Blogger Bob Owens has some questions for ABC News that he can’t seem to get answered:

* When did [Brian] Ross become aware of the existence of the instant messages between Congressman Foley and House pages?

* Were these instant messages given to Ross and the Staff of The Blotter directly by the pages, or were they filtered through an intermediary?

On the second question, I linked to the WSJ the other day, which reported that Ross says two other pages (not the recipients of the Foley IMs) passed the IMs to ABC News. Ross said he verified them with the recipients. It doesn’t answer the question of when, though. I forwarded Bob’s blog post and questions to an ABC News exec. If I hear anything back, I’ll let Bob and you all know.

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Update: From Jeffrey W. Schneider of ABC News:

We became aware of the IMs only after we reported the first blotter item on the emails between Foley and a former page last Thursday, September 28. As we have reported, the IMs were given to us by former pages who contacted us after reading that first story.

As for responding to reader’s questions, we have received tens of thousands of comments on these stories. We would like to respond to every question, but as I’m sure you can appreciate, that is not always possible.