The Daily Background

A week ago today, on Tuesday October 3rd, I published an investigative report gathered from interviews with former pages as well as exclusive written evidence I had obtained on the Foley scandal. Although the piece itself was rather lengthy (you can read it here), these were the following main points it made:

-Republican pages appear to have been aware of rumors about Foley, while Dem ones did not…
-The office of Clerk of the House has been advising former pages who call up not to talk to anybody about the story…
-The House did not contact any of the former pages I talked to, neither had authorities…
-The press had contacted most if not all former pages I talked to, and is swarming over this thing like crazy…
-A second GOP representative, Jim Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican in Congress (who is retiring this year) is rumored to have called a male page at his house in Alabama…

TheDailyBackground.com was the first website– either blog or traditional news organization to report on the rumor between pages that Republican Congressman Jim Kolbe had contacted a male page at his house. At the time, nobody paid particular attention to that particular detail of the story I wrote.

Now, one week later, the mainstream traditional press is now confirming what I had first published- that Republican Congressman Kolbe had contact with male pages. The Washington Post reports:

In interviews with The Post last week, multiple pages identified Kolbe as a close friend and personal confidante who was one of the only members of Congress to take any interest in them. A former page himself, Kolbe offered to mentor pages and kept in touch with some of them after they left the program, according to the interviews.

Kolbe once invited four former pages to make use of his Washington home while he was out of town, according to an instant message between Foley and another former page, Jordan Edmund, in January 2002. The pages planned to attend a first-year reunion of their page class. But because of a snowstorm, they did not take Kolbe up on his offer, according to one of the four pages.

The Post also reports that Congressman Kolbe had seen an explicit instant message between former Congressman Foley and a teenage page in 2000– something the Congressman now denies.

I am glad that traditional media is now exploring this aspect of the story- as it relates to Congressman Kolbe and his apparent contact with pages, which I originally wrote about early last week.

Filed under: News Media, Z-TDB Blog