House page program leaders discuss trip

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - House page program overseers this week discussed a camping trip that Rep. Jim Kolbe (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., took with two former pages and others in 1996, a congressional official said Tuesday. The trip is under review by the Justice Department.

The five-member House Page Board, three lawmakers and two House officials, took no action and did not have any information beyond recent news accounts of the trip, the official said.

The discussion indicates that the board is moving beyond the overly friendly e-mails, and sexually explicit instant messages that ex-Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record), R-Fla., sent to former male pages. The House ethics committee and the FBI are investigating Foley's approaches to the teenagers.

The congressional official is familiar with the Page Board discussion but was not authorized to be quoted by name about the meeting.

While the Page Board does not have investigators, they could ask Kolbe to meet with them.

When the Foley scandal became public in late September, House Speaker Dennis Hastert asked the chairman of the Page Board, GOP Rep. John Shimkus (news, bio, voting record) of Illinois, to investigate the page system.

"We want to make sure that all our pages are safe and the page system is safe," Hastert said.

Pages are high school students who perform errands for lawmakers, learn about Congress and attend classes at a congressional school.

Meanwhile, the ethics committee continued to call witnesses for closed-door testimony. On Tuesday, House Sergeant-at-Arms Wilson Livingood, a member of the Page Board, was questioned for less than two hours. He would not comment afterward.

The committee still has not heard from the former clerk of the House, Jeff Trandahl, who as a board member confronted Foley in the fall of 2005, along with Shimkus.

Their visit came after the House speaker's office learned that Foley sent e-mails to a 16-year-old former male page from Louisiana. While the e-mails were far milder than the sexually explicit instant messages Foley sent to other former male pages, they raised questions. Foley asked what the youngster wanted for his birthday and requested a photograph.

Shimkus has said previously that Foley told him and Trandahl that he was acting as a mentor and that nothing inappropriate had occurred.

Foley was ordered by Shimkus to cease all contact with the former page and assured Shimkus he would do so, the board chairman said. He also was advised to watch his conduct with current and former House pages and he gave assurance he would do so, Shimkus said.

The ethics committee also heard Tuesday from Paula Nowakowski, chief of staff to House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. Boehner has said he spoke to Hastert about Foley earlier this year, but the speaker said he does not recall the conversation.

Boehner has said Hastert told him the Louisiana page's complaint "had been taken care of." The majority leader is scheduled to testify this week.

The Kolbe trip was discussed at a conference call of the Page Board on Monday.

The meeting was first revealed several hours later by the lone Democrat on the Page Board, Rep. Dale Kildee (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, who declined to say what was discussed. Kildee has been upset that Shimkus never told him about the problems with Foley.

Kolbe took the former pages as well as staff members and National Park Service officials on a Fourth of July rafting trip in the Grand Canyon in 1996, his former spokeswoman, Korenna Cline, said last week.

A federal law enforcement official said last week an allegation related to the trip was given to the U.S. attorney's office in Phoenix. It was not immediately clear whether it concerned any contention of improper activity by the retiring Kolbe — the only openly gay Republican in Congress.

The official described the inquiry as preliminary and as far narrower in scope than the federal investigation concerning Foley, who resigned Sept. 29 after he was confronted with sexually explicit instant messages sent to former pages.

A second law enforcement official said the 1996 Kolbe trip may be too old to investigate as a criminal matter. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Kolbe said in a statement that he had not been contacted by anyone about the camping trip. "But if I am, I will fully cooperate with the appropriate authorities," he said.

Cline said last week the rafting party included five current staffers, two former pages and Kolbe's sister. Nothing inappropriate happened on the trip, she said. She did not know who the pages were or what year they worked for Kolbe, but she said they paid their own way.

Beth Kolbe, the congressman's younger sister, who was on the three-night trip, said that nothing inappropriate happened and that she had not heard of any concerns from anyone until the story of the camping trip appeared in the news media.