'Undetectable' weblog put skids under Foley

A weblog run by Radar Magazine is raising some concerns about the sequence of events that pushed former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley's illicit electronic relationship with an underage former House page into the spotlight just as the 2006 mid-term elections approached voters.

The reports of the sexually explicit e-mails and instant messages were launched into general circulation by ABCNews.com, resulting in Foley's quick resignation.

But the Radar blog reports that wasn't the first site to post the information.

"That dubious honor belongs to StopSexPredators, a pseudo-vigilante blog filled with plagiarized, hastily-assembled posts, which no one seems to have heard of, visited, or linked to before last week – and whose operator has a suspiciously savvy grasp of the news cycle," the Radar report said.

The Radar report said it appears that the blog's only purpose appears to have been to get someone to pay enough attention to the situation to begin investigating Foley's misdeeds at this time.

An investigation was something Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a George Soros-sponsored organization, said it had been trying to obtain for several months.

That group said it sent a letter to the Department of Justice Inspector General's office this week to ask why the Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to begin the investigation back in July, about the time the StopSexPredators site was set up.

CREW said it received a set of e-mails, allegedly from Foley to a former House page, on July 21, and it sent them to the FBI later that day. The e-mails asked the page his age, how school was going and what he wanted for his birthday, CREW said.

The Radar Magazine report said one indicator of the purpose for StopSexPredators was that the site apparently was set up late in July to serve as a "clearing house for the public to report sex predators and as a resource for concerned citizens."

However, there had been only six posts on the site over the summer, the Internet equivalent of a whisper in the next block, before suddenly on Sept. 21 the weblog announced that it had "been noticed."

"And some shocking e-mails have been received!!!" it said.

Four e-mails purportedly from "interns" and referencing Foley soon were up on the site, the Radar report said.

"(Of course, if these e-mails are legit, it means the 'interns' somehow stumbled upon the blog, despite the fact that it had not yet been linked to by any other sites, and was virtually indetectible (sic) to Google, which ranks sites according to the number of incoming links.)" the Radar report said.

The report said it was then three days later when the now infamous "E-mails from Congressman Foley to 16 Year Old Page!!!" were posted. The claim was made that they'd been sent in by a web site reader, even though they appeared to be scans of faxed printouts, the Radar report said.

A short time later, ABC had them.

The report noted that someone identified as WHInternNow on Sept. 24 posted a note on Daily Kos telling people to "Check this out. Congressman Mark Foley has crossed the line," with a reference to StopSexPredators.

Six minutes later there was an expanded posting, where WHInternNow said he'd been reading "various discussions" about Foley. WHInternNow said he'd Googled Foley and found the StopSexPredators site and its references to Foley and the e-mails, expressing surprise.

However, back on Sept. 5, the same WHInternNow referred to Foley with this: "It's not that he's gay. It's that he constantly hits on underage interns on The Hill. You guys talk about an 'open secret' well Foley's eye for the young boys in the White Hose and around the Capitol is what has the Republican bosses scared to death."

On Oct. 2, the StopSexPredators blogger wrote he was "thrilled" so many people found his site, but he would "prefer to keep marching toward the large goal (of) stopping sex predators."

Later e-mails to the site weren't answered.

But at GOPVideo.com someone asked the question: "How would a victim of sexual abuse even find this blog – it is too new to be indexed in even the first 10 pages of internet searches. As far as I can tell all links to the site have occurred in the past week. And why would a victim of sexual abuse trust an anonymous blog with 4 posts that has no affiliations with any professional website?"

The Wideawakes site also notes that CREW is "one of four George Soros-funded 'public interest groups' which endeavors, like the others, to attack and discredit members of the GOP, and along with that agenda, to ensure in what appear to be extreme and underhanded methods, the 'win' for Democrats by default when a Republican takes his fall."

Soros is the liberal billionaire who spent tens of millions of dollars of his own money in 2004 trying to prevent George Bush from being re-elected. Another of his projects is the left-wing www.moveon.org.

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