Trandahl in November – right when we think the emails were leaked. The question is, were they given to Foley and someone in his staff could leak them?
AJ,
Why is the To line identically redacted in both versions of the 5 individually forwarded Foley emails? The To lines in the 3 page email from the kid to Danielle do not have identical redactions over her name. In fact, ABC’s version lets her name show.
I’m thinking her name is not under the To redaction. Maybe these emails we see are not the ones Danielle got from the kid. Maybe they were forwarded by her to someone else. That could be or could not be sinister. Could she have forwarded them to Shimkus and Trandahl?
And why redact the date? If these are the forwards from the kid that he said on 8/31 that he was sending “now”, why not let that show?
On the other hand, if the date is weeks or months later, people might wonder who it was being sent to and why. Better to cover the date and just let people think these are the emails from the kid to Danielle.
I don’t believe the From line, which is individually redacted by ABC and CREW on all 5 emails, is the kid. Why? Because if you look at the first forwarded Foley email (“Do I have the right email?”), you see the To line, which is the kid’s address, is relatively short. But the From line at the top of that page is about twice as long. So they are not the same address.
And the very top line on all 5 emails is the name of the person who owns the Microsoft Outlook inbox that printed them. Who could that be? Trandahl? Shimkus? Rogers? Aravosis?
Your thoughts? I would love for you to pick this apart.
Thanks.
Okay, I’m already picking it apart myself. I’m looking at the pixels in the From line in the ABC version of the 5 emails, compared to the pixels in the from line in the 3 page email from the kid to Danielle. It’s hard to tell, but they look the same, so I think I’m wrong about the sender of the 5 emails not being the kid. I still don’t know why the address in the To line of the “Do I have the right email” message is so much shorter. Maybe the kid quit using that account because he was so creeped out by the emails and sent his email to Danielle from a different account.
But I’m still thinking that the To line in the 5 emails isn’t Danielle because of what I said above. The redaction over the To line on both the ABC and CREW versions were from a single source, but on the 3 page email ABC let her name show and CREW redacted it separately. That makes me think the To line name is someone else. Could it be the kid forwarded these emails to more than one person? Very curious.
According to this interview Shimkus states Trandahl got emails from the La page parents …that would me a SECOND SET was sent to him because clerk of the house overseas the pages so the parents made the same determination that the post aj makes the case for in their decision process
http://www.goedwardsville.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17296433&BRD
Shimkus said he first learned of the e-mails in the fall of 2005. Just before an upcoming vote on the House floor, House Clerk Jeff Trandahl showed him an excerpt of e-mail exchanges the former page’s parents forwarded to him. The parents, Trandahl said, had expressed concern about the messages but were adamant that they be kept confidential.
What stood out was that Foley asked the page for a photograph of himself.
Shimkus said that he and three others walked down to Foley’s office and confronted him with the messages. “I remember him looking at it, giving it back to us and responding, ‘If I can be accused of being overly friendly then I’m guilty for being overly friendly. When I was a young kid someone was a mentor to me and encouraged me to public service, and that’s all I’m trying to do.’ My response was ‘That’s fine. Stay away from this page and stay away from the pages, plural.'”
Trandahl thus had possession of the emails and had prior issues with Foley conduct with pages and it was a recurring issue so the emails he got and the ones thru the other channel brought the issue to a head.
My theory is that the Hastert or others once advised of the recurring problem involving pages that perhaps Trandahl was booted because they wanted new blood to run the page program, because shortly thereafter Trandahl was quietly removed from his position with little fanfare after a long hold of the Clerk position
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2540067&page=1
Before the scandal became public, sources told ABC News, Trandahl had called Fordham several times to complain that Foley was paying too much attention to pages. Fordham said he would talk with Foley about the matter, according to the accounts.
Usually, Foley’s behavior would change for a short time, only to return — and Trandahl would call Fordham again, according to the sources.
After several such cycles, the sources said, Fordham and Trandahl discussed seeking the help of Hastert’s office, which led to Fordham’s meeting with Palmer.
Okay, Merlin,
So Trandahl had his own copy!! That is very interesting!
That also explains the question I asked above about the kids email address changing. He sent the email to Danielle from his parents address, the same address the parents used to email Trandahl.
That would also explain why the To line in the 5 emails is marked out when it wasn’t in the 3 page email from the kid to Danielle. It was sent to Trandahl. If Trandahl was passing this around, he sure didn’t want his name to show.
Foley Setup? – Part XVII – Another Page?…
Another page, via the LA Times….
“A former House page says he had sex with then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) after receiving explicit e-mails in which the congressman described assessing the sexual orientation and physical attributes of underag…
Foley Setup? – The Key – Danielle Savoy?…
From the Palm Beach Post back on September 29th:
“WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Mark Foley’s campaign Thursday called the disclosure of a series of e-mails between the congressman and a 16-year-old former congressional page a “political atta…