You Decide

Nothing like a few facts to begin putting things together.  The MSM runs with sensationalism, the heck with facts and time-lines.  Couple of very interesting points in this article. 

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'Democratic operative'
shopped Foley e-mails
Reporter says magazine killed story in May,
2 newspapers had info from source 1 year ago

Posted: October 10, 2006
5:00 p.m. Eastern

Source WorldNetDaily.com

A Democratic operative shopped around the story of disgraced former congressman Mark Foley's inappropriate behavior with male pages more than one year ago, according to Harper's magazine.

In a story posted today on the weekly's website, reporter Ken Silverstein says that in May he received copies of the now-infamous e-mail exchanges between Foley and a 16-year-old page.

Silverstein said that one year ago his unnamed source provided the same material to the St. Petersburg Times and, he "presumes," the Miami Herald, which both decided against publishing the stories. The two papers already have acknowledged receiving copies of the e-mails – the Times said it didn't run the story because the e-mails contained "nothing overtly sexual," and the boy and his family wouldn't speak on the record.

The Harper's reporter wrote a story after receiving the e-mails in May, but the magazine did not publish it, he said, "because we didn't have absolute proof that Foley was, as one editor put it, 'anything but creepy.'"

In the e-mails – which were not sexually explicit but, nevertheless, troubled the teens' parents – Foley requested a photograph and asked what the 16-year-old wanted for his birthday. Later, Foley's salacious instant-message exchanges with another teen prompted his resignation.

Silverstein said, "At the time I was disappointed that the story was killed – but I must confess that I was also a bit relieved because there had been the possibility, however unlikely, that I would wrongly accuse Foley of improper conduct."

Silverstein said he also was provided with several e-mails the page sent to the office of Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who had sponsored the teen when he worked on Capitol Hill.

The Harper's reporter contends the Democratic operative was "genuinely disgusted" by Foley's behavior and had no partisan intent, because the e-mails might originally have come from Republicans, and the operative was not working "in concert" with the Democratic Party.

If this was all a plot to hurt the GOP's chances in the midterm elections, why did the original source for the story begin approaching media outlets a full year ago? If either of the Florida papers had gone to press with the story last year, or if Harper's had published this spring, as the source hoped, the Foley scandal would have died down long ago. A stronger case could be made that the media, including Harper's, dropped the ball and inadvertently protected Foley and covered up evidence of the congressman's misconduct.

The e-mails got into the hands of the George Soros-sponsored Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington July 21. The group says it turned them over to the FBI, which later concluded the messages "did not rise to the level of criminal activity." Two months later, Sept. 24, an anonymous blog, StopSex Predators.com, published the e-mails. ABC News, which had received the messages in August but put them aside to cover other stories, published them on its website Sept. 28. The next day the network received copies of sexually explicit instant messages between Foley and a teenage boy from 2003, leading to the congressman's resignation.

As WND reported, a radical homosexual activist has claimed some of the credit for revealing Foley's behavior and has warned there is more to come, stating on his website earlier this year he would "out" a "gay" Republican senator during the run-up to the mid-term elections.

"Ladies and Gentlemen ... if they want a cultural war, I'll give them a f------ cultural war. Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy 2006," wrote Mike Rogers on his weblog in January.

As Rogers held on to damaging information about Foley – who abruptly resigned Friday in the wake of revelations – having indicated the story would break just prior to the Nov. 7 congressional elections.

Rogers helped develop a "target list" of 20 lawmakers and Capitol Hill staffers he believed were hiding their sexual orientation while promoting an "anti-gay" political agenda. The list included Foley and Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland

Rogers claimed that before the Foley story broke, he shared information about the congressman with Bill Burton, the director of communications for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. WND spoke with a Burton assistant, but the director did not respond to a request for comment.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52383