WASHINGTON — For 20 years, Kirk Fordham was a loyal staffer and strategist -- rising from his early days as a Capitol Hill intern to the coveted post of chief of staff to a senior congressman.
But Wednesday, amid a scandal that has rattled Capitol Hill and ended the political career of Fordham's longtime boss, former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), the 39-year-old aide emerged as a central player in a saga that could bring down the same House GOP leadership that he worked so tirelessly to serve.
No longer a behind-the-scenes operator, Fordham resigned his post as chief of staff to Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and declared his intention to tell all when the FBI calls.
"I have no reason to state anything other than the facts," Fordham wrote in an e-mail sent to The Times. "I have no congressman and no office to protect."
Fordham's assertion Wednesday that he informed House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's top aide more than two years ago of Foley's "inappropriate behavior" with teenage pages contradicted claims from the Illinois Republican and other leaders that they did not know the scope of Foley's problems until last week's news reports about sexually explicit instant messages he sent to boys as long as three years ago.
Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, denied Fordham's account in a terse, one-sentence statement.
But Fordham's decision to speak publicly, coming one day after President Bush offered a stout defense of Hastert amid calls for the speaker's resignation, handed more fodder to Democrats and others who are accusing the GOP of a coverup. And it put Fordham at the center of a burgeoning scandal during a heated election campaign that was shaping up as a possible defeat for the GOP majority.
For the soft-spoken Fordham, a role as a possible whistle-blower is an unfamiliar one -- but it is perhaps not surprising for a longtime Republican weary of his party's anti-gay political tactics and concerned that some were planning to make him take the fall. He spoke out Wednesday to denounce what he said were false charges from unnamed sources that he had tried to suppress details to protect his old boss.
A native of suburban Rochester, N.Y., he has worked for Republicans since his college days as an intern for his congressman, one-term Republican Fred J. Eckert, and as a volunteer stuffing envelopes and knocking on doors for a candidate for county executive.
