Did White House fire woman on strength of bogus Breitbart video?

source http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/07/did_white_house_get_woman_fire.html?wprss=plum-line

By now you've heard about the story burning up the right: A U.S. Agriculture Department official says the USDA forced her to resign because Andrew Breitbart posted a video of her supposedly describing how she didn't help a white farmer 24 years ago because of racial reasons.

The woman has now said the video is bogus and that she said nothing of the kind, and she's hinted that the White House urged her firing.

So the question is this: Did the White House have this woman fired before the facts were known, all in response to what may prove to be a Breitbart-manufactured racial controversy? If so, this would illustrate an appalling White House willingness to "jump" when Breitbart says "how high," as Digby put it in a scorching post today.

I generally agree with Digby's read, but I want to urge a bit of caution here. The woman's public statements thus far don't quite say conclusively that the White House directly ordered her firing. There are still more facts to come out. That said, it seems unlikely that the USDA would undertake such a high-profile axing of the woman without consulting the White House first.

Here are the basics. The woman, Shirley Sherrod, was pictured in the video recounting to an NAACP gathering that as a worker in the mid-1980s for an organization that worked with black farmers, she didn't give all the help she could to a white farmer. "I didn't give him the full force of what I could do," she said.

More of the basics of this case right here, but the upshot is that USDA chief Tom Vilsack fired the woman, citing zero tolerance for discrimination.

Subsequently, Sherrold told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the clip had been selectively edited, and that the real point of the story was that she'd learned from that episode that "race is not the issue" when it comes to helping farmers.

Sherrod also hinted in two appearances on CNN that the White House was behind the firing, which is what now has people in an understandable uproar. But what did she say, exactly?

In one of those appearances, she says inconclusively that Breitbart appeared to have scared "the administration."

In the second, according to CNN's transcript, she said: "I had at least three calls telling me the White House wanted me to resign." Asked who the calls were from, Sherrod said they were from was Cheryl Cook, the USDA deputy undersecretary.

I don't know what to make of this. The woman is not alleging, as has been widely reported, that she got calls directly from the White House. Rather, she's saying that she was told the White House wanted her out.

Again, it seems very unlikely that the USDA would take an action like this without consulting the White House, and if the White House ordered this, it's appalling. And even without the White House, if Vilsack did fire her just on the strength of a Breitbart video, that itself is unacceptable, particularly now that the NAACP is conducting its own investigation into what happened, and it's looking like the Breitbart version may be bogus.

As for the White House's role, though, I want all the facts before making a final judgment.