WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod pleaded with officials to hear her out after she was ousted from the USDA during a racial firestorm in July, internal e-mails show.
Mrs. Sherrod's pleas reached Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's e-mail soon after he ordered her dismissed from the department because of supposed racist remarks she made earlier in the year. He initially stuck by his decision despite her warnings that he didn't have the full story.
Agriculture Department officials asked Mrs. Sherrod to leave her job as Georgia's director of rural development July 19 after comments she made in March were misconstrued as racist. She later received numerous apologies from the administration, including from President Obama himself, and Mr. Vilsack asked her to return.
Mr. Vilsack has repeatedly said he made the decision to ask her to leave the department alone, with no consultation from the White House. More than 800 pages of e-mails obtained Thursday by the Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act show his decision was made hastily after learning that an edited clip of her remarks had made its way into the media.
The clip, posted by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, showed Mrs. Sherrod, who is black, telling a local NAACP group that she was initially reluctant to help a white farmer save his farm more than two decades ago, long before she worked for USDA. Missing from the clip was the rest of the speech, which was meant as a lesson in racial healing. Mrs. Sherrod told the crowd she eventually realized her mistake and helped the farmer save his farm.
Mr. Vilsack has acknowledged that he made the decision quickly without seeing the full tape. He was traveling in Ohio when the story broke, and an official traveling with him e-mailed other aides that the secretary was "absolutely sick and mad over the S Sherrod issue" after seeing news clips about it.
His decision to ask her to resign that day is not detailed in the e-mails. The communications do show that he had early indications that Mrs. Sherrod's comments were being misconstrued by the conservative blogosphere as USDA moved to oust her.
Rural development undersecretary Dallas Tonsager wrote Mr. Vilsack that afternoon and said he was "deeply disturbed" by the edited clip they had seen but noted that Mrs. Sherrod had said the comments were "one small part of a longer story she told of her personal transformation beyond race."
Mr. Tonsager informed Mr. Vilsack in the e-mail that Mrs. Sherrod had told deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook, the official who asked her to resign, that there was a copy of the longer speech. But no one there had seen it.
As those e-mails circulated the night of July 19, Ms. Cook was extracting a resignation from Mrs. Sherrod. The urgency for her official resignation was clear as the department's White House liaison, Kevin Washo, e-mailed Ms. Cook short missives asking "You have it?" and 30 minutes later, "Let me know as soon as it's in your inbox."
