Interesting Turn On The Foley Affair and Who Knew

[Annie]

Lots of links.

http://gaypatriot.net/2006/10/25/hr...-raises-more-questions-about-hrcs-involvement

HRC Fires Staffer Who Orchestrated Foley Scandal
Statement Raises More Questions About HRC’s Involvement
Posted by GayPatriot at 6:20 pm - October 25, 2006.
Filed under: Log Cabin (Republicans), Gay Politics, Gay America, Outing Witchhunt, Liberals, 2006 Elections, FoleyGate, Hypocrite Rights Campaign

This is a stunning development in efforts to peel back the onion of the Mark Foley scandal and expose who knew what and when they knew it.

I have been flying back to Charlotte for most of the day, so I have been unable to “elevate” the comment by Brad Luna of the Human Rights Campaign to a full posting. I emailed Brad last evening asking the HRC to respond to Dan’s posting challenging Joe Solmonese to respond to the accusations that the entire Foley affairs orginated at the Human Rights Campaign.

“The email exchanges in question between former Congressman Mark Foley and a House page have been in the possession of bloggers and media outlets for some time now. Yesterday, it came to our attention that an HRC employee, hired just last month to work for us in Michigan, was responsible for initially posting these emails on his blog. We investigated the matter, determined that HRC resources had been inappropriately used, and let him go. No one at the Human Rights Campaign, other than this individual, had any knowledge of his activities,” said Brad Luna, Spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign.

Luna’s statement was also emailed to the blogger of “Stop October Surprises” who was one of the first to connect the dots linking the Human Rights Campaign to the bogus blog “Stop Sex Predators”. SSP, you will recall, was the blog set up to leak out the details of the Foley connected the dots. We now know that a former employee at HRC was behind the entire affair.

I have repeatedly highlighted the HRC’s involvement in the Foley affair from the start. Many of you dismissed it. But the HRC has finally admitted it.

So my questions now are the following:

* When did the HRC employee come into possession of the Mark Foley emails?
* Why did he hold them until October, instead of going to the proper authorities immediately if he truly wanted to expose a potential sex predator?
* What did the officials at HRC know about the Foley matter before today?
* Who is this former HRC employee? What connections might he have with the two-year old outing campaign targeting gay Congressional staff?
* Were other HRC employees involved in this conspiracy?
* Does this former HRC employee have any connections to Democrat Party officials?​

Finally, it is worth noting that one of the central figures in the Foley affair is also a Board of Directors member of the Human Rights Campaign — Jeff Trandahl, the former Clerk of the House.

I think the HRC needs to come clean and fully explain to those of you who give them money exactly what the hell they are up to. This entire matter has put every gay American into a bad light by equating child predators with being gay. The HRC has a responsibility to tell us what they know and when they knew it. They are now directly responsible for the anti-gay atmosphere that has emerged from the scandal that one of their own employees helped launch.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

 

[Annie]

ummm yeah, October 'surprise' my ass:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061027/ap_on_el_ho/foley_blogs

Author of blog exposing Foley fired

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 29 minutes ago

The Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group, has fired an employee who admitted to the first publication on a Web site of Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record)'s e-mails to a former male page.

The e-mails and later disclosures of sexually explicit computer messages from the Florida Republican to other male pages sparked a campaign-season scandal that threatens the GOP's majority in Congress.

"He inappropriately used Human Rights Campaign resources. He was fired," organization Vice President David Smith said of the employee. "The Human Rights Campaign believes in being very aboveboard in our political activity."

Smith refused to identify the employee by name, citing privacy concerns, but said he was a junior staff member who worked as a coordinator in Michigan.

The Web site in question first published on Sept. 24 Foley's e-mails to a former page from Louisiana. ABC News reported its own account of the e-mails on its Web site four days later.

Foley resigned Sept. 29 after ABC questioned him about a different set of sexually explicit computer instant messages the network says it received from a different page.

Though several news outlets possessed the more ambiguous e-mails to the Louisiana page for nearly a year before the Web site put them online, the blogger was first to put them in the public arena.

What followed was a fierce round of finger-pointing among congressional Republicans regarding who knew about Foley's behavior and what they did — or did not — do about it. As the House ethics committee and the FBI opened probes into the matter, Democrats accused Republicans all the way up to Speaker Dennis Hastert of failing to vigorously confront the issue because they wanted to keep Foley's seat in GOP hands.

Republicans, in turn, have accused Democrats and their supporters of peddling the story to news outlets.

The Human Rights Campaign, a solid supporter of Democratic candidates, first learned last Monday that its employee had written e-mails regarding the site on a computer owned by the group, Smith said.
Bullshit as the first post pointed out.

He said the employee told a supervisor that the author of a rival blog was about to expose his role in the disclosure and his affiliation with the HRC. The employee was fired two days later, Smith said.

The fired blogger did not return e-mails seeking comment Thursday. In his last post, Oct. 19, he castigated Hastert for blaming the scandal on Democrats.

"That's just an attempt at escaping responsibility," the blogger wrote in that entry. "What does it matter who actually posted those first e-mails?"

It mattered to a computer-savvy West Coast blogger who suspected that the person behind the Web site stopsexpredators.blogspot.com was a Democrat. The second blogger early this month used tracer programs to find out that stopsexpredators was writing from a Human Rights Campaign computer in Michigan.

Forming his own blog, stopoctobersurprises, the second man threatened in e-mails to expose the first blogger's affiliation unless he identified himself.

When the stopsexpredators author did not respond, the West Coast blogger posted a message to let him know his location had been found out.

On Sunday night, Smith said, the stopsexpredators blogger told his HRC supervisor that he was about to be identified by the stopoctobersurprises rival. The supervisor told Smith early Tuesday, who then fired the employee.

The West Coast blogger, reached by telephone Thursday, refused to provide his name or to comment on the record. He identifies himself on his own blog as a fiscal conservative but social liberal who votes Republican most of the time and doesn't care what consenting adults do in private.