It's Not Only Foley in the Race to the Bottom

The story I posted Tuesday on the media's role in the Mark Foley scandal generated an enormous number of emails. The lion's share contained stimulating, illuminating insights such as “You really are full of shit.” But among the several hundred messages I received, a few merit a reply.

1. Many readers wrote in to tell me that, because it was a Democratic operative who brought me the material, it followed that the Foley scandal was a Democratic plot and part of an “October Surprise” strategy to inflict maximum damage on the G.O.P.

Democrats and Republicans (and independents for that matter) pitch stories to the media all the time. Sources almost always have an axe to grind. Did my source hope to damage Foley's political career? Undoubtedly—and so what? He also also provided accurate information about a story that merited attention. My source was genuinely angry about Foley's conduct. And the information that he provided ultimately led to an outcome that few people would consider unjust—Foley has resigned.

As I wrote on Tuesday, the source brought the story to other news outlets late in 2005, and brought it to me in May. Why would he try to spring an October Surprise a year early?

I have no evidence that the source was working in concert with the national Democratic Party. That said, I acknowledged in the story that some Democratic officials may well have been aware of the accusations against Foley and expected supporting evidence to come out in the press. Since writing the original article, I've become convinced that was in fact the case; indeed, several well-placed sources have told me that some Democrats—and certainly people affiliated with the campaign of Foley's Democratic challenger Tim Mahoney—were aware of the accusations at least as early as late Spring.

It's quite possible these parties knew well before then, and were planning accordingly. As Ralph McGaughey, a conservative from Boston, pointed out to me in an email, before the scandal broke, Foley was almost guaranteed to win re-election. In 2004 George Bush easily beat John Kerry in Foley's conservative district, and the congressman's last two Democratic challengers raised only about $60,000—total. Meanwhile, Foley was sitting on a vast campaign war chest and had a reputation as a formidable fundraiser.

And yet Mahoney has been able to raise more than $1.1 million for his campaign.

I checked campaign-finance records and found that Mahoney himself provided about half of that amount. But he also pulled in $80,000 from heavily Democratic labor-union PACs and raised about $455,000 from individual donors. What's more interesting is that some of that money started coming in late last year—around the time that the Foley emails were given to reporters in Florida—and some of Mahoney's biggest donors were from out of state. The donors include major Democratic donors like John Gorman of Austin-based Tejas Securities, the New York-based construction mogul John Tishman, and the Massachusetts-based real estate tycoons Gerald and Elaine Schuster, who have a history of anti-labor and slumlord practices. These campaign-finance records certainly suggest that Democrat officials expected Foley's seat would be in play and quietly steered donors in Mahoney's direction.

This still doesn't support the October Surprise scenario, unless it was an October '05 Surprise, nor does it suggest that my source had anything in mind other than exposing Foley's wrongdoing and damaging his chances of staying in Congress. The intense focus on who brought the story to public attention is, as I said on Tuesday, a convenient way of diverting attention from the most important issue—namely that the source had documentation that foreshadowed, and ultimately led to, Foley's humiliating exit from Congress, which was a fit punishment.

(Note to emailers: Please don't write to tell me, as many already have, that I have “inadvertently” revealed that Democrats helped to spread the story. I am not doing anything inadvertently. I am reporting what I know and updating it when possible, no matter what it shows or what conclusions people might draw.)

2. “Could it be the case,” asked one email correspondent, “that ABC, as well as other media outlets, held on to this story until weeks before the election in order to drop an 'October Surprise' on voters? . . . I agree it would have to be a grand conspiracy, but is it, nonetheless, a valid question.”

Harper's made an editorial decision not to publish the Foley story. The decision had nothing to do with inflicting damage on the G.O.P. If that was the goal, why did my editors agree that I should pass the material on to other publications instead of simply sitting on it until October and publishing a story then? Furthermore, this conspiracy scenario imagines that reporters and editors working at various magazines, websites, and newspapers—who were aware of the salient facts of the case—collectively agreed to this plot. Then, I suppose, we all gathered in a room, lit some candles, invoked the spirits, and, finally, handed the prize to ABC.

3. Many emails were a variation on this theme: “Your story is interesting, but what has caused the scandal and the ‘October Surprise' are the instant messages, which were sexually graphic—not the emails you refer to. It is still very probable that Democrats and helpers in the media held on to the more inflammatory information and released it right before the election.”

Again, this is a paranoid fantasy. If Harper's—or any other publication that declined to run the story—had obtained the instant messages, it would have been an easy call to go ahead with the story. ABC decided to publish, which meant that sources (including one die-hard Republican ex-page) immediately sent ABC the lethal IMs. If any of the other publications had published the story earlier, they would have received the IMs, and the whole Foley scandal would be over with.

4. Many readers asked, “Since many in the media didn't publish a story about the initial emails, doesn't that exonerate the G.O.P. leadership?”

No, it doesn't. I (and other journalists) had no power over Mark Foley. He could lie to me with impunity, and he did. However, the G.O.P. leadership did have power over Foley and could have confronted him about the charges aggressively, and taken action against him. They chose not to. It has become apparent that G.O.P. leaders have known about the Foley problem for a long time and knew more than was available to reporters (at least until the IMs surfaced). To take one example, Kirk Fordham, Foley's former aide, has said that some three years ago he had “more than one conversation [about Foley] with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene.”

5. Also frequently charged was that Harper's and other publications should have gone to the cops with the information on Foley, and that we put other pages in danger by not doing so.

First, it's clear that Foley was guilty of grossly inappropriate behavior, but it's not clear even now that he was guilty of a crime. Second, journalists are not an arm of law enforcement. Our job is to collect information; if we are seen as an arm of law enforcement, many people will be even less likely to talk to us, which means we can't do our job. Third, even if you reject the latter argument, there was absolutely no evidence that Foley posed an imminent risk to anyone. Fourth, I was concerned about Foley's behavior and shared the information for precisely that reason. Fifth, some of the same people who accused me of covering up a crime also complained that the whole Foley affair was a Democratic plot. If you're concerned about Foley being a threat to kids, shouldn't you stop whining about how exactly the story came to public attention?

To sum up: Democrats, as well as some Republicans, worked to get the story out. But as Vaughn Ververs said in a post on the CBS News website, “The Foley story is what it is, the emails are there, and more firsthand accounts are coming out. How or when it broke is really beside the point in this case.”

Lying isn't just a Republican problem. If Bill Clinton had simply admitted that he'd fooled around with Monica Lewinsky, he could have defused that scandal. Instead, he looked into the camera and insisted he did not have sex with that woman. The same principle applies now—if G.O.P. leaders had dealt with the Foley problem when they became aware of it, Foley would be out of Congress and there would be no scandal. Instead, they went into damage-control mode and hoped the whole thing would go away. The cover-up, as everyone should know by now, is often worse than the crime.

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