Harpers Received Foley story back in MAY

[beachmom]

http://harpers.org/sb-republicans-1160492797.html

Last May, a source put me in touch with a Democratic operative who provided me with the now-infamous emails that Foley had sent in 2004 to a sixteen-year-old page. He also provided several emails that the page sent to the office of Congressman Rodney Alexander, a Louisiana Republican who had sponsored him when he worked on Capitol Hill. “Maybe it is just me being paranoid, but seriously, This freaked me out,” the page wrote in one email. In the fall of 2005, my source had provided the same material to the St. Petersburg Times—and I presume to The Miami Herald—both which decided against publishing stories.

It was a Democrat who brought me the emails, but comments he made and common sense strongly suggest they were originally leaked by a Republican office. And while it's entirely possible that Democratic officials became aware of the accusations against Foley, the source was not working in concert with the national Democratic Party. This person was genuinely disgusted by Foley's behavior, amazed that other publications had declined to publish stories about the emails, and concerned that Foley might still be seeking contact with pages.

snip

Among those who received information about the story but declined to pursue it were liberal outlets such as Talkingpointsmemo.com, Americablog.com, and The New Republic (The Hill, Roll Call, and Time magazine also had the Foley story, though I'm not certain when it came to their attention.) Ironically, it was ABC—which just weeks ago was being defended by Republicans and attacked by Democrats for airing The Path to 9/11—that finally ran the story. The network obtained the emails from a person who is scrupulously non-partisan.

Read the whole thing, but you know the GOP will try to spin this. The point here is that EVERYBODY seemed to know about this story, but nobody would do anything. Responsibility should go to Hastert, since this was his House. And it looks like this Democratic operative was trying to do the right thing, because he was concerned about the kids in the Page Program. Since he started contacting media outlets a year ago, looks like there was no left wing conspiracy "October surprise".

[displacedtexan]

1. Thank A Dem For Trying To Help The Kids In The GOP's Grasp!

Enough said.

[Ezlivin]

2. Perhaps they were afraid of being "Rathergated"

I think that publications are gun shy now concerning "revelations" about government officials. Rove has taught them all that publishing so much as one half-truth can doom the entire article as it is instantly labeled as a "smear campaign."

This was done with Hatfield when he wrote "Fortunate Son."

[Poiuyt]

3. Of course, Hatfield had more than just a smear campaign against him

[beachmom]

4. That is a good point.

We've all had our say in wanting Democrats to get a backbone, but the media needs to, too. They need to realize that no matter what they do, the Right will continue to call them liberal biased. What they need to do, is to stick to facts and take a step back to see how the story affects the big picture. If they did that, they could be fearless in their reporting (to borrow a little from Arianna).

[beachmom]

5. Just as an aside, I think the liberal blogs TPM and Americablog

need to come clean on this. They should have immediately come out and said they were given the story.

[Howardx]

6. americablog did

tpm has not yet that im aware of

[beachmom]

7. Thanks -- I guess I hadn't checked them

It's strange -- I just checked all of the famous RW sites, and there's not a peep about this. I got this story via Andrew Sullivan. I thought this was a big deal, but so far, both right and left are yawning.

[sandnsea]

12. They aren't yawning

They're quivering, I suspect. This is a big deal. Journalists are afraid to go after stories now, thanks to the poisoned political atmosphere. I wish people would really rise up and remember government is supposed to represent us and not be a playground for the wealthy few. I am just sick of this. Thanks for posting.

[HereSince1628]

8. House Dems agreed back in 98 not bring R's up on ethics charges

And the R's agreed to reciprocate, thus leaving each party to police its own members. Clearly this undermined the overall ethics review process.

It's not at all clear if this truce contributed to the longevity of Foley's behavior. But IMHO, if the truce hasn't been called off, it really needs to be.

It's interesting to me how quickly the R's including Hastert came out with the "democratic operative supported by Soros' money" defense. It seems to me that someone was quite well aware that the story had been shopped around for many months and by whom. And that suggests that the knowledge of Foley was, despite all the protestation about dirty tricks, in the Republican information chain for quite awhile. That leaves the R's just as culpable as ever.

This episode stinks to the Average American and there isn't going to be a dilution effect by adding more culpable people whether it is reps, staff, bloggers, journalists, or "operatives." Rather every piece of the fishwrap that gets peeled off is simply going to let out more stink.

[beachmom]

10. That's why this needs to be the anti-encumbant election

Just completely corrupt.

[HereSince1628]

11. I agree

[Parche]

9. harpers

Thats Bizarre....