WASHINGTON - House Speaker Dennis Hastert's political support showed signs of cracking on Wednesday as Republicans fled an election-year scandal spawned by steamy computer messages from former Rep. Mark Foley. At the same time, a congressional aide said in an Associated Press interview he first warned Hastert's aides more than three years ago that Foley's behavior toward pages was troublesome. That was long before GOP leaders acknowledged learning of the problem.

The aide, Kirk Fordham, said he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene" several years ago.

The claim drew a swift, unequivocal denial from Hastert's chief of staff. "What Kirk Fordham said did not happen," Scott Palmer said through a spokesman.

Hastert's political difficulties were evident half a continent away.

Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, third-ranking leader, pointedly told reporters he would have handled the matter differently than the speaker, had he known of it.

"I think I could have given some good advice here, which is, You have to be curious, you have to ask all the questions you can think of," said Blunt, a member of the leadership. "You absolutely can't decide not to look into activities because one individual's parents don't want you to."

Republican Rep. Ron Lewis of Kentucky, in a tougher-than-expected re-election race, abruptly canceled an invitation for Hastert to join him at a fundraiser next week.

"I'm taking the speaker's words at face value," Lewis told the AP. "I have no reason to doubt him. But until this is cleared up, I want to know the facts. If anyone in our leadership has done anything wrong, then I will be the first in line to condemn it."

Ron Bonjean, Hastert's spokesman, said the entire issue had been referred to the House ethics committee. "We fully expect that the bipartisan panel will do what it needs to do to investigate this mater and protect the integrity of the House," he added.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi went one step further, saying in a statement that Hastert and the rest of the GOP leadership should be "immediately questioned under oath...."

"The children, their parents, the public, and our colleagues deserve answers and those who covered up Mark Foley's behavior must be held accountable," she said.

Foley, 52, a Florida Republican, resigned last Friday after he was confronted with sexually explicit electronic messages he had sent teenage male pages. He has since entered an alcohol rehabilitation facility at an undisclosed location. Through his lawyer, he has said he is gay but denied any sexual contact with minors.

His abrupt departure left behind an Internet-age sex scandal that has shaken Republican confidence — and poll numbers — little more than a month before elections at which their control of the House will be tested.

It also plunged Hastert and others into an intensive effort to grapple with conflicting claims about what senior lawmakers knew, when they learned and what they did about it.

Fordham resigned Wednesday as chief of staff to Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., the House GOP campaign chief who says he alerted Hastert to concerns about Foley last spring.

The longtime Capitol Hill aide said that more than three years ago, he repeatedly asked GOP staffers to intervene with Foley. He declined to identify them, but officials said Palmer, Hastert's chief of staff, was one of them.

Fordham also disputed allegations that he covered up any misdeeds by Foley. "At no point ever did I ask anyone to block any inquiries," said Fordham, who was Foley's longtime chief of staff until leaving in January 2004.

He said he intends to fully disclose to the FBI and the House ethics committee "any and all meetings and phone calls" about Foley that he had with senior aides in the House leadership.

State and federal investigators swung into action.

The Justice Department ordered House officials to "preserve all records" related to Foley's electronic correspondence with teenagers, and one law enforcement official said FBI agents have begun interviewing participants in the House page program. It was not clear whether those questioned were current or former pages, or both.

The request for record preservation is often followed by search warrants and subpoenas, and signal that investigators are moving closer to a criminal investigation.

The request was aimed at averting a conflict with the House similar to a standoff in May when FBI agents raided Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson (news, bio, voting record)'s office seeking information in a bribery investigation.

Separately, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has begun a preliminary inquiry.

Hastert was at home in Illinois during the day as he struggled with the first major cracks in his political support from fellow Republicans.

His office heatedly denied any suggestion that he intended to resign as speaker.

"When Republicans keep the majority this November, the speaker will run again and serve his full term should his colleagues choose to elect him," Bonjean said.

But the comments by Fordham coupled with the remarks by Blunt and Lewis' action, suggested Hastert's plans might face a challenge. The speaker is elected by the full House, but he essentially serves at the pleasure of the members of the rank and file of the majority party.

In this case, that's the Republicans, who already had been struggling to retain their majority in adverse political circumstances and now must contend with the questions about Hastert's actions.

Even a Republican from Hastert's home state of Illinois expressed reservations about asking the speaker for campaign help.

"We still take the position that we want all the facts," said Ryan McLaughlin, a spokesman for state Sen. Peter Roskam, who is running for an open seat now in Republican hands.

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Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor, Lara Jakes Jordan and Laurie Kellman in Washington; Marus Kabel in Springfield, Mo., and Michelle Smith in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report. to teenage male pages.

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