Foley Case: Not the First Time Heather Wilson Tied to Youth Scandal Questions

UPDATE 10.20.06: In the past couple of days KOAT successfully convinced YouTube to remove the video linked above due to copyright issues. For those who didn't get a chance to view the video when it was available (for weeks if not months), read this unofficial transcript provided by someone who watched it carefully.
************
Reminiscent of the still-unfolding scandal involving Rep. Mark Foley -- and what many, even on the right, see as a Republican cover-up -- is an earlier scandal involving Republican Rep. Heather Wilson (NM-01) and her husband, Jay Hone. The video above shows a KOAT-TV7 (Albuquerque) news story prompted by one of Wilson's first actions when she was appointed to head the NM Department of Children, Youth and Families. Wilson served as Department Secretary from 1995-1998. On her third day in office, she removed a sensitive department case file, which had been opened on her husband, from the agency's central records repository in Albuquerque. Although Wilson initially denied doing so, she later changed her story and admitted removing the file. In other words, she lied.

The file was opened in response to an Albuquerque police report filed in March 1993 that reportedly contained potentially damaging allegations against her husband. The file is rumored to contain information about an accusation against Hone that has to do with inappropriate contact on his part with a babysitter. Most files opened by the department in this manner are generally based on claims of sexually inappropriate contact or abuse involving minors.

In the news report, investigative journalist Larry Barker tracks down Wilson and asks her about the file. On camera, Heather denies she removed the file from the Department's central filing system and transferred it to the custody of the Department attorney who shared her Santa Fe offices. The news team reports that when Wilson learned they were going to run the story she summoned reporters to her office and finally admitted she did, in fact, remove the file to her Secretary's office in Santa Fe.

The Bernalillo County District Attorney at the time, Bob Schwartz, stated that the removal was a "highly inappropriate" act on the part of Wilson and that she should at least have filed a request under seal to a judge to get permission to move the file. Schwartz claimed Wilson had a clear conflict of interest in the matter and stated that if she had, indeed removed it, she should resign. Strangely, I can't find any evidence that the matter was pursued. At the time, Republican Gary Johnson was Governor of NM, and the matter just faded from public view. The file has evidently never been returned to the central records of the Department.

Here we have a clear case of Heather Wilson acting to hide the facts about allegations about her husband's possibly improper behavior with a minor -- no doubt to ensure they never see the light of day.

Now move forward in time to 2001, when Wilson is serving on the Page Board, which oversees the Congressional page program. Even though a page has come forward to say that Republican-appointed pages were warned that year not to respond to Rep. Foley's "friendly" overtures, Wilson claims she knew nothing about it. She served on the board from 2001 through 2004, when Foley's inappropriate emails and IMs were being sent, yet she claims she knew nothing about them. Heather Wilson was on the board charged with supervising the page program during a time when rumors were apparently making the rounds about Foley's suspect interest in the youths, but she heard none of it.

A coincidence or a pattern? You decide. But I have to ask, can Rep. Heather Wilson be trusted in matters like this after lying on camera about a similar matter in the past?