Rep. Issa's Unfortunate Look-Alike: Vito Fossella

As if Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) weren't taking enough heat already for calling the 9/11 terrorist attacks "simply" a plane crash, he now has the unfortunate problem of looking just like Rep. Vito Fossella (R-N.Y.).

Rep. Darrell Issa, left, alongside Rep. Vito Fossella.

For years the two have been confused for each other. But now, well, now isn't exactly a good time to be mistaken for Fossella, who stands accused of drunken driving and has confessed to fathering a child with his secret mistress who he romanced on taxpayer-funded overseas congressional trips, presumably unbeknown to his wife, the mother of his not-secret three children in Staten Island.

New York magazine on Tuesday ran a story titled "Vito Fossella: When Sex Overcomes Politics" and underneath the headline ran a photo of the congressman wearing - thanks to the powers of Photoshop - a big scarlet letter "A" around his neck.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) was mistaken for Rep. Vito Fossella by New York Magazine, which published his photo with a red scarlet letter A around his neck. (New York Magazine)

The only problem was, the congressman in the photo wasn't Fossella. He was Fossella's doppleganger, Congressman Issa, who, while charged with infuriating New Yorkers with his insensitive 9/11 comments, wasn't charged with a DWI in the wee hours of the morning two weeks ago. Nor did he admit to fathering a child with Laura Fay, a retired military liaison officer to Congress with whom he has had a longtime extramarital affair.

That guy would be Fossella, whose own hometown newspaper, The Staten Island Advance, has called on him to step down over his multi-tiered scandal.

Luckily, Issa never saw the photo of himself in New York magazine's steamy online story wearing the scarlet letter around his neck. His press secretary, Frederick Hill, called the magazine and got it pulled off the web site in very short order.

As soon as Hill called to complain, New York magazine quickly removed the errant Issa photo from its web site and replaced it with one of Fossella. Though, perhaps because the photoshop idea lost its luster in the mixup, there is no scarlet letter "A" hanging around Fossella's neck in the current photo accompanying the online story.

"By the time I was able to show Rep. Issa a printed copy of the webpage, the photo had already been removed from the web site," Hill says. "Upon seeing it, he asked if it was real. I told him it was and he just shook his head."

Hill says Fossella and Issa - both of them tall, fit and swarthy - have been mistaken for each other over the years. Even New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer once mistook Issa for Fossella, his own state's congressman, according to Hill. But recently, hungry reporters looking for comment from the scandal-plagued Fossella have made the mistake more often, he adds.

Lauren Starke, a spokeswoman for New York magazine, says the mix-up occurred because the photo the magazine got from Getty Images was mislabeled. As for why the magazine chose not to hang the same scarlet "A" around Fossella's neck that it hung around Issa's, Starke said, "In the interest of correcting it as quickly as possible we did not replace the letter."

But, she adds, "We certainly didn't intend to tar Representative Issa with the same brush."

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