U.S. & World News

Bush 'Shocked' By Foley Conduct

Meanwhile, House Speaker Rejects Calls For His Resignation Over Handling Of Scandal

WASHINGTON (CBS News) ― President Bush said Tuesday he was "shocked and dismayed" at disgraced lawmaker Mark Foley's behavior and supports House Speaker Dennis Hastert's call for a full investigation.

"This investigation should be thorough and any violation of the law should be prosecuted," Mr. Bush said while campaigning for Republican lawmakers in California.

Hastert, R-Ill., on Tuesday rejected a call from the conservative Washington Times for him to resign over his handling of the scandal involving Foley's contacts with teenage male pages.

Mr. Bush expressed confidence in the speaker's ability to resolve the matter, calling him a "father, teacher, coach."

"I know that he wants all the facts to come out and he wants to ensure that these children up there on Capitol Hill are protected," the president said. "I'm confident he will provide whatever leadership he can to law enforcement in this investigation."

"I was dismayed and shocked to learn about Congressman Foley's unacceptable behavior," Mr. Bush told reporters. "I was disgusted by the revelations and disappointed that he would violate the trust of the citizens who placed him in office. Families have every right to expect that when they send their children to be a congressional page in Washington that those children will be safe."

Meanwhile, Majority Leader John Boehner said Hastert had assured him months ago that the matter had been taken care of. "It's in his corner, it's his responsibility," Boehner, R-Ohio, said in an interview on WLW Radio in Cincinnati.

However, Boehner said in a letter to the Washington Times that he disagreed with the paper's call for Hastert to resign.

"No one in the leadership, including Speaker Hastert, had any knowledge of the warped and sexually explicit instant messages" Foley allegedly sent to a teenage page.

Foley, a Florida Republican, resigned abruptly on Friday and has since checked himself into an alcohol rehabilitation program at an undisclosed location.

His departure left behind a trail of questions concerning the e-mails and instant messages he had sent pages over an unknown period of time. Beyond the details of his actions, Republican leaders feared the impact on the Nov. 7 elections, and the possible loss of their House majority.

One senior House Republican told CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger that this scandal "could be the congressional equivalent of Katrina. Our base is moral conservatives, and we look like a bunch of hypocrites who just didn't want another scandal before the election."

The Washington Times, one of the most reliably conservative voices in the nation's capital, called for Hastert to "resign his speakership at once" for not doing enough to investigate questions about Foley.

"Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week's revelations, or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away," The Times' editors wrote in Tuesday's editions.

"Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance," The Times said.

Hastert brushed aside any suggestion that he step down.

"The Speaker has and will lead the Republican conference to another majority in the 110th Congress," said a statement from Hastert's office. "Mark Foley has resigned his seat in dishonor and the criminal investigation of this matter will continue."

Hastert and other leaders have laid out a complicated series of events. They say they first became aware of overly friendly e-mails from Foley to one underage male page about a year ago, but had no idea that the congressman had sent other, sexually explicit messages, to additional pages.

The speaker has said that Foley was confronted about his communications with the one page, and told to break off contact with him and all other pages.

Boehner, the second-ranking GOP leader, became the latest member of the party's high command to outline his involvement when he answered questions in his radio interview.

"I believe I talked to the speaker, and he told me it had been taken care of," he said, when asked about the e-mails that were not sexually explicit.

"In my position, it's in his corner, it's his responsibility. The clerk of the House, who runs the page program, the page board, all report to the speaker, and I believed it had been dealt with. Again, I didn't know the context of what even the original message (said)," he added.

Boehner noted that his daughter had been a Senate page several years ago, and said of Foley, "if I'd known anything about the context of all this when it occurred, I'd have drug him out of there buy his shirt sleeves."

To speak to former pages like Blake Yocum, Foley's interest in the young students was practically legendary, reports CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, but this story has been a surprise.

"I feel my close friends who were pages suspected that Congressman Foley was homosexual. But we never suspected pedophilia out of the congressman," said Yocum.

Foley's attorney, David Roth, said Monday that Foley was "absolutely, positively not a pedophile" and had never had inappropriate sexual contact with a minor.

ABC News reported instant messages between Foley and a San Diego teenager who suggested he was uncomfortable in an exchange discussing dinner plans for when the boy was to come to Washington.

"… and then what happens," Foley messaged at one point.

"I have the feeling that you are fishing here ... I'm not sure what I would be comfortable with ... well see," the teen replied.

Democrats protested that the matter should have been brought to the attention of the page board or the House Ethics Committee.

"Republican leaders admitted to knowing about Mr. Foley's abhorrent behavior for six months to a year and failed to protect the children in their trust," said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "Republican leaders must be investigated by the Ethics Committee and immediately questioned under oath."

The FBI has begun an inquiry into Foley's computer contact with pages, and Hastert wrote a letter to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush asking for an investigation into whether state laws were broken.

The St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald, which had been given copies of the e-mail with the Louisiana boy last year, defended their decisions not to run stories.

"Given the potentially devastating impact that a false suggestion of pedophilia could have on anyone, not to mention a congressman known to be gay, and lacking any corroborating information, we chose not to do a story," said Tom Fiedler, executive editor of the Herald.

(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)