FOLEY GATE

WASHINGTON - A top House Republican staff member charged Wednesday that he warned senior aides to House Speaker Dennis Hastert as far back as 2003 about former Florida Rep. Mark Foley's behavior toward underage congressional pages.

Hastert has said his aides were first alerted about Foley in fall 2005, and then only with ambiguous evidence. Foley resigned Friday after evidence became public that he had exchanged sexually explicit Internet messages with former male congressional pages for years.

Kirk Fordham -- who was Foley's chief of staff for a decade before holding the same post for Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee -- said he had told Hastert's aides about the behavior at least three years ago.

Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, flatly rejected Fordham's assertion: ``What Kirk Fordham said did not happen.''

--story