taking several phone calls from the department of agriculture and tap out a letter of resignation as you were driving somewhere. the person on the other end of the line was cheryl cook. our ed henry tried to sort of chase her down yesterday, just get a few answers from her and also had a chance to speak with agriculture secretary tom vilsack about it and no one seemed to be answering any questions. she s pictured there in the background with the agriculture secretary. what s your take on what who was perhaps instructing cheryl cook and what should happen after this? you know, i know cheryl cook and i know, had she been given the opportunity to make a decision here on her own, we wouldn t be sitting here talking about this. so she was the messenger. i really, truly do believe it was not her message. cheryl is a great person. i would definitely want to see
a voice mail shedding no new light on cook s contact with the white house. i think that s pretty clear what her involvement was or wasn t. obviously we informed them of what was going on because that s what we do on a daily basis. then in terms of their request or anything else, they this was our decision here at usda. then suddenly a possible break-through. my producer has just gotten what we believe to be the direct line at the agriculture department for cheryl cook as well as her cell numbers. your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. the mailbox belonging to cheryl cook is full. to disconnect press 1. to enter another number, press 2. she s getting a lot of calls and not returning calls. reporter: we headed to agriculture headquarters to see if we could find cheryl cook there. we tried to talk to
denials from both agriculture and the white house that there was no political pressure from the white house to push out shirley sherrod. but obviously, as you know, she has said repeatedly that just the opposite is true and that she was told by cheryl cook that the white house wanted her out. so until these questions are answered we still don t know those details from monday. you wore out a lot of shoe leather trying to get the answer to that question. ed, we did talk to shirley in our last hour. cheryl cook is the person that called her three times, said pull off the road, you need to resign right now. you think that shirley sherrod might be a little bit bitter about that. listen to what she told us. what is your take on what who was perhaps instructing cheryl cook and what should happen after this? you know, i know cheryl cook and i know had she been given the opportunity to make a decision here on her own, we wouldn t be sitting here talking about this. so she was the messen
secretariville tack but his driver spotted our camera and his car was brought to a different entrance and the secretary left. just as we were about to leave the secretary s car came back to the office and we confronted him. will cheryl cook be made available for any questions? there s been an allegation that she said that the white house wanted shirley to resign. will she be made available to answer questions? why not? i addressed that yesterday. the secretary said he had addressed that the day before. all he had said was that there was a liaison at the agriculture department to spoke to somebody at the white house. he didn t reveal the name of the reyea son at agriculture. robert gibbs at the white house has not revealed which white house official or officials inside that building spoke to agriculture. all we have still is shirley sherrod saying repeatedly on our air that she was told by cheryl cook that people inside the white house wanted her out. now the white house again has
house. secretariville tack has denied that but cheryl cook hasn t come forward to answer one single question on this matter. we spent the day trying to track her down atat. dan lothian pressed robert gibbs on whether the white house would make cheryl cook available. i would point you to usda. i don t know if you talked to usda. the person who supposedly said that the white house wanted her to step down. again, call the department of agriculture. you hear on the overhead intercom robert gibbs just told cheryl cook, call the press office. we ll try to track her down. hey there, ed henry at cnn. we re working on a story about cheryl cook. i want to see if we can get an interview with her. robert gibbs just said in the briefing for the second day in a row that if any reporters want to talk to her, we should call over to the press office. can you help us? let me see. let me take your information down. reporter: later in the afternoon i got a call back from another press person