Embarrassed White House Offers Apology, 'Unique' Job To Sherrod

Blasted by pundits on both ends of the political spectrum for its firing of a USDA worker who made racially tinged remarks, a chastened White House apologized while wooing her with a new job.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Wednesday he has apologized to ousted employee Shirley Sherrod and offered her a unique new position at the agency.

Sherrod, in an interview with The Associated Press, said she was considering it.

"They did make an offer," she said in a telephone interview. "I just told him I need to think about it."

Vilsack told reporters that Sherrod accepted his apology. He said, "She was extraordinarily gracious."

The new job offer comes after an embarrassed White House apologized to Sherrod Wednesday for ousting her over her remarks about race to an NAACP banquet in Georgia earlier this year. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the administration did not know all the facts when it acted.

When asked Wednesday if he had spoken with President Barack Obama, Vilsack said simply, "No."

Vilsack insisted that it had been his decision to seek her resignation and said he takes full responsibility.

"This is a good woman," Vilsack said. "She's been put through hell."

Sherrod resigned this week as state director of rural development in Georgia. She said she quit under pressure from the White House.

The extraordinary turn of events came less than 48 hours after a video depicting Sherrod talking about her experience with a white farmer went viral. While Sherrod emerged heroic for the treatment she received, the Obama administration appeared fearful, even panicky in dealing with a racially charged story.

Sherrod, who says her remarks had been selectively edited and taken out of context, told CNN that the White House "harassed" her to resign because the controversy was "going to be on Glenn Beck tonight."

When USDA officials contacted Sherrod saying the White House wanted her to resign, she says she tried to communicate that there was another side to the story.

Her videotaped remarks appeared to indicate she didn't give "the full force of what I could do" to a farmer because he was white. But she says the remarks were actually used to illustrate that people should not be judged based on race. The farmer has defended Sherrod, and credits her with saving his farm. But the administration officials wouldn't listen, she says.

"They were not interested in hearing the truth," Sherrod said of the administration. "No one wanted to hear the truth."

"The last time they asked me to pull over the side of the road and submit my resignation on my Blackberry, and that's what I did," Sherrod told The Associated Press.

Pundits on the left and right said Wednesday that the incident shows all the hallmarks of an administration panicked by free-falling approval numbers and negative coverage from conservative media.

The White House has denied any involvement in Sherrod's forced resignation, while acknowledging that they approved of Vilsack's decision once they were informed of it.

But Sherrod has indicated she was told the order came from the White House. And a report Wednesday morning by Politico's Ben Smith appears to support that account. Smith says three Democratic sources tell him that Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina praised the White House's initial response to the Sherrod incident at the daily 8:30 a.m. staff meeting on Tuesday. In those remarks, Messina said the White House had reacted quickly to the controversy.

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