SALON

Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 11:27 PM UTC

E-mails Show White House Input On Sherrod Ouster

By

Topics: From the Wires,

WASHINGTON (AP) — White House officials were in close contact with the Agriculture Department in the hours leading up to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s decision to fire USDA employee Shirley Sherrod in 2010, according to nearly 2,000 pages of internal emails released by the administration.

Emails obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act don’t contradict Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s assertion that he made the decision to oust Sherrod as the department’s director of rural development in Georgia after an edited video of her making supposed racist remarks surfaced on a conservative website.

But they do show the White House and Agriculture Department officials were sharing information and advice from the first minutes after the scandal began to emerge until Sherrod submitted a resignation hours later at the request of a senior USDA official.

USDA officials asked Sherrod, who is black, to resign after the original video emerged. Once it became clear a day later that Sherrod’s speech was about racial reconciliation, not division, Vilsack apologized and asked her to return to the department — an offer she declined. President Barack Obama also offered an apology after her ouster created a racial firestorm.

Agriculture Department officials exchanged more than two dozen e-mails with their White House counterparts as the story began to hit conservative websites and later Fox News the afternoon and evening of July 19, 2010. The video — posted on the website BigGovernment.com, run by the late Andrew Breitbart — showed Sherrod saying she was initially reluctant to help a white farmer more than two decades earlier.

USDA director of communications Chris Mather sent the White House press office a heads-up email describing the video.

“She goes on to make it a larger case about understanding race …. but looks bad. (Fox News host Bill) O’Reilly just called us for statement,” Mather says in the email.

White House spokesman Reid Cherlin, responds, asking Mather in an email what USDA is going to say about the matter, “and has she been fired? I’ll alert folks here.”

Mather answers, telling Cherlin that Sherrod had been placed on administrative leave. “I guess some folks over there are circling wagons,” Mather says, referring to the White House.

At the same time, Valerie Green of the White House presidential personnel office was emailing the USDA’s White House liaison, Kevin Washo, asking him to loop her in, “Please. Please. Please.”

Washo emails back to her, “I tried calling you.”

In a separate email exchange with Green, Washo asked for records the White House might have on Sherrod, who was a political appointee. Green says she is working on it. Washo replies: “Let me know what counsel says so we can be decisive on this.”

In a later email, Green says, “I still think we need the rest of the speech if we can get it.”

Despite those concerns, USDA officials extracted the resignation from Sherrod that evening. In an email, she offered her resignation but put the Obama administration “on notice that I will get the whole story out.” The next day, Sherrod appeared on numerous television news programs, saying she was unfairly asked to leave.

The email exchanges confirm what White House and Agriculture Department officials acknowledged in background interviews in the weeks after the incident — that the White House was more involved in the immediate response to the video of Sherrod’s remarks than officials initially let on. Several emails detail White House and USDA calls to members of Congress, civil rights groups and Vilsack the night Sherrod was fired.

No one stepped in to stop Vilsack from telling his subordinates to get Sherrod to resign. But it’s clear that the White House kept itself in the loop on the decision to oust her.

“We’re good with this version on this end. Counsel has cleared the language,” White House cabinet communications director Tom Gavin said in an email to the Agriculture Department’s Mather after Mather sent him Vilsack’s initial statement on Sherrod’s firing.

White House spokesman Jay Carney on Thursday repeated the administration’s statement that the decision to oust Sherrod was USDA’s alone.

“The emails confirm what we said at the time, which is that the White House had no involvement in the decision made regarding Ms. Sherrod’s employment, her firing, but were made aware of the decision that had been made by the Department of Agriculture,” Carney said.

Many of the newly released emails are blacked out, citing laws that allow the government to withhold information that shows the “deliberative process.” Others concerning Sherrod’s personnel records also are blacked out. The Agriculture Department released an earlier batch of emails in October 2010.

Sherrod has a defamation lawsuit pending in federal court against Breitbart, who died unexpectedly last week. She also sued one of Breitbart’s colleagues and an unidentified defendant who she says gave Breitbart the video. Breitbart was trying to get the suit dismissed when he died.

More Mary Clare Jalonick.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations