HRC Employee Leaked Foley Emails

Ever since this whole Mark Foley scandal erupted, people have been scratching their heads over who originally leaked the “overly-friendly” emails between Foley and an underage former Congressional page. Now, we may finally know.

It seems that Human Rights Campaign has fired one of its own for posting the emails on a website called Stop Sex Predators, which eventually led to the posting on the ABC News website that threatens to bring down some pretty big Republicans (ie: Speaker Dennis “Hasturd” Hastert…he’s big).

The New York Times reports:

A liberal gay rights group said Wednesday that one of its employees, acting anonymously, had created the Web site that first published copies of unusually solicitous e-mail messages to teenagers from former Representative Mark Foley, which led to his resignation.
…
The rights campaign’s spokesman, David Smith, said the employee, whose name he declined to disclose, was a junior staff member hired last month to help mobilize the organization’s members in Michigan. “The minute we learned about it we took decisive action,” Mr. Smith said.

Hmmm, very interesting. We wonder what Joe Solmonese has to say about all of this…

As you can see above, the name of the employee hasn’t been released to the public, but we have a feeling someone out there knows the truth. So, astute and investigative readers, who’s the leak? Gold star for positive identification.

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(And, yes, we’ve pasted the article below…)

October 26, 2006
Rights Group Fires Publisher of Foley E-Mail
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 – A liberal gay rights group said Wednesday that one of its employees, acting anonymously, had created the Web site that first published copies of unusually solicitous e-mail messages to teenagers from former Representative Mark Foley, which led to his resignation.

A spokesman for the group, the Human Rights Campaign, said it first learned of its employee’s role this week and immediately fired him for misusing the group’s resources. The scandal surrounding Mr. Foley, a Florida Republican, has been a burdensome distraction for members of his party in the month before the midterm elections, and some Republicans have speculated that the e-mail messages were planted by a Democrat.

The rights campaign’s spokesman, David Smith, said the employee, whose name he declined to disclose, was a junior staff member hired last month to help mobilize the organization’s members in Michigan. “The minute we learned about it we took decisive action,” Mr. Smith said.

The Miami Herald and other news organizations have acknowledged obtaining copies of the same e-mail messages months ago but declining to publish them because of their potentially ambiguous contents.

After the messages appeared on the Web, at stopsexpredators.blogspot.com, the Web site of ABC News followed with its own independent report. The ABC News report resulted in the disclosure of more sexually explicit electronic messages that Mr. Foley sent to other former Congressional pages.

In the aftermath of the scandal, the creator of the sex predators Web site declined requests sent by e-mail to identify himself. Instead, he posted a message urging the news media to ask questions about “when the Republican leadership knew about it, what they did, how they were connected, what favors took place, etc.”

The posting continued: “The true hero here is the page who reported the e-mails in the first place.”