The House ethics committee investigation of the House page program--in the wake of the Mark Foley page sex scandal--this week is poised to hear testimony from key staffers of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and perhaps the speaker himself.

The testimony is crucial in determining if the speaker's team first learned of Foley's ``overly friendly'' overtures to pages in November, 2005--as the speaker claims--or years earlier, as a former Foley chief of staff claimed. A special investigative subcommittee of the panel, officially named the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct started work on Oct. 4.
Key Hastert staffers: Chief of Staff Scott Palmer; Deputy Chief of Staff Mike Stokke and Ted Van Der Meid, chief in-house counsel.