Editorial: Falling down on the job

Saturday, Jan. 27, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.

A Justice Department report says that the FBI should have taken immediate steps last summer to protect teenagers who work as congressional pages.

According to the report released Monday, the FBI learned in July that former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., had sent disturbing and suggestive e-mails to a former page. But the FBI declined to investigate the incident further, thus failing to take action "to ensure that any minors in the congressional page program were not at risk of predatory behavior by Foley," Glenn Fine, the Justice Department inspector general, wrote in the report.

There was no misconduct by FBI officials, Fine contends, but the agency should have at least interviewed the former page and revealed the e-mails to House officials who oversee the page program. (The House last week approved a measure that would add a former intern and the parent of a current intern to the House board that oversees the program.)

Foley was accused of sending sexually suggestive communications to male pages as far back as 2003. He resigned his House seat in September and checked into a rehabilitation facility for alcoholism. After the allegations surfaced, at least two other House members said that they had told former House Speaker Dennis Hastert in 2005 of Foley's suspected behavior.

Yet none of these adults stepped forward to protect the teenagers who work as interns in our nation's capital. The FBI began an investigation after Foley's resignation. But, according to a story by The New York Times on Tuesday, the agency has not released the results of that investigation.

It is bad enough that sitting members of Congress can hide such unconscionable acts for years. It is simply unthinkable that federal law enforcement officials could learn of such abuses and fail to act swiftly to protect the youths allegedly victimized by them.