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Politics

Report: FBI flubbed Foley case

By BILL ADAIR
Published January 23, 2007

WASHINGTON - When an FBI supervisor saw the initial e-mails between Rep. Mark Foley and a former teenage page, the supervisor's first thought about the congressman was "What a freak."

But the supervisor and several agents at the FBI believed they did not have enough evidence to pursue an investigation of the congressman. Once they concluded Foley had not committed a crime, they gave up.

A report from the Justice Department's inspector general said there were enough red flags about Foley's behavior that the FBI should have kept investigating.

"We believe the FBI should have considered taking some steps to ensure that any minors in the congressional page program were not at risk of predatory behavior by Foley," Inspector General Glenn Fine wrote in the report, which was released Monday.

At the very least, the report said, the FBI should have notified supervisors of the House page program or briefed Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an advocacy group that first provided the e-mails to the FBI.

The details of the Foley scandal, which led to the resignation of the Fort Pierce Republican on Sept. 29, are well-known. But the report provides new details about how the e-mails were handled by the FBI.

The report said the FBI had encouraged CREW and other watchdog groups to pass along tips about possible criminal activity.

When Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, received the e-mails last July, she quickly forwarded them to an FBI agent who several years earlier had encouraged those tips. In the e-mails, Foley asks the boy his age, requests a photo and mentions another page who was "in really great shape."

The report shows the Foley e-mails became tangled in the FBI bureaucracy and were shuffled from office to office as agents discussed who had responsibility to investigate.

Sloan had notified the Public Corruption Squad, where a supervisory special agent's reaction was "what a freak." But that supervisor decided the e-mails were not under his jurisdiction. So he forwarded them to the Crimes Against Children and Adult Obscenity Squad.

That office, however, determined there was no crime against a child, so it forwarded them to the Cyber Crimes Squad.

Agents in that office, like the other offices, could not find any evidence that a crime had been committed.

The e-mails did not contain any sexually explicit language and there was no indication that Foley had tried to meet with the teenage boy.

No further action was taken until Sept. 29, when Foley resigned and ABC News published explicit instant messages between the congressman and teenage boys.

The report also says the FBI misled the public by erroneously claiming that it could not investigate the matter because CREW had "heavily redacted" the e-mails. To the contrary, the report said, CREW provided the e-mails exactly as the watchdog group had received them, with plenty of clues that could have been followed up.

Sloan, CREW's executive director, said Monday that the report was a sobering look at how the FBI bungled the case.

"The general theme of the report is that the FBI screwed up - and lied that they screwed up. We ought to be worried. Somebody ought to be looking over the FBI's shoulder."

Bill Adair can be reached at adair@sptimes.com or 202 463-0575.

[Last modified January 23, 2007, 01:31:11]