ABC News Producer Tells How Foley Story Went Down

This morning, Amy Goodman interviewed Maddy Sauer, the ABC producer who worked with Brian Ross on the Mark Foley story and who has been in contact with the congressional pages. She talked about how the story developed for the news network.

Sauer: There really was no other option but to go to the congressman's office and let them know what we found. So I called the press person for Congressman Foley and let him know that I'd obtained two transcripts from two different former pages, internet messages with former pages, and they asked me for a copy of them and I had to refuse because that would have let them know who the pages involved in these communications were and I wasn't ready to do that. So, he asked me to read him the transcripts which I did and he . . .

Goodman: This was the press person?

Sauer: This was the press person and it was one of the strangest conversations I've ever had with a press person for a congressman because I've never ended that conversation saying, 'So, the question is, does the congressman engage in sexually explicit internet messages with teenagers that were his congressional pages?' And when he had to tell me he'd call me back on that one I knew we had a problem here. So it was, I'd say, an hour later maybe that we got a call back from the congressman's office saying he was going to resign.

Sauer said she had spoken with almost 10 former congressional pages, some of whom had received similar communications from Foley, and some of whom simply knew about similar communications with other pages.

Democracy Now! video here.